This issue includes a University Profile instead of Carnegie Mellon University-Qatar

Big name universities usually bring to mind a stuffy, traditional relic of an academic institution where echoes of 19th century haughtiness still resonate in its frosty and impersonal corridors. Carnegie Mellon’s Qatar Branch campus is nothing of the sort. The Doha offshoot is the university’s first undergraduate branch campus and is literally new, from the contemporary design of its buildings to its cutting-edge teaching methods. So new in fact that you can still smell the fresh paint. An experiment in innovation on just about every level imaginable, it’s somehow fitting that Qatar – itself a maverick state which has grown to become one of the most influential and unfettered nations in the region – should host a branch of a higher learning institution known for its non-conformist approach to education.

Founded in 2004, Carnegie Mellon’s Qatar campus comprises part of the sprawling 2,500 acre Education City grounds on the outskirts of Doha which also houses five other American branch campuses, and that’s where the novelty truly begins.

“What the Qatar foundation wants is multiversity,” explains Chuck Thorpe, Dean of Carnegie Mellon. And Education City delivers. The flagship project of the Qatar Foundation actually enables students to cross register for courses in any of the six – so far – institutions on campus.

There is no other place else in the world where you can take a computer science course from Carnegie Mellon and then walk across the street and take a foreign affairs course from Georgetown, then go take a jewelry design course from Virginia Commonwealth before hearing a lecture at Cornell Medical School. Simply put, there’s little redundancy. With engineering offered at Texas Ana and design offered by VCU, it makes no sense for Carnegie Mellon to bring engineering programs when they’ve got one right next door. And at the end of the semester, the course shows up on the student’s Carnegie transcript, complete with a grade. An academic one-stop-shop. 

Carnegie Mellon itself has been offering students a choice of undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Business Administration since 2004. Last year, it introduced the Information Systems degree, which is a combination of both business and computer science providing the knowledge and skills to design effective systems for data management, essentially with students utilizing computer tools to solve business problems. The program draws on a wide range of college and university strengths, and its flexible nature encourages students to explore their own interests in a contemporary content area such as professional communications, organizations, global systems, business and economics.

 But like everything else in Education City, much care goes into the selection of Carnegie Mellon programs. Extensive market surveys are conducted in collaboration with the Qatar Foundation to determine whether there is, in fact, a market for related jobs. Furthermore, with a certain number of required courses for the various programs, Carnegie talks to businesses to determine what tracks are most important and should be brought to Qatar. As a result, according to America’s Best Grad Schools 2008, US News & World Report, Carnegie’s computer science program has been tied at number one for years while its business program ranks in the top 10. 

But this is the Carnegie Mellon model, and general-education courses are considered no less important. Therefore the major courses are complemented by Math, Statistics, English, History, Psychology, as well as a host of other courses. And with the Qatar Foundation insisting on a true Carnegie degree, the same courses have to be taught to the same standards as the mothership in Pittsburgh.

But the similarity goes beyond just courses. They also had to decide whether to do everything in Qatar that they do in Pittsburgh. “That’s why running an undergraduate program is so complicated,” says Thorpe. “Master’s students sort of show up, take their classes and go home.” Not so with undergraduates, who have the same interest in a student government, in student newspapers, clubs, internships and student advising as they do in the US. And with students from 31 different nationalities, issues such as living in the dorms also have to be considered

The quality of instruction is also to the same standards as Pittsburg, and with good reason – many of the instructors are actually the same ones who teach at the main campus, with professors, including senior professors, rotating through the main campus in the United States and the Qatar branch.

As far as student quality is concerned, the same rules also apply. In fact Carnegie Mellon Qatar even brought over the vice president for admissions from Pittsburgh to help decide whom to admit so that the same quality was maintained.

“We aren’t like Carnegie Mellon, we are Carnegie Mellon,” insists Thorpe. “The pressure on us has been the pressure to keep the quality, not to attract a whole bunch of students and try to make money.”

Despite its relative youth, Carnegie Mellon Qatar’s strong internship program attests to the strategy’s success. According to Thorpe, students who go out and spend their summers interning return full of enthusiasm, having immediately used what they learned in their job. He also notes the interest from employers keen to hire the students long before they graduate.

And the claim is backed up. Nour Al Moughanni says Carnegie Mellon helped her get an internship at energy firm ConocoPhillips while she was in her second year as undergraduate student at the university. The company contacted her again later about a position with ConocoPhillips, where Moughanni is currently an information coordinator.

Another novelty for the Gulf and much of the Arab world is the mixed classes at Carnegie Mellon. With a lot of the students coming through gender-segregated schools, men and women at the university find themselves in the same classroom with students of the opposite sex for the first time. “This is what we wanted to do, and what the Qatar Foundation wants us to do,” says Thorpe.

“Specifically, the Qatar Foundation asked us to consider launching masters’ programs,” he explains. “We think that’s a great idea, we’ve done a market survey, and we’re in the process of designing what such a program would look like.” But more generally, it was clear from the beginning that the Qatar Foundation wanted Carnegie to bring the whole university to Qatar.

“Our primary mission is undergrad education; but it’s clear that is only a part of what we do,” Thorpe says. As Qatar sets out to create the knowledge-based society, they are relying on the universities to do research and executive education; to work with K-12 schools to improve the pipeline of students; to bring in distinguished lecturers and conferences; in general, to create the kinds of intellectual excitement that builds up a culture of learning and inquiry. “That’s great for us,” Thorpe says. “Carnegie Mellon is a problem-solving organization, and we thrive on just those kinds of challenges.” Of course Carnegie just wouldn’t be Carnegie without the technology that takes education into a different realm, and there’s plenty of that.

For instance, through the use of video conference links, students in Qatar can not only take courses from professors sitting in their armchairs back in Pittsburgh, but they can also compare progress. One such course was one called US counters, with a professor and students in Qatar and a professor and students in Pittsburgh discussing the same readings, and twice a week they would light up the video conference and have a group discussion.

Clearly the benefits of comparing notes in such a manner is priceless, and without the technology, not feasible. Students also have access to pre-recorded lectures, which allows them to study from home. “Imagine listening to a professor where if you didn’t understand something you could rewind and watch it again,” says Thorpe “Or if you’ve already read a part and you understood it you could fast-forward.” That facility wasn’t available at the university this writer attended, except perhaps the part about not understanding a great many things.

Even extra curricular activities at Carnegie have a healthy dose of technology thrown in. An after-school programming club led to a computer programming competitions, and Carnegie Mellon even started Robotics clubs, where students build robots out of Lego and compete against one another in the Botball Robotics Challenge, which Carnegie successfully brought outside the United States.

Having graduated its inaugural class only last year, Carnegie Mellon Qatar currently has in the environs of 240 students, 30 faculty members and 90 staff. As many as 40 percent of students are Qataris, with the rest comprised either of foreigners who grew up in Qatar, such as Indians, Egyptians or Lebanese, or students who come from abroad and live in dorms to savor the Carnegie experience.

Carnegie also has students from the main campus who come to Qatar for a semester as well as students from the Qatar branch who go and take courses in Pittsburgh. “We are here to teach but we are also here to learn and to bring US students or faculty here. Then we go back to the United States much wiser than when we came here. It is a wonderful experience,” Thorpe explains. And in the students’ own words that experience has been nothing short of “inspiring.” “I graduated with a degree in business administration, which you can get at a lot of universities, and often at good ones, but no place can be as inspiring as it is here, just by the fact that we started something new, with nothing to base it on,” says Jinan Tabra, one of Carnegie Mellon’s first graduates. “We are creating its history. We are creating this foundation and it is so inspiring to be part of that, to be able to shape the future of something much greater than yourself.” But in the interest of maintaining objectivity, it must be said that time will be the true test

Carnegie Mellon Qatar’s success. From its contemporary building designs and beautifully manicured grounds to its cutting edge programs and enthusiastic student body, the university certainly started out in the best of conditions. Yet when all is said and done, it’s still only 5 years old, and will need to put a lot of miles on the odometer before it can truly be considered the equal of its American counterpart. In this part of the world, people are attracted to anything new like a moth to a flame. Whether Carnegie Mellon Qatar continues to attract students of the same caliber once the novelty wears off, and professors of the same quality continue to teach there once the paint begins to peel has yet to be seen. But in the meantime, the Botball competitions should keep things exciting.

By Staff