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By Erin Dostal and Emily Glazer The Daily Northwestern
Northwestern is finalizing plans to open an undergraduate communication and journalism school in the Arab state of Qatar, with classes scheduled to begin as early as this fall, university officials said.
The NU campus will be in Education City, a compound of colleges sponsored by the Qatari government in the capital city of Doha.
Plans began when Qatari officials approached NU seeking to open a journalism school, said Medill Dean John Lavine. After speaking with NU officials, the Qatari government decided to add a communication program as well.
Communication Dean Barbara O'Keefe said although the school would initially have 40 students, she expects it "to grow over time."
Half the enrolled students would study journalism and half communication, Lavine said.
Although most students would be from Qatar, the rest would come from other parts of the Middle East or South Asia.
The courses taught on the Qatari campus would be similar to those taught in Evanston, both O'Keefe and Lavine said. Some might be taught in both Arabic and English, Lavine said. The program would provide funding to hire about 50 NU faculty and staff, who might rotate between the two campuses, the Chicago Tribune reported Friday.
Students in the Qatari schools would pay the same tuition as undergraduates in Evanston, which will be $35,064 next year.
Al Cubbage, NU's vice president for university relations, said the financial details of this project are undisclosed, but that "there would not be significant costs incurred by Northwestern."
Lavine said he hopes the new campus will expand Medill's international reach.
"The heart of the matter is that … there's an increasingly short distance between places all over the globe, and for those of us that deal with journalism and media, that's certainly true," Lavine said.
Most students complete their Teaching Media internships - quarter-long programs at professional news organizations - at U.S. sites, although some choose to go to organizations abroad, such as The Star in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The extension into Qatar will create TM programs in the Middle East, including possible connections with Al-Jazeera, the largest Arab television network, Lavine said.
"We certainly are not thinking about going to Qatar to create American media, but we are deeply committed to a free press," Lavine said. "It's just an extraordinary opportunity."
However, the Qatari campus is not strictly for Medill.
President Henry Bienen told The Daily in February that he thinks "the biggest commitment is to have this campus abroad giving an NU degree."
Cubbage said negotiations over the contract are pending.
"When we started the negotiations, the hope was that it might be as early as next fall, September of 2007," Cubbage said. "Obviously that would be an aggressive timetable now."
Education City is maintained by the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, a nonprofit organization.
The education complex already includes a Texas A&M University engineering school, a Georgetown University foreign policy school and a Cornell University medical school.
Lavine said he spoke to the dean of the Georgetown program, who said the quality of the students was the same - if not better - than those on Georgetown's U.S. campus. The students were 45 percent Qatari and 55 percent international, he said.
One journalist called Qatar "the Switzerland of the Middle East" because of its commitment to education and willingness to accept people of different religions, Lavine said.
Cubbage said this is an opportunity to provide NU's education in a very interesting environment.
"The university is becoming increasingly known worldwide," he said. "We can really provide the kind of quality education that Northwestern has in a new part of the world."
Reach Erin Dostal at e-dostal@northwestern.edu and Emily Glazer at e-glazer@northwestern.edu.
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