Qatar campus opens door for cultural exchange
Eight years ago, VCU’s College of Design Arts in Qatar opened its doors to its first freshman class of about 25 students. Since then the school’s enrollment has jumped to 157, a 620 percent increase.
“We have our largest freshman class this year,” said Richard Toscan, dean of the School of the Arts.
Eight years ago, VCU’s College of Design Arts in Qatar opened its doors to its first freshman class of about 25 students. Since then the school’s enrollment has jumped to 157, a 620 percent increase.
“We have our largest freshman class this year,” said Richard Toscan, dean of the School of the Arts. “We also have our largest total enrollment, around 155. I think the school is at a steady state right now. We’re close to our maximum enrollment. The way the building is now our maximum capacity is about 170.”
John Demao, associate dean of the School of the Arts, who serves as a liaison between VCU Qatar and the Monroe Park Campus, said he is pleased with the progress the school has made.
“I think it’s actually been pretty phenomenal,” he said. “We started the first year with, I think, 25 students and five faculty – something like that – and now we’re up to about 40 faculty and 157 students.
“We have potentially 180 for next fall. The problem we’ve run into is that we’ve run out of space. There’s no more room for people. We’re talking about expansion for the building just to accommodate what we have now. There has been some discussion of some other programs going over there.”
Unlike the Richmond campus, only women attend the Qatar school. The arts are dominated by women in Qatar, and men have little interest in pursuing careers in the field.
Toscan, however, mentioned the potential of changing that.
“The building was not actually designed for coeducation in terms of bathrooms and all kinds of stuff,” he said. “We’re about to start plans for an addition to the building. I don’t know what the time limit for that is going to be, but I’m guessing that the structure will be in place for us to become coeducational in three to five years, more likely five years.”
Nevertheless, VCU’s presence in Qatar has opened the door for a two-way cultural exchange whereby several students from Qatar have transferred to the Monroe Park Campus. While several American students have visited Qatar, last year VCU offered its first cooperative international-design symposium in Doha.
“We sent 12 of our American students to Doha to attend the conference and take part in workshops with our Arab students in Qatar,” Toscan said. “They all loved it. We have another design conference planned for next February. We’re going to do it every year now. Again we’ll send about 12 students for a week to Doha.”
One American VCU student who visited Doha, Marie Lynn, an interior design major, said if given the opportunity she would definitely go back.
“It was a huge eye opener,” Lynn said. “I considered taking a semester abroad there. It’s set up kind of like an exchange program. It’s pretty much all set up for you, and it’s not very expensive to go over there since it’s related to VCU. And the cost of tuition is the same as here at VCU, but I only have two semesters left.
“I was surprised. Interior design-wise a lot of it seemed pretty similar to what we go through, but their school seems to be more integrated with the fashion, interior and graphic design than we are here.
“Like here, interior design is really separated from anything. We go to our classes and that’s it. But over there it seemed like everyone was kind of involved in maybe a little bit of fashion. . . . It was interesting because it seemed like we could really benefit from a more integrated program – like if interior design students took a fashion class or a graphics class, because it’s all related.
“When you get out in the field I kind of feel like you do a little bit of everything. So they seem that they are a little more well-rounded for that.”
Another student who participated in the conference, Jason Beckwith, a fashion merchandising major, said he also had a positive experience.
“I was very lucky to observe the Muslim culture firsthand,” Beckwith said.
Furthermore, he recommended that other design students visit Qatar for next year’s conference.
“It was a very busy week,” he said. “When we flew over – the trip from Richmond to Qatar took about 24 hours from Richmond to Detroit to Amsterdam to Bahrain to Qatar. Once we got there we got to participate in a lot of workshops. I got to listen to speakers in the field like Reem Acra and Joseph Johnson.”
Qatar borders Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the heart of the Middle East, which is currently the home to the U.S. command center for military operations in Iraq. Despite this, Toscan said the entire faculty says they still feel very comfortable.
“You don’t really see the American military presence in Doha,” he said. “They tell me the only place you really see that presence is all the short-haired guys at the Mexican restaurant in Doha.”
Similar to most of the Middle East, Toscan said the people of Qatar have a rather negative opinion of the Bush administration’s role there.
“Fortunately,” he said, “they don’t equate our American faculty with American foreign politics. They make a distinction between the two.”
After VCU opened a campus in Qatar, other universities established programs there.
“We were the first,” DeMao said. “Cornell has a medical school there. This is their third year. Texas A&M has opened an engineering school there. This is their third year. Carnegie-Melon starts this year. All those programs are all coed.”
Toscan said he eventually expects about 10 more universities to offer a program in Qatar because this is a very beneficial arrangement. The original contract between VCU and the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development was for a 10-year period. Two years ago a new 10-year renewable contract was signed.
“We don’t pay a penny,” said DeMao. “It’s all funded by the Qatar foundation for education.”
The American professors in Qatar now witness the country at a time of social and political change. In a way, the dean said, VCU may have a small influence on this process.
“They’re essentially heading toward creating the same thing the British have – a constitutional monarchy,” he said. “They’re making a lot of progress in that direction, and certainly we’re supporting that approach just in the ways we teach design, not because we talk about politics.
“I think it’s given us a place to explore curricular ideas. It’s certainly made the school far more internationally recognized. It’s given us a way to introduce our design students here to international issues in a part of the world that will become a major market once the Palestinian-Israeli issue can be resolved . . . not before then.”
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