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Everette Dennis |
Everette Dennis, who was appointed dean and CEO of Northwestern University in Qatar (NUQ) earlier this year, has expressed his excitement ahead of the opening of its new campus in the next two years, which he claimed will make an incredible difference to the students and the school as a whole.
Speaking to Gulf Times, the new dean also noted his determination to get members of the school out into the local community to engage those interested in media and communication and help develop the local media scene. The new facilities at NUQ will enable the school to fulfil these aims with much greater ease, he explained.
Next year will see the first group of students complete their studies at the university as the Class of 2012 graduate in May. The school has just under 160 students at the moment, and the dean explained that the new building will allow the university to provide services for more students, as well as graduate programmes and increased capacity for research.
“It will give us extra space to operate and develop the programme, it will give us the capacity to bring more students from universities in Education City, and it will give us much more laboratory and studio space,” he said.
Dean Dennis is an expert in new media and this is an area that he hopes to see develop throughout the university. “For me I think the school needs to be poised for the digital and global world, and so whatever anybody does at the moment, we want people to begin to think about how content will be viewed and how it can travel between different platforms,” he said. “We want to produce people who can get jobs and who have the practical skills to do so, but on the other hand we want to inspire them to the future,” he noted.
Dean Dennis explained that he decided to come to Qatar because of the challenge represented by the opportunity to develop NUQ.“I think here is a different challenge, to help people navigate a new environment which is changing so rapidly – the place is growing so quickly,” he said, “to me there was a sense that the country has a sense of destiny, it has enormous resources to work with, it is open to outside talent and its placing emphasis on training and educating people.”
The new dean has also been engaging with local business and government officials to discuss the potential for various cooperative initiatives and programmes for students learning at NUQ.
