College of the North Atlantic - Qatar (CNA-Q) is developing a five-year research strategy to meet the country's needs, disclosed president Dr Salem Al-Naemi.
“We are developing a five-year research matrix for the future. This will hopefully be announced with the launch of the university. Our research strategy is well aligned with the research priorities of the country,” he told Gulf Times.
“We do have some research programmes in the pipeline in the national priority areas such as sustainability, food security among others. The five year research plan is the continuation of the several research programmes that are going on in the college. However, we will expand the scope of some of the research. Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) has set certain research priorities for the country and our research areas are aligned with these priorities,” he explained.
Dr Al-Naemi said: "We do have several research programmes going on and most of them are funded by QNRF. We have a spectrum of research such as in energy and we work with Shell, Qatar Gas and Qatar Petroleum in some of these projects. We have some very good research in healthcare as well as in environment and sustainability,”
CNA-Q president said that the college will be really emphasising on research. "We are an applied technology institute with strong relations with several partners in different industries such as energy, health and financial industry as well as other organisations in the private sector. Therefore, we want to tap and develop our research plan according to the needs of these industries. This will enrich and bring opportunities for our faculty and the students will be very much engaged on the research. When they graduate, they will have very strong relations with the industry they will be serving,” he noted.
Dr Al-Naemi remarked that the college is re-engineering its strategy as it is getting ready to transition to a university. “We are developing a strategy to align with university goals and objectives to be a major pillar for the nation. We are looking at providing the best education and learning, curriculum and services on par with any other university nationally and internationally. We are working on it and will be implementing it with the announcement of the launch of the university,” he said.
Dr Al-Naemi said that the college plans to nurture the alumni and train them to be part of the academic staff. "We aim to attract our graduates or other graduates in applied majors and we are planning to work with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education to send them abroad for further specialised studies. Hopefully, they will be part of our academic community in the future. We currently have highly qualified teaching faculty from around the world and they will be able to cover the newly introduced programmes successfully. Presently the college has a total of 288 academic staff, including instructors, deans, and chairs." he said.
The president also stressed that the college wants to build on the existing engagement with the community at large.
“We want to develop a much stronger engagement with the community and be a centric service provider for the community not just in education but also in cultural and sports fields. We want to collaborate with national and international universities in higher education and specifically in applied education. We aim to be ranked top among the young universities in applied university category and will be working hard to reach the milestone. We are open for collaboration and in talks with some universities in the US, Europe and India in areas such as exchange of faculty and students, joint research and learn from the programmes of other universities,” said Dr Al-Naemi.