University Pioneers Adjust to New Culture at Carnegie Mellon in Qatar

“Daily life can be as exotic or ordinary as you'd like,” says Dean Charles Thorpe.

It's 110 degrees in the shade, but pleasantly less humid than summer in Pittsburgh. It's a place where you can shop at traditional markets called souqs, or head down the street to a modern superstore that's bigger than the average Sam's Club.

It's Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar , and 44 employees who have moved to this warm and friendly Arabian Gulf nation to establish the university’s first residential undergraduate campus outside of Pittsburgh are finding that daily life can be both exotic and as ordinary as a workday in Oakland.

“I was impressed by the wonderful juxtaposition of sand and water,” says Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs Robert Kail, who first encountered Qatar a year ago as part of a Carnegie Mellon "advance team" exploring the feasibility of creating the new campus.

“It's a very modern country,” says Kail, former longtime associate dean for the College of Engineering. “In many ways, in fact, downtown Doha puts Pittsburgh to shame.” He was surprised, he says, by the upscale malls and superstores in the downtown area. “We tend to think of malls in terms of the suburbs. But there are no suburbs in Doha. It's all city and desert.”

Getting settled in Qatar

Education City “is just off the edge of published maps of Doha, which makes for interesting navigation,” says Charles Thorpe, who stepped down as director of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute to become dean of the Qatar campus.

“Actually, driving here is a lot like driving in Pittsburgh,” Thorpe says. “There are seemingly no streets that run straight, there aren't street signs at a lot of the intersections, and people refer to places like ‘where the police headquarters used to be‘.”

Thorpe and his wife, Leslie, and teenaged children, Leland and Hannah, live in a residential area of Doha about 15 minutes from campus. They inhabit the top floor, while the bottom floor is used as an official Carnegie Mellon space for meetings and social gatherings.

Many other university employees are living in large luxury apartment complexes and villas, including Ruth Gaus, assistant to the dean, who moved to Qatar with her husband Robert this past June. “I'd never traveled outside the United States before, so it has been a real whirlwind of experiences,” she says.

Gaus lives in Riviera Gardens, “a beautiful compound surrounded by palm trees and gardens,” where she enjoys getting together with Carnegie Mellon neighbors to share tips for living in Qatar.

(Continued …)

1 2 3