Carnegie Mellon plans Middle Eastern branch campus

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Carnegie Mellon University will open a branch campus in Qatar, the latest American institution to join an experimental education project in the Middle Eastern nation, officials announced.
Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar will offer undergraduate programs in computer science and business with a first class of 50 students expected to enroll by fall. University officials plan to grow slowly, and students will earn degrees based on the same academic standards as are at the Pittsburgh campus.
"The education development in Qatar presents us with an extraordinary opportunity to make contributions to the region and to the world that are important and lasting," university President Jared L. Cohon said in a statement Monday. "This initiative will also advance significantly our strategic priority of internationalizing Carnegie Mellon."
Carnegie Mellon joins other American universities such as Cornell, Texas A & amp;M and Virginia Commonwealth in opening a branch campus at a 2,400-acre multi-institutional center in the capital city of Doha.
All costs are being underwritten by the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, a nonprofit organization founded by Qatar's emir to raise the education level of Qataris.
"This is the most audacious thing you have ever seen. You just see it rising out of the desert. It just takes your breath away," Provost Mark Kamlet said about the center called Education City. "When the oil is gone and the natural gases exhausted, they will have an extremely good economy and society."
The university plans to start by sending a handful of faculty and staff members to the overseas campus, which will be led by Charles Thorpe, a leading robotics researcher who is currently serving as director of CMU's Robotics Institute.