Building the "Multi-Versity"

Back when he was a student in Penn GSE’s Executive Doctorate Program in Higher Education Management, Tim Fournier GrEd'06 and his classmates used to joke that the program was designed to provide "a blueprint for starting a new college campus."

At the time, that kind of start-up opportunity seemed like a pipe dream. But, just a few months after Fournier had completed his doctorate, he was given just that chance when Northwestern University asked him to help launch a brand new branch campus.

The only hitch? It was to be in Qatar, a tiny, oil- and natural gas-rich state on the Persian Gulf, on a 2,500-acre complex in the capital city of Doha.

The 2,500 acres is called Education City, a project created by Qatar's ruler, His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, and his wife, Her Highness Sheikah Mozah Bint Nasser Al Missned. Through their personal foundation, the couple committed millions to the creation of a regional education hub with stateof- the-art facilities. Their aim, according to the Qatar Foundation website, was "to bring knowledge to the people of Qatar and the region, thereby helping to build a skilled human capital base."

Education City offers a full complement of programs—a K-12 academy, a learning center for students with academic difficulties, and a post-secondary program for students making the transition to college. But the vision extends to research as well. The Qatar Science and Technology Park will provide research and training facilities meant to promote technology business in Qatar.

At the heart of all this activity are the six American universities that have opened their doors in Doha. The first arrival, in 1998, was Virginia Commonwealth University, with a design program. Following VCU were the Weill Cornell Medical College (2002), Texas A&M (2003), Carnegie Mellon (2004), and Georgetown (2005), offering degrees in medicine, engineering, business, and international politics, respectively.

In 2007, Northwestern announced that it would be the latest American university to set up shop in Education City, offering programs in journalism and communications.

An Offer He Couldn’t Refuse

For Fournier, the timing was perfect. When he began the Exec Doc program, he anticipated that his career would continue in research and compliance operations for large Research I universities.

But the program changed his thinking. With students hailing from liberal arts colleges, faith-based and gender-specific institutions, HBCUs, and the nation's community colleges, the cohort offered a diversity of voices that, as Fournier tells it, "opened my eyes to other possibilities in higher education beyond the 100 largest research universities... Learning about these institutions and from people working in them helped me reconsider what I could do with my skills more broadly."

Then, Northwestern gave him an offer he couldn't refuse: the chance to build something from the ground up. "I like to think that my daily application of both the content of the Exec Doc program and my improved understanding of higher education led Northwestern to ask me to help open our first, full overseas campus in Education City," Fournier says.

After an early career stint in broadcast television, Fournier earned an MBA and landed work in regulatory compliance and operations, first as a consultant and later as Penn's institutional compliance officer. He was Northwestern's research integrity officer before he took the job in Doha.

To Fournier, the challenges that Northwestern and the other institutions have undertaken in Qatar are potentially transformative. "The success of the Education City experiment will affect the future of an entire nation," he observes. "At the same time, it serves as a prototype for a new educational model—one that is referred to here as the multi-versity."

For Qatar, the project is critical. As Fournier explains, "In this region, national economies are fueled by oil and natural gas resources. As these finite resources start to disappear, either the economic void must be filled or the economy will die."

Education City provides a way forward for Qatar after the natural gas is gone. But as Fournier points out, it also provides "a new paradigm for education, research, and community development that brings together leading programs from a variety of institutions to form a new set of collaborative relationships."

As a partner with the other universities in Education City, Northwestern has the prospect of creating cross-registrations for our students that will enable them to take advantage of top-notch academic programs. And I'm intrigued by the creativity that can come from putting faculty and staff from really different organizations together every day."

Keeping the Trains Running

Still, the challenges of the day-to-day work—"keeping the trains running on time"—occupy most of his attention. "Beyond keeping the trains running, I also have to acquire the trains and the track and the station house. My responsibilities include providing the administrative infrastructure that supports our faculty, staff, and students in our educational mission as well as the housing, transportation, and other infrastructure that supports our ability to live in Doha."

As chief operating officer and senior associate dean for finance and administration, Fournier has his work cut out for him. He manages business and finance, facilities, marketing and public relations, human resources, library, and information technology and, drawing on his early days in broadcast journalism, oversees the television and radio production facilities as well.
One of his key challenges is personnel. In any university, recruitment and turnover of top staff and faculty always threaten to disrupt the business of education. But as Fournier ruefully explains, "these risks are greatly magnified" for a facility operating in another country.
As such, Fournier devotes a lot of time to helping with the practical tasks that face foreign residents anywhere—processing immigration and residency permits, ensuring appropriate medical exams, assisting with overseas banking,arranging faculty and staff housing, coordinating events for transitioning families, etc.

Added to the usual challenges of the ex-patriate life are the deeper mysteries of living in a culture so fundamentally different from that of the U.S. Once a poor pearl-fishing center, Qatar has transformed itself into an oil-rich country with the highest GDP per capita in the world. Under the rule of His Highness Sheik Hamad, the tiny nation is guardedly liberal, particularly compared to some of its neighbors. Women can vote and drive—although most wear the abaya in public. The law is based on civil code—but Islamic law still applies in certain cases. So newcomers can be in for a little culture shock, and part of Fournier's job is to help them get oriented to a very different culture.

Equally important are the challenges of acclimating local personnel to the ways of an American university.

In that respect, Fournier credits the Exec Doc program with teaching him the importance of keeping the administrative team running in the same direction. "In a large organization," he observes, "one person acting in a direction slightly skewed from the main might be able to be lost in the noise. But in a small organization, especially one 8,000 miles from home, we've all got to be pulling together. And one of the lessons of the Exec Doc program is that—at least for me—everything comes back to supporting the organization's mission."

A New Educational Tradition

Last August on Northwestern's Evanston campus, incoming freshmen were moving into their dorm rooms, buying their Wildcat hoodies, signing up for classes.

Eight time zones away, 39 of their peers were joining in this same ritual. During orientation week, they too learned how the campus celebrates Wildcat victories, how the Dance Marathon came to be—all the collegiate traditions that form the background of academic life.

But this small band of nine men and 30 women were breaking new ground—not only as the first class in an audacious experiment in transnational education but also as trailblazers in their own cultures.

Northwestern University in Qatar's Class of 2011 hails from more than a dozen countries, all in a region not exactly known for its commitment to free speech. Again, Qatar is relatively liberal by Persian Gulf standards. After all, Sheikh Hamad established Al Jazeera, the Arab answer to CNN. Even so, journalism and communication, the two fields Northwestern’s students will be pursuing, are not typical career choices for young Qataris. As Fournier observes, "It's a story not unlike many Western cultures— parents want their children to become doctors and engineers first."

That said, Fournier has high praise for the way the programs have been rolled out. "Her Highness and the Qatar Foundation are putting together a collaborative educational campus that builds new programs in a way that the culture can absorb," he explains. "...First, Education City introduced a fine art and design program for girls that provided advanced educational opportunities for those whose families weren't comfortable sending them overseas to study. This grew into a four-year degree program. Then came medicine, engineering, business, computer science, foreign service, and now journalism and communication. It's been a thoughtful, evolutionary process for introducing a new educational tradition."

What is more, Northwestern is planning a program for high school students that will help build their English language skills and also educate potential applicants about the kinds of careers awaiting journalism or communication majors.

Says Fournier, "This is a region with a rich history and tradition of storytelling. Our job is to help our students translate that tradition into careers that help create new knowledge and entertainment, inform and communicate with the people around them, and connect people of different communities, nations, and cultures.

"We look at our educational programs as building bridges that create, inform, and connect."

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