Story and Photo by Oma Seddiq

Northwestern University in Qatar’s contract with Qatar Foundation has been extended to the 2027-28 academic year after Northwestern University Provost Daniel Linzer signed an agreement with QF officials Monday, according to NU-Q Dean and CEO Everette Dennis.

NU-Q’s contract was set to expire in 2017-18, although negotiations for renewal had long been underway. In an email he sent to the NU-Q community today, the dean said the renewal had been “anticipated,” and he described the contract extension as “A new lease on life for NU-Q.”

Provost Linzer traveled to Doha this past week along with several other high-level administration officials from Northwestern’s campus in Evanston. During his visit, he also spoke to the NU-Q community about its role within Northwestern and goals for the future.

NU-Q is one of Northwestern’s most important experiments in globalizing the university, he told approximately 65 students, faculty and staff during a community meeting on Monday.

Northwestern’s current mission is to improve learning, conduct ground-breaking research, and make a global impact, Linzer said. NU-Q has already been advancing such goals, he added.

“The faculty and administration and staff of NU-Q have really created something absolutely wonderful and the evidence is in the students,” he said. “Students have done so much amazing work.”

Along with NU-Q’s efforts, Doha has presented opportunities to both Evanston and NU-Q students to produce creative work, Linzer said.

“It is turning into an epicenter for a lot of what happens in the Middle East because of Al Jazeera,” he explained.

The concern now is how to maintain NU-Q’s progress and develop it further, Linzer continued. “We have work to do,” he told the audience.

NU-Q student work should be curated online so that everybody from Evanston can see it, he suggested. “I would love to see this work not just fade away as one-time work for a class, but to form a body of evidence that is displayed,” he said.

“We’re here for quite awhile and very excited to do so,” he said during the community meeting, before the agreement with Qatar Foundation had been officially signed.

The provost gave an excellent update on the mission of Northwestern University and the goals for NU-Q, said Mary Dedinsky, the director of the NU-Q journalism program. “I found there were a lot of things I wanted to know more about and will be following up on.”