Written by Habibah Abass. Photo from NU-Q Facebook Page.
There are currently 34 faculty members at Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) who offer a number of classes in communication, journalism and liberal arts for the university’s 207 students. Despite this, some students say there are not enough classes being offered each semester and there’s a shortage of available seats in each class.
“I don’t like having to choose between which class I dislike the least because the classes I wanted to take were all full,” said Meriam Abdessadok, a communication freshman at NU-Q.
“I’m aware that this isn’t a film school, but we do have a lack of film production and postproduction classes. We need more professors who can offer these classes,” said Mohammad Qandas, a communication sophomore at NU-Q.
“We have plenty of equipment and resources at the studio that remain unused because we don’t have anyone to teach us how to take advantage of the resources we have,” he added.
Since NU-Q still currently shares a building with Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, there are logistical issues in regards to acquiring more professors who can offer more classes for students, said Charles Whitney, dean of academic affairs at NU-Q.
“We don’t cover some things because we simply don’t have the faculty to cover them,” said Whitney.
“As we expand, we will be adding faculty. When we get in the new building, we will have more flexibility in class sizes and we will continue to grow,” he added.
Other than the lack of space available, some classes just can’t increase in size. “It depends on the nature of the class,” said Nadiyah El-Amin, academic advisor at NU-Q. “Sometimes a professor is forced to accommodate a predetermined number of students because of the equipment available for the class,” she explained.
“Many professors increased their cap sizes this semester,” El-Amin said, adding that this meant that professors had to increase the number of seats they could offer in their classes because the number of students at NU-Q is growing every year.
Students are encouraged to cross-register at neighboring universities in Education City. However, some students have expressed their discontent with cross-registering because classes taken at other universities do not affect a student’s grade point average. This sometimes proves to be a disadvantage for a student who wants to boost his/her GPA.
“I have to take classes at NU-Q in order to keep up my GPA,” said Amal Ali, sophomore at NU-Q.
For now, all students can do is wait until the university moves into the new building in late 2016/early 2017 to see if there will be any changes in this matter, according to El-Amin.
“Next year we will have more faculty members and that will allow us to offer more courses,” said Whitney.