Faculty Profile: Marci Brown, Adjunct Lecturer at Northwestern University in Qatar

Marci Brown

Marci Brown

Being a teacher was not always in Marci Brown’s plans, who was 42 years old when she first began teaching. Prior to that, she had worked as a journalist and then as a public relations consultant for the National Council On Crime and Delinquency, a non-profit organization in the United States. But her desire to live abroad led her to start teaching English at a local school in Greece.

“I have fallen in love with teaching – it’s really what I want to do,” Brown said.

Brown is currently an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University in Qatar, teaching Intro to Journalism to dual enrolled students, starting this semester. Students in the Dual Enrollment program are accepted to NU-Q but must complete a foundation year at the Academic Bridge Program first. Brown comes to NU-Q from ABP, where she is the English department supervisor.

The class Brown is teaching is an introductory course at NU-Q that explores the history of journalism and basic news reporting techniques. This course was previously taught by NU-Q professors Patricia Roth and Miriam Berg.

Originally from California, Brown earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a minor in criminal justice from Sacramento State University in 1982. “Somehow I thought I’d be a crime beat reporter. It just never quite worked out that way,” Brown said with a laugh.

Years later, in 2002, Brown went back to university and completed a master’s degree in creative writing from Antioch University in Los Angeles.

Having worked as a journalist and public relations specialist, teaching was a major career shift for Brown, but she soon came to realize how much fulfillment it truly brought her.

“You’ll hear teachers say this all the time—how satisfying it is to see that light bulb go off over a student’s head, when you can see that they understand something or that you’ve opened their eyes,” Brown said. “I’m not sure there are that many jobs out there that provide that kind of satisfaction.”

Although she loved the years she spent teaching in Greece, Brown was ready to move on after some time. “I wanted a job that provided me with a bit more structure and support,” she said.

Brown found that support at ABP, where she has been working for nine years now. She described discovering this job in Qatar as a very happy coincidence and one that she doesn’t plan on leaving anytime soon.

“They [students] get to build the skills they need, but they [also] have that confidence because they’ve been sort of accepted in the university already,” Brown said about the dual enrollment program.

For Brown, the most rewarding part of being an educator is her students coming back and gushing about their time in ABP.

“Just the fact that they even come back to say hello and let us know how they’re doing—we love that,” she said. “I feel like we make really big strides here.”

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