The cool videos that were shown during the CMU building opening can now be seen online here.

I'm particularly fond of this one featuring our students.

Every few days the university receptionist sends out a "lost and found" email, alerting the campus community as to what items can be claimed by their owners at reception. Normally these include keys, cell phones and high-end sunglasses.

Today's notice, however, requests that the owner of two misplaced SWORDS come pick them up.

Sunday was the official inauguration of the Carnegie Mellon building in Education City. When I moved to Qatar in 2004, I never dreamed I'd be here long enough to see groundbreaking on our own building, let alone the celebration of its completion -- but here it is 2009 already, and there I was at the celebration!

I loved all the videos, and watching the emir and sheikha joke around with the students while waiting for a photo op. Most of all, perhaps, I loved the chocolate-covered ice cream balls. Mmm.

Media coverage:

• Qatar Tribune: Sheikha Mozah opens new CMU-Q building
  
• The Peninsula: Sheikha Mozah opens CMU-Q campus
• Gulf Times: Carnegie Mellon’s Qatar facility ‘dream come true’
  
• Gulf Times: Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar Gets New Building
  

Update, 15.3: official news release here, with all the videos here.

CMU-Pittsburgh students or recent students: Do you know how much undergraduate TAs are paid? Do you know if it varies by department or if it's standard across the university?

I'm getting pushback from higher-ups about our payscale so it'd be handy info to have.

The students have been dressing inexplicably all week (as twins, in pyjamas, etc.); eventually I worked out that it's some sort of spirit week, and each day has a dress theme. Today was slated to be "traditional dress day," so I wore a tie-dye T-shirt, jeans, Birkenstocks, and a bandana in my hair.

Since the clothing themes weren't communicated to faculty or staff, I figured I'd get comments on my attire at the liberal arts faculty meeting this afternoon. I didn't. Apparently my personal fashion sense is such that I can show up to faculty meetings in tie-dye and a bandana without eliciting comment. Scary.

I don't know if it makes me happy or sad that, when I hear a student excitedly shouting "Quick! Where's Marjorie!", I know that there's a rodent loose in the ARC. Burtuqal III has been successfully released in the bushes outside. I wish I knew if mice are even capable of living in the bushes outside; it'd be pretty tragic if he came across the bleached, sandblasted bones of Burtuqals I and II out there.

Unrelatedly. There are many people to pity in the current economic crisis, but I keep finding myself pitying the news agencies. Every single day, they have to find new photos to represent "economic crisis!" on their front page. Sometimes it's a picture of sad people on a trading floor, sometimes it's a picture of a sign displaying some industrial average or other, sometimes it's a dismal line graph. But it's always really boring. It must make them sad to have such an unphotogenic event dominate the news.

Speaking of unphotogenic events dominating the news, news sources are currently offering mixed reports about whether the U.S. military has confirmed having attacked a village in Syria yesterday. If they did... well, I just don't know what to say anymore.

I was just commenting to my parents how much my work-life balance has changed in the last few years. For my first few years in Qatar, my job was boring and undemanding, and my life revolved around my friends; for a long stretch of time, in fact, the only reason I didn't quit my job was that it would mean seeing less of my friends.

Now all those friends have left. I miss them, and haven't really replaced them adequately. However, now that my job is interesting and stimulating, it's fine that I no longer have a tight-knit circle of friends for my life to revolve around. (The downside: my new workaholic life does not lead to interesting blog entries.)

I did have a fun social occasion last night: a group of TAs, young professors and staff went out for iftar (the fast-breaking meal at sundown during Ramdan) at a Lebanese restaurant. I had a blast. Even if I don't get as much social time as I'd like, I love that working here gives me the opportunity to interact with such a fun, smart, diverse crowd of people. (IIRC the 14 of us represented 9 nationalities.)

I think this is one of the interesting realities of living overseas. I imagined that moving to Qatar would mean meeting lots of Qataris and learning about their culture. That turns out not to be very easy: Qataris already have their own social networks and life routines that don't include me. This may be partially because Qatari society is rather insular, but I think that people living abroad in other countries often find the same thing. On the other hand, if you're lucky, you end up meeting lots of other expats in the same situation as you and learning about their cultures instead, so it all works out in the end.

From: [listname]@lists.andrew.cmu.edu
To: [me]
Date: 8:25 AM
Subject: Your message to [listname] awaits moderator approval


Your mail to '[listname]' with the subject

Better monthly time card

Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval.

---

From: [listname]@lists.andrew.cmu.edu
To: [me]
Date: 8:25 AM
Subject: [listname] post from [me] requires approval

As list administrator, your authorization is requested for the
following mailing list posting:

List: [listname]@lists.andrew.cmu.edu
From: [me]
Subject: Better monthly time card

---

What do you think; should I approve it?

As the director of a university tutoring center I get assigned lots of interesting tasks: hiring and training dozens of course assistants and peer tutors each semester, working with faculty to develop new methods of supporting courses, researching predictors of student success, presenting at conferences in exciting locations.... But today was the first day my job also involved playing rat-catcher.

Ever since we moved into the new building there's been a tiny beige mouse-like thing running (and more often hopping) around the ARC. Today one of my coworkers cornered it, but it escaped from the container she trapped it in. Luckily, I have many years' experience corralling pet rats, so I led an effort to coax it into a trash can.

It was an awfully cute little thing, like a little kangaroo rat, with enormous back legs and front legs so small they're barely visible. My coworker says it's a jerboa (although it doesn't have a tufted tail?). I desperately wanted to keep it, but I know taming wild rodents isn't very smart, so I released it outside.

This is not a very large trash can; the jerboa is tiny!	A coworker put this on my door after the escapade.

For additional rodent yumminess, click here for a video of me squeeing over the mouse while my coworker tries to feed it an oatmeal cookie. (It did eventually calm down enough to eat some.)

After four years of anticipation, CMU-Q moved into its own building today.

Verdict: it's pretty!

Architect's rendering	Photo, different part of the same atrium

It's really all in the details, though, as you can see from this glorious elevator call button (look closely):

Though really, it's an improvement. Last time I saw that elevator shaft, on a construction site walkthrough a month ago, it looked like this:


More pix here.

One of the main topics of this conference I'm attending is whether the spread of English as a global language is good (yay intercultural communication!) or bad (boo Anglo-American hegemony!).

As I suspect is typical wherever Anglo-American academics gather to criticize Anglo-American hegemony, there has been a fair bit of capitalism-bashing going on. The opening plenary speaker extensively quoted Marx in his talk on whether English is a panacea or a pandemic. The final speaker of the day wondered whether English can ever be culturally neutral, or whether it is too tied to the failing capitalist international regime.

I'm not normally one to sing the praises of rampant unchecked capitalism, but giving a speech on the failure of capitalism in the middle of Hong Kong struck me as a little humorous.

Yesterday, the PBS show NOW aired a segment on Education City. The video, as well as a slideshow and student interviews, can be viewed on their website here.

As a bonus, near the end of the video you can see some footage of our first class of students graduating. I haven't blogged about that at all, but I should soon. :-)

(Also, to alleviate various heart attacks I seem to have caused, let it be noted that the poll I posted earlier this week was inspired by a conversation in an English textbook, not by a real-life example.)

1) I ran our end-of-year stats yesterday, and discovered that during the 2007-2008 academic year, the ARC held 1337 tutoring sessions. We are officially leet.

2) Yesterday, a student asked me the most amazing question about citing sources. When citing the online version of a print source, you cite it as you'd cite the print source, but then add the URL at the end. Thus,

If I read it on paper:

Krug, M. (2008, April 30). CMU-Q students studying migrant workers' woes. Qatar Tribune, p. 15.

If I read it online:

Krug, M. (2008, April 30). CMU-Q students studying migrant workers' woes. Qatar Tribune, p. 15. Retrieved May 2, 2008 from http://qatar.livejournal.com/287452.html.

The student's question is this: if you are citing a movie that you (illegally) downloaded, do you cite the torrent file?

I cannot find this issue addressed in any citation guidelines.

CMU-Q students studying migrant workers' woes
Matthias Krug, Qatar Tribune, 30 April 2008

DOHA - A group of three Carnegie Mellon-Qatar (CMU-Q) students from Education City and three faculty members are carrying out surveys to ascertain the challenges facing the migrant labourers. These surveys are being conducted as part of the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF)-backed 'Migrant worker survey' research project. The groundbreaking project, which altogether involves six students from CMU-Q, is one of 47 innovative research projects which have been allocated a total of $25million fund by the QNRF, a member of Qatar Foundation.

"There are a lot of stories in the newspapers about issues related with migrant labourers but there are no real quantitative data to support them. This project is aimed at doing exactly that," CMU-Q faculty member Marjorie Carlson told Qatar Tribune before embarking on the Friday trip to Electricity Street in the Souq area. "Out of the total 250-300 surveys envisaged by the team, 50 have been conducted. The questionnaire of the extensive survey has 126 posers and 15-30 minutes are needed to complete it," he added.

At the Electricity Street, a large number of curious onlookers gathered around those who were answering the questions of students and faculty members. "We do not usually have visitors from outside our community," one of the workers said citing reason for the crowd. Another said, "If they are trying to know about us and the way we live it is good. We are happy to talk to them."

Sometimes language barrier does come up while conducting the survey, as the questionnaire is only in English. It is likely that it will be translated into Arabic, Hindi and Nepali during the next stages of the project. "Sometimes it is difficult to communicate with the workers because many don't know how to speak English," one of the students involved in the project said. "But we have methods of finding out workers who can communicate with us. It is difficult to conduct the survey in the Souq area on working days, but on Fridays we are able to talk to the migrant labourers who come here to spend their weekend," he added.

"When the workers are unable to communicate in English, we take the help of their friends who know English," said Dr. Silvia Pessoa. "Our experience has been really good. Once we approached a group of workers who first refused to talk to us. But when we explained the purpose of the survey they became so eager that they almost mobbed us. One man kept bringing more and more people to talk to us even though he himself was unable to answer our questions," he added.

The questionnaire has been split into eight sections containing posers on issues ranging from personal and family information to employment in Qatar and housing facilities. The students ask questions on the workers' academic qualification and the number of years they had taken to complete it. They also seek information regarding the contract and salary from the workers, besides their emotional state.

"It took a long time for the survey to get off. The final version is our tenth draft and we consulted several people to make sure that it was right," Pessoa said. "Since we did not want the questions to be suggestive we had to put in a lot of effort. Now we just have to go out with the students and complete the 300 questionnaires. Hopefully when we complete the work we will be in a position to inform the community about the challenges being faced by the workers in Qatar. We are also looking forward to publishing our research work in an international journal," he added.

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I count five errors, several of them hilarious. Oh, and yes I am in the picture; I'm just to the right of Erik (the tall guy with a ponytail), wearing a blue polo shirt with a white stripe on the collar.

Sunday's New York Times kicked off a series on the internationalization of American universities, with a picture of our students on (I hear) the front page! U.S. Universities Rush to Set Up Outposts Abroad. Yesterday's installment in the series was specifically about Education City and featured quotes from many of our students and staff: In Oil-Rich Mideast, Shades of the Ivy League.

Each of these articles also featured an online Q&A, the first with our dean and the second with one of our students. Chuck has already responded to readers' questions here and Dana is still accepting them here. (EDIT: She's now answered them very nicely here.)

Reading through the questions posed to Chuck made me surprisingly angry. When I first heard about the branch campus I voiced some concerns about the enterprise, and the same concerns were raised by various people I knew. I think the top four of these concerns were:

• Does providing a Western education overseas constitute cultural imperialism?
• Are we being used to put a happy, liberal face on an oppressive regime?
• Will the campus discriminate against GLBT employees?
• Is it really possible to reproduce the Carnegie Mellon experience in Qatar?

The people asking questions on the NYT webpage ask some of these same questions. But another concern I'd never heard before was raised repeatedly: why are we educating foreigners when there are Americans who need educations? "EDUCATE OUR OWN CHILDREN FIRST." says one commenter. "The American taxpayer is subsidizing education and job growth overseas while they are being priced out of an education for themselves and their children," says another, who seriously misunderstands the capital flow involved in a branch campus in the Middle East. A third raised concerns about how America will maintain its competitive advantage in "knowledge-based industries" if "critical masses of graduates with a US degree can be found in any emerging market." Educational protectionism? What a lousy reason to oppose providing American-style education in the Middle East.

There's been some controversy on the Pittsburgh campus about plans for CMU to cooperate with the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia's answer to Education City. I haven't yet decided how I feel about that. Obviously my four big questions about the wisdom of establishing CMU-Q were answered to my satisfaction, or I wouldn't be here. But I'm less sure they can be answered positively when it comes to Saudi.

My coworker Silvia and I were just awarded a UREP grant for our proposed study, "Low-skilled Migrant Labor in Qatar: The Workers' Perspectives." Next semester we'll be working with six CMU-Q students to design and administer a survey to low-skilled laborers about their experiences in Qatar, and then conduct in-depth interviews with selected participants.

Yay!

Yesterday, as part of International Week at school, there was a poster session of the religions represented at CMU-Q. I had seriously considered volunteering to make a poster on secularism, since I think it's little understood by many of our students. Before I got around to volunteering, though, I was asked to represent Buddhism; as a somewhat lackadaisical practitioner of Vipassana meditation I'm the closest thing CMU-Q has to a Buddhist.

Putting the poster together was more difficult than I expected. It was easy to decide what topics I should cover ("Who was the Buddha?", "What are the Four Noble Truths?", etc.) but much more difficult to come up with answers to these questions that nearly all Buddhists would agree with. The creators of the other religion posters agreed that this was difficult for their religions, too. (For the record, these were Hinduism, Judaism, Christanity, Bahai and Unitarianism.)

It was also an interesting task to attempt to convey what I find appealing about Buddhism. I love its practicality and emphasis on self-development. I love its agnosticism about the supernatural. I love that the Buddha said that we shouldn't believe things because he said them, but instead should judge based on personal experience. I love that Buddhist ethics are at heart utilitarian -- avoid harming sentient beings! -- and not full of lots of weird rules that have to be somehow reconciled with our modern sensibilities. I don't think I succeeded in communicating these things to the students, but at least working on the poster got me started thinking about these things.

I still don't call myself a Buddhist, mostly because I still have some serious reservations about the Four Noble Truths. (Namely: OK, so I could reduce my suffering by being less attached, but wouldn't I also reduce joy?). I voice this skepticism over and over when I talk to my Buddhist friends; maybe someday I'll be thoroughly convinced by their replies, but that hasn't happened yet. For now, I remain cheerfully secular. Or at least a cheerfully secular person who wears a dharmachakra necklace every day and has Buddhas all over her home and office.


No, I don't really meditate in this silly pose.

Why I love my peer tutors, part 1:

Last week I made a poster with pictures of the peer tutors, so that students coming into the ARC for help can figure out which peer tutor can help them with which subject. At the peer tutors' suggestion, I used their Facebook profile pictures on the poster.

The day after I posted the pictures, I came in to find an APA-style reference list taped up next to the poster, with a list of all the webpages I took the pictures from, and the message "Cite your sources!!"

That made my week.

Why I love my peer tutors, part 2:

This weekend, two teams coached by Justin and David participated in a programming competition against several schools in the States. They did quite well -- both teams got 6 out of 10 problems. Most of these students are peer tutors (the rest are course assistants) and they are all made of awesome. Go team go!

Source: The A4

(And no, I don't know why our recycling box was stuffed in the window frame.)

Regional writing tutors and instructors share ideas

Oct. 29, 2007

DOHA, Qatar -- More than 50 educators from across the region convened in Doha Oct. 26–27 for the Middle East-North Africa Writing Centers Symposium to collaborate on how to develop students' writing and language skills.

With the focus on how educators can help each other by sharing ways to enhance students' communications skills, participants discussed a range of topics from setting up a writing center, to working with students as peer tutors, to conducting research.

Ways to do this were discussed in a series of interactive workshops led by Dr. Michele Eodice, director of the writing center at the University of Oklahoma in the US and president-elect of the International Writing Centers Association (IWCA). Eodice, who has many years' experience in writing centers in large US universities, said writing centers must be a place for "informal education" rather than an extracurricular or co-curricular academic service.

The delegates were brought together by the Qatar Writing Centers Network, an informal group based in Qatar Foundation's Education City. The network comprises directors of the centers in Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar [w00t woot! -Ed], Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ), Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q) and the College of the North Atlantic-Qatar. All of these institutions helped sponsor the symposium.

Cecelia Hawkins, director of TAMUQ's Technical Communications Center, chaired the committee that planned the event. "The idea was to do the networking, get support and find out what other people in writing centers are doing," Hawkins said.

Several of the institutions represented at the event, including the University of Bahrain and the universities in Education City, already have writing centers. Others, such as Qatar University, have Web-based writing communities.

However, many delegates learned best practices for setting up such centers in their institutions, notably a group from the Higher Colleges of Technology in Oman. Laila Al Hijri, from Ibra in Oman, said the sessions gave important guidance. "Now I know exactly how a writing center is going to help the students," she said. "Because I have talked with so many people I know the kind of benefits it will bring to the students, the teachers and the administration."

Delegates noted that introducing writing centers into high schools -- before students reach the level of higher education -- would be beneficial; they also discussed the applicability of the writing center model across languages.

Another important outcome from the symposium was participants' proposal to form a new regional network connecting writing center professionals on campuses that are distributed across a wide geographical area yet share a common interest in promoting effective use of language.

Autumn Watts, a member of the board of the planned regional organization and coordinator of the writing center at WCMC-Q, said: "Writing centers are gaining increasing attention for their innovative possibilities within education, and the new Middle East and North Africa network will facilitate dialogue and collaboration among universities in this region. The symposium is just the beginning."

The IWCA will provide a central point of reference for them, Dr. Eodice said: "The organization can lend credibility to their work, help them build professional identity and give them a real support network here."

Edit: Article in the Peninsula

Poll #1041692 Pick a class for me!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

One of the cool benefits of working at CMU is that you can take classes for free, assuming you can fit them into your work schedule. I'd like to ask to take another class this semester, but I can't quite decide which one! So: which of the following classes do YOU think I should take?

Why?

Edit: apologies for my inability to spell "Computation." Apparently you can't fix polls once you've posted them?