Courtesy Qatar Foundation The main building at the 24,000 Education City campus houses Qatar Academy, the K-12 school.

Georgetown may establish a foreign service campus in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, joining American universities like Cornell and Carnegie Mellon that already have schools outside the capital, Doha.

The college would be based on the School of Foreign Service’s undergraduate curriculum and include coursework consistent with Georgetown’s Catholic identity, making it the first of its kind in the Arab world.

The Qatar Foundation, an organization set up by Qatar’s royal family, would fund the endeavor but Georgetown would oversee curriculum, admissions and requirements.

The college would join Cornell’s medical school and Carnegie Mellon’s school of business and computer science in Education City – a sandy, 24,000 acre plot outside the capital devoted to education development. The city also houses a K-12 school, Texas A&M’s engineering school and a branch of Virginia Commonwealth University that offers degrees in fashion and interior design.

“There is a real interest in the Qatari regime in an American liberal arts education,” said SFS Dean Robert Gallucci, who visited Doha last week with faculty and administrators. The visit was Georgetown’s third with the Qatar Foundation to assess the feasibility of establishing a college there.

The mission of the foundation, headed by the Qatari emir’s wife Sheikha Mouza Bint Nasser Al-Misnad, is to develop a higher education hub to serve Qatar and students of the greater Middle East.

Qatar, a Persian Gulf state and U.S. ally that borders Saudi Arabia, remains a monarchy but its regime is relatively progressive, Gallucci said. Its government allowed the United States to keep its central command center in Doha during the war on Iraq.

Oil and natural gas have given Qatar a per capita gross domestic product comparable to that of the leading West European industrial countries.

Nonetheless the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks – an extension of religious extremism – point to problems with education in the greater Middle East, Gallucci said. Through this venue, Georgetown has the opportunity to help the problem, he added.

Their hope, according to MSFS Director James Reardon-Anderson, is that sharing Georgetown’s liberal arts education with the Persian Gulf would prove mutually beneficial.

“Our intention is that it would strengthen the presence of America in the Middle East in a way that it would improve understanding and relations between the two sides,” Reardon-Anderson, Georgetown’s project director, said.

The Qatari government approached Georgetown last year with the offer after consulting with former U.S. Ambassador to Qatar, Patrick Theros (SFS ’63). After discussions with Sheika ouza, Theros suggested that his alma mater would provide the region with an ideal American liberal arts education.

If Georgetown accepts the offer, its first class could enroll as soon as Fall 2005. A new freshman class would be added every year to reach full university enrollment in about four years.

But at this point, the program remains in discussion stages, Reardon-Anderson said.

The next step is assessing expenses, curriculum, faculty and student recruitment.

“The challenge will be to get a student body of the quality and caliber to sustain a Georgetown education,” Reardon-Anderson said.

Ideally, students would be recruited from the eastern editerranean to India.

Currently, Cornell has students from India, Bosnia, Nigeria and a number of American students of Arab descent.

Reardon-Anderson anticipated establishing a Qatar study-abroad program for Georgetown students as well.

Tenured Georgetown professors and those hired especially for the school would compose the faculty.

The curriculum would include courses in Biblical Literature and coursework unique to Georgetown’s Catholic identity.

According to Rev. Brian O. McDermott, S.J., rector of the Jesuit Community, this would serve to promote inter-religious understanding as well. McDermott was among those who visited Doha last week.

“This would be a very Jesuit enterprise and would fit with our mission as a Jesuit institution,” he said.