BY JOYCE C ABAÑO

DOHA: Work on the new building of the Northwestern University-Qatar (NU-Q) will start by the end of January next year and it is expected to be completed sometime in 2013, an official from the university has said.

Richard Roth (pictured), Senior Associate Dean of the Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, said the new building, which is being designed by American architect Antoine Predock from Albuquerque, New Mexico, will be four stories high. “We already know what the outside of the building looks like, so now they are trying to figure out the inside.”

Predock, who attended the University of New Mexico and later received his degree in architecture from the Columbia University, is the principal of Antoine Predock Architect PC. Besides being a licensed architect he is a registered landscape architect and interior designer. His influence extends to international sites, including the National Palace Museum Southern Branch in Southern Taiwan and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, Manitoba, both of which are currently in the design phase. In 1985, Predock was awarded the Rome Prize and in 2006 he was honoured with the American Institute of Architects’ highest award, the AIA Gold Medal.

According to Roth, the new NU-Q building will have four studios to start with for the university’s communications programme.

With the completion of the new building still years away, Roth said the university will be moving temporarily to the Carnegie Mellon University-Qatar’s building next school year. The university is also planning on having a temporary studio for the students’ use.

“Our university’s aim is to bring positive change to the media in the country… We want our students, after they graduate, to help develop and improve the journalism in this country,” said Roth, who pointed out that the university’s focus was to teach the students the importance of accuracy, ethics, values and honesty when working for

the media.

NU-Q, which currently has around 17 students enrolled in journalism and 21 in communications, will be welcoming another group in August.

The journalism programme, with concentrations that include print, broadcast and multimedia, leads to a BS in Journalism degree awarded by Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. The communication programme, with curricular offerings in the areas of communication theory, history and industries, and media technologies and practices, leads to a BS in Communication degree with a major in Media Industries and Technologies awarded by Northwestern’s School of Communication. The courses at NU-Q are taught by scholars and practitioners who hold faculty appointments and have had first-hand experience teaching on the

Evanston campus.

Roth said the university was constantly looking at the future of the media in the Middle East. The university is also thinking of starting programmes that would help improve the professional media here, a sample of which was the two-day workshop on “The Global Media Transformation.”

“Media professionals need refresher courses because things are changing fast,” he said. He said they may offer workshops on video editing, narrative writing and online writing, among others, in the next few months.

Roth said he was happy with the progress of the students who will soon be having their 11-week internship

in journalism.

“The students will be having their journalism residency anywhere in the world… they will be presented a list of the places where they can have their internship, then they are asked to give us a list of their top three choices, then we discuss it,” he said. He added some of the students at NU-Q will be working at Al Jazeera this summer.

Northwestern University-Qatar is one of six campuses of leading American universities established in Education City, as a result of collaborative agreements between the universities and the Qatar Foundation.