Mideast Communications Course Planned at UL

[NewsCopy]

QATAR University (QU)’s College of Arts and Sciences will enter into a three-year, $3,000 partnership with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, as a part of the 2006 US-Middle East University Partnership Initiative. The Mass Communication Departments of both universities are to co-operate, under the programme that begins in spring 2007, in enriching their faculty and students skills and experiences in various fields of mass media. The partnership includes exchanges of students and professors, setting up a Digital Media Centre at QU and launching a new course in ‘Global Communication at Work,’ to be taught in both universities, and intended to help students to access and understand each other’s culture. The partnership also includes a plan to send students from QU to University of Louisiana for classes in digital journalism, advanced reporting and online journalism. At the same time, students from University of Louisiana will come to QU to join the Arabic for non-native speakers’ programme to learn the language and culture. The rest of the story

[NewsCopy]

Middle East Partnership Initiative Providing More than $1.1 Million for U.S.-Middle East University Partnerships The Department of State's Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) is supporting greater freedom and opportunity for students in the region with four new grants totaling $1,160,000 for partnerships between colleges and universities in the United States and the Middle East. The projects selected for awards include: The William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan and Institut National de Commerce (Algeria) will train women managers to meet the changing needs of the Algerian business community. University of Louisiana at Lafayette and Qatar University (Qatar) will enhance news reporting and other journalism skills through the mass communication program at Qatar University. Enhancements will include a curriculum review, new course offerings, a student newspaper, the integration of new communication technology into the classroom, and a student and faculty exchange and internship program. The rest of the story

[NewsCopy]

UL's communications department has received a nearly $300,000 grant to help a Middle Eastern university enhance its communications program. The grant awarded by the U.S. Department of State's Middle East Partnership Initiative will establish a partnership between UL and Qatar University in Qatar, a country that borders Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. This year, the MEPI program awarded four grants totaling $1.1 million to three universities in the United States. UL's partnership with Qatar developed through contacts UL communications associate professor Phil Auter had with Qatar faculty. "Their program is growing, and they have very distinct desires in what they want to achieve," Auter said. "What our program has at the moment is a very solid and established broadcast area. We have the ability to teach a lot of hands-on production. These are some of the things that Qatar University is interested in." The rest of the story Marsha Sills msills@theadvertiser.com

[NewsCopy]

A partnership between mass communications departments at UL and Qatar University in the Middle East is set to prepare students for the world outside their classroom. As part of a three-year grant, UL will help Qatar develop its mass communications program as the Middle Eastern university prepares for its accreditation. The partnership also includes faculty and student exchanges. While faculty interchanges are expected to foster program development at both universities, possibly the greatest impact will be the global experience for faculty, but especially the students, said Mohamed M. Arafa, president of Global Media Consultants, the group assisting both universities in the exchange. “We live now in a global village,” Arafa said. “The post-September 11th world demands open intercultural dialoguing. This partnership will help open that bridge of dialogue by giving future leaders in media that experience of living, studying and understanding each culture on its own terms.” The rest of the story Marsha Sills msills@theadvertiser.com

[NewsCopy]

By the fall semester, UL's communications curriculum will go global. A communications course will be jointly taught by communications faculty members at UL and Qatar University in the Middle East. The course is one of the fruits of the universities' partnership that began more than a year ago with a nearly $300,000 grant from the USAID's Higher Education for Development program. "The first year was more about working out administrative issues and planning," said Phil Auter, associate professor of communications and the UL's principal investigator for the grant. The rest of the story Marsha Sills msills@theadvertiser.com

[NewsCopy]

Doha • Qatar University's (QU) Mass Communication Programme received a three-year grant from the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) as part of a faculty exchange partnership programme initiated between QU and University of Louisiana at Lafayette (UL). Under this partnership, initiated in 2006, QU will liaise with UL to enrich and modernize its teaching and training programmes for students of mass communication. QU Associate Professor of Mass Communication Prof Mahmoud Galander during his visit at UL, as part of the programme, addressed the Honor Society of International Scholars and gave a speech on "US Public Diplomacy and the Image of the US in the Middle East" to the Society of Professional Journalists. He also talked on image-building, opinion-making, image consulting and on the Middle East media and the coverage of the Darfur crisis to UL mass communication students. The rest of the story Source ::: The Peninsula