An astute correspondent who somehow remains pitifully trapped in Butler piqued Bwog’s curiosity with this observation:
“Her Highness Sheikha Moza, aka the First Lady of Qatar, just took a tour through Butler. This is interesting because she is famous for spending billions to get American colleges to build satellite campuses in Qatar (check out Cornell’s campus in Doha). Is she trying to build a Butler in Doha? Probably not. Despite being very pro ‘the global university,’ Bollinger said at his last fireside chat that satellite campuses were not in his plans.”
So…maybe she’s looking to build a study abroad center, a la Reid Hall in Paris? Or simply checking out Butler’s avant-garde exhibit on the latest in plastic bag technology?
6 Comments
@know it all her daughter graduated from Columbia…….perhaps she was here for fundraising purposes?
@king KINGSHIP!
@dang so that’s who I passed! didn’t know i was in the presence of a highness.
@Alum PrezBo’s comment about satellite campuses was that he didn’t want to move existing programs far offsite. For example, he didn’t want to move the business school or journalism schools to a site in the west 60s as George Rupp had considered doing. What Qatar probably has in mind is something quite different.
Cornell didn’t move anything to Qatar; it opened what is de facto a second medical school there. No programs from the original medical school were relocated, though some of its faculty rotate through both locations. Four other U.S. universities have opened new campuses in Qatar: VCU (Arts); Texas A&M (engineering); Carnegie-Mellon (business and computer science); and Georgetown (foreign service).
I don’t think PrezBo’s reluctance to decentralize what Columbia already does would conflict with opening an entirely new division overseas. Qatar funds these programs royally — both figuratively and literally — so Columbia could open a first-rate program there without detracting at all from what it has now.
@Anonymous Were you at the fireside chat? I was. His comment was specific — Columbia will not expand itself overseas. There was no differentiation between moving existing programs or re-starting an institution. He said bluntly that Columbia will remain here in NY
@READ This is a sad story bwog should get on or at least link.
http://media.www.columbiaspectator.com/media/storage/paper865/news/2007/05/02/News/Columbia.Employee.Shot.And.Killed-2899418.shtml