Bahrain: Grand but Different

There is much in the Kingdom of Bahrain with which to be impressed.  There is certainly opulence and grandeur.  The photo to the right is of the grand chandelier in the lobby of the Gulf Hotel in Bahrain where I stayed…a truly impressive hotel.  There is also the Grand Mosque in Bahrain in the photo below.

But one is also stuck by the difference that comes with a country run by a royal family.  I had just finished the last of three faculty observations and was getting ready to meet with Campus Dean Dottie Lewis (a great find for NYiT!) and faculty about the new core.  M plan was to the spend a leisurely half hour saying goodbye and preparing to go to the airport.  Just as I walked into the room, Dottie told me that the King’s uncle had just passed away (as in within the last few hours) and all educational institutions (as well as many others) were ordered to close for three days of mourning.  I assumed that this meant beginning the next morning.  Dottie told me that, no, the school was to close “now” and she was sending out an e-mail to her faculty an staff to that effect.  One professor called who had just started an exam.  The answer…the exam stops now and you will need to restart it on Thursday.

So, differences, appreciation for what we have, respect for the priorities of others…but most of all, differences…

 

Bahrain-ian Basketball!

Who new?  I travel half way across the world, hoping to experience an exotic, new culture, and the first thing that I get to see is the fledgling effort by NYiT students and faculty to start a basketball club.  Tom Philbeck, our CAS Assistant Dean and Philosophy Professor, drove me to a sports complex in the city.  One of our students has been working with a few other staff and students to form a basketball club, possibly to take on clubs from the US Navy stationed here, or other groups.  I was being treated to tryouts.

Before going to the complex, Tom and I stopped at the Mega Mall here (water park attached) to pick up some legitimate B-ball sneakers.  I learned that Tom (in the green shirt in the photo to the right) played Div. 1 at Appalachian State in his undergrad days and was both excited and a little nervous about lacing them up again.

When we arrived, there were about 12 people total, including four young ladies,  mulling around and moving baskets into place.  While there was one lean, tall, gentleman acting as a coach, for the most part, this was a shoot around followed by a full court pick-up game in which the ladies participated.  Actually, one of the oung women would be right at home on a street court in the Bronx.  She had the baseball cap on backwards, the below the knees cut offs, and was dribbling behind the back and between the legs as if she had been doing it for years.

It is great to see the students, staff, and faculty interacting and getting together outside the classroom.  I have no idea which side “won” (I doubt they were even keeping score, except for who was doing the best trash talking), but everyone had a great time.

Well, I’m of to Amman tonight.  I will try and fill in another entry on Bahrain later this evening before switching my sight to Amman.

Your Tramp Abroad

 

Great People, Great Facilities

For any enterprise to be successful, you need to have good people working on it.  Throughout my entire visit to Abu Dhabi, I was continually impressed with the quality of the people we have as colleagues at our campus there.  All of the professors that I met, from the gentle and thoughtful Polish math professor, Mirek Majewski, to the British ELI teacher, Linda Graham, to the larger-than-life Physics Professor, Kamal Al Achrafi (just to name a few), were caring teachers, energetic faculty members, and enthusiastic members of NYiT Abu Dhabi.

But enterprises such as an institute of technology also need great facilities.  Fortunately for our students in Abu Dhabi, they have these.  Every classroom in Abu Dhabi is a modern “smartclassroom” as shown in the picture to the right.  These are not simply computers projecting onto screens, but rather interactive smartboards with “touch” manipulation of the computer through the board itself.  In addition, some of the rooms have computer stations for students.  I dat in on a class in one of these rooms with Professor Peter Karagianakis who made very inventive and effective use of this technology in his speech class.

The overall impression I got from Abu Dhabi is one of great optimism.  With the accreditation process behind them and a new student recruitment process about to begin, everyone is excited about the potential for growth that the campus promises.

Enough for now…back to grading my stateside students on one of my few “slow” days on this trip

Your “Tramp Abroad”

 

Sultry Nights and Dining

While it may be cold and rainy in NY, Abu Dhabi is just easing out of the unbelievable heat of summer and into a temperature range a little more tolerable…think July in Florida and you get a sense of the “cooler” temperatures of November in Abu Dhabi.

Not surprisingly, most outdoor activity is scheduled at night, including outdoor dining. The photo above is of the outdoor cafe/barbeque attached to the hotel.  Abu Dhabi is a very popular vacation destination for many in Europe and Australia and so there were almost as many languages being spoken at this cafe as there were tables.  You also found a great many “hooka pipes” being smoked.  The cost was pretty steep, but one pipe, loaded ith fruit flavored tobaco and burning coals at the top, could have up to four tubes and mouth pieces for people at a table to share.

.The food here was excellent.  Essentially, a wide variety of meats are grilled over wood fires out back and brought into the building in the photo to the right under the Foster’s sign (remember, a great many Aussies here).  You then went back to the line as often as you liked to take what you wanted.  While it was certainly warmer than I am comfortable with, it was nice to get outside for a bit and sit back.

 

Abu Dhabi: Always in Bloom

After having left the rather wet and chilly weather of NY, one of the things tthat struck me walking around the NYiT Campus here are the beautiful flowers just about everywhere.  Without a real winter, the campus is always in bloom and most of the pathways are lined with flowering bushes like this one.

 

My first full day at our campus was a very busy but very enjoyable one.  It was good to meet new colleagues and re-connect with others.  Everyone has been especially welcoming and helpful and the faculty are exceptional in their concern and efforts with the students.

Today I have another full day of meeting faculty and administrators, and then its back to the hotel to pack.  My flight is early tomorrow and it will be off to Bahrain.  The weekends in the ME are Friday and Saturday.  Since I will be arriving on a Friday, I hope to get caught up on blog entries and posting photos that I have taken.

More to come

 

 

Goodbye New York!

NY Skyline before boarding the plane

Well, I’m a little late making this first post, but since technology access has expanded, many things that used to be free just aren’t anymore.  The last time I traveled to the ME, I had free access to the internet from the waiting lounge before my flight and could start my blogging there.  Not now.

So, while I have been taking pictures and doing a great deal of traveling the last few days, this is the first time I have had to upload a photo or two and update the blog.  The picture is from the lounge before our departure, so that would be Monday night.  That evening, I flew 6 hours to Paris, waited 5 hours for my connecting flight, and then flew another 7 and a 1/2 hours to Abu Dhabi.  Needless to say, I was pretty tired after that trip.

However, I have made it and will be posting more in the days to come.

 

Emirates Palace Hotel

The Palace Hotel

Originally uploaded by phdquig.

It has been just about 2 years and 10 months since my last trip to our Middle East campuses. Today, I’ll be leaving for another trip to meet with our colleagues in Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, and Amman Jordan. I am looking forward to seeing the campuses and re-connecting with colleagues. I am NOT looking forward to the flight, but until we figure out a viable teleport machine, I guess its a long flight and a great deal of reading.

I took the picture to the left on my last trip to Abu Dhabi. This is the Emirates Palace Hotel…I am NOT staying here. I think I would get lost trying to find the front door! Anyway, I will be posting to this blog throughout the trip. Please keep looking for updates as I visit NYiT’s three campuses.

 

Home Again, Naturally

Waterfront in Abu Dhabi

Originally uploaded by phdquig.

Well, after one last somewhat harrowing failed attempt to get back to NY, I am now sitting in my rather drafty OW office and looking back on the rather “warm” pictures of the last leg of my journey to Abu Dhabi. Again, if you click on any one picture, you’ll get to my flickr site and be able to see them all.

It was an amazing trip, filled with great memories, new friends, and great stories to tell. Since I am trying desperately to catch up with all that I missed while away, I will perhaps save the “stories” for later blog entries. For now, please enjoy the rest of the slides…

 

Of Colleges, Colleagues, and “All that Jazz!”

Last night, several of the faculty here in Bahrain invited me out to a club to listen to one of our own faculty in the School of Management on the sax.  It was a delightful evening of good food and drink, and great conversation. 

One thing that has stuck me about our still young campuses here in the ME is the collegiality of the faculty.   I have always believed that those who work at colleges should be collegial.  It is interesting those, put into a very new academic setting without any previous “politics” or “baggage”, faculty instinctively find each other and quickly begin to see themselves as a closely knit “faculty.”  They are a relatively small group who all get along, socialize after work, and provide each other with a great deal of support, new ideas, and a very international perspective on topics as varied as student learning styles and cultural attitudes about smoking.  The sax playing faculty is a young Belgian engaged to one of our ELI instructors who is Turkish.  We were joined that night from another School of management faculty from Tennessee and my colleague in English from Texas.  Today, I will also be meeting with one of our Physics/Math faculty here who is from Spain.   In many ways, we are already building a real “global” faculty for these campuses, one in which faculty from all over the world are being attracted to teach at NYiT, regardless of its location.

 

Time of change, time of growth

Newly finished addition

Originally uploaded by phdquig.

I debated for some time which photo I would use to start this blog entry and finally settled on this one. It is not the most novel (a common image from much of our promotional material available here,) nor is it as “exotic” as some of the other photos I took yesterday, particularly the one of the main mosque in Bahrain.

What is does represent, however, is the sense of change and growth of these overseas campuses. The third floor of the building…the one at the same height as the NYiT logo, is brand new. It was built in less than 3 months. In a similar fashion, the student body is quickly growingin number. I have no exact figures, but on what is considered a slow day in Bahrain (the weekend here is Friday and Saturday, so Thursday is like our NY campus Friday as far as activity is concerned) the campus was still full of students, strolling through the campus quad or playing Foosball in the coffee shop.

And as these campuses grow, the administrative structures to help keep up with the increased student body are also undergoing rapid and important changes. One of the things I had been asked to think about on this trip is global communication. How can we make it easier for all parts of the NYiT family to study, work, and develop together. I have seen much that points to this need. When I met with students in the coffee shop, many of them asked about how, in detail, they might attend NYiT in NY for a semester or a year. But these questions all had to do with visas, eligibility for financial aid, etc. Faculty have constant questions about NYiT courses…not on what or how to teach these, but additional resources or experiences that our faculty in NY might share with them. Likewise, I am learning many new approaches (primarily related to education technology) that our faculty here have developed.

This post seems to have become a little too “philosophical” for a travel journal written by a “Tramp.” I am heading off to lunch with the CAS coordinators and will post later tonight about the more “recreational” side of my journey then…you see, there was this really neat jazz club, and…well, that’ll be the next post.

Your Tramp Abroad.