MSU to be first American university in Dubai

In an area of the world marred by conflict, Dubai is attempting to establish itself in the United Arab Emirates as the “stabilized factor.”

MSU will be the first and only American university to have a presence in the city, after finalizing a partnership with TECOM Investments and the Dubai International Academic City on Tuesday morning.

The agreement was made to establish programs overseas where MSU students can take classes and achieve a degree as they would in East Lansing, beginning in fall 2008.

MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said she’s pleased because MSU will be the first and only American university taking part.

“It’s sort of the equivalent of being the major tenant in a shopping mall,” Simon said.

Simon said she hopes that the Dubai facilities will open up opportunities for MSU students and graduates.

“This is an arrangement where the campus can be very inclusive and also the neat thing about this is it will provide our students an opportunity for study abroad to have a home in Dubai,” Simon said.

“So many Fortune 500 companies are now locating in Dubai. It will provide a wealth of opportunities for our students.”

Corinne Reardon, budget officer for the provost’s office, said Dubai has established regions for specific purposes, like media (NBC and ABC broadcast stations) and Internet (Cisco and Microsoft) cities. MSU will be part of “academic city,” an area with approximately 30 worldwide universities. There will be facilities for academics, student housing, athletics, a student union, library, meeting rooms and retail.

“Right now, we’re looking at a lot of different programs and a lot of different delivery options,” Reardon said. “There will be opportunities for students to go there for periods of time and students there to come here. Right now, our basic premise is that students there will have the same programs we have here.”

The turnaround from preliminary discussions to finalization was a year and eight days, Simon said. Representatives from Dubai have been in contact with administrators, faculty and deans from MSU about the partnership since last September.

“They’ve gained confidence in us and we’ve gained confidence in them,” Simon said. “The signing today on behalf of TECOM was really the first step because what they’re doing is they’re giving us the startup money because they’re so confident in us.”

Simon said the $2-3 million startup money would go toward faculty pay. She added that the money will be paid back from the proceeds of the Dubai program.

Jeff Riedinger, dean of international studies, said a motivation behind the program is to allow students who may not be able to travel to the United States to earn an American higher education.

“It also allows our faculty to have our presence on the ground that we would not otherwise have,” Riedinger said. “It opens up new opportunities for students on the East Lansing campus to study. There’s a number of exciting ways in which it expands our horizons as we move, as President Simon says, ‘from land grant to world grant.’”

Joey Nowak can be reached at nowakjo2@msu.edu.

Published on Tuesday, September 25, 2007