development > listening post

LIFE AS IT IS AT

CARNEGIE MELLON
BY SINDHU NAIR

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CMU-Q DEAN ILKER BAYBARS TALKS ABOUT THE CAMPUS THAT IS BRINGING ABOUT CHANGE THROUGH TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION AS IT FOLLOWS THE PATH OF CMU'S MAIN CAMPUS IN PITTSBURGH.

arnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q)'s Dean Ilker Baybars has spent more than four decades at his alma mater. Talking about the college and taking pride in its achievements is only natural for Baybars, given his long association with it. Reecting on his 43 years as a student and later on as a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon, Baybars says quite simply: I was very lucky to be here. He arrived from Turkey to CMU in the 70s, and two decades later the internet age made its debut. It was confusing times, hard to survive, different environment; nonetheless very exciting times, he reects. I lived through the era of mainframe computers, then PC usage to laptops, and am now at the mobile internet era. Baybars reveals that his rst salary was a grand total of $2.40 when he began his oneyear faculty appointment at CMU in 1978 after earning a masters degree and a PhD from the very same campus. That one year turned into a second, and then a third, and here he is a few decades later in Carnegie Mellons rst branch campus, miles away from where he started, in Qatar, continuing to work for a university that has rewritten the future of some of the world's most life-changing technological innovations. He recounts an incident at a Christmas party in Pittsburgh when he was chatting with a Carnegie Mellon professor, who disclosed in casual conversation that he was the inventor of touch screen technology. And that describes Carnegie Mellon, according to Baybars: Things happen here. Even after all these years of mentoring students, Baybars says he still feels quite accomplished when he inadvertently meets

one of CMU-Q's Qatari alumni at a West Bay office and sits alongside them for a meeting. That brings it home to me that we are here; we have made an impact; we have graduated these young men and women; they are working, and here they are alongside me in a business meeting, representing their company, and being rewarded for their hard work. That, he feels, is quite an achievement, but more challenging still is being accepted in his current role in a country that, even with its economic and technological advancement, is considered to have a culture that is more reticent than open. In this scenario, being greeted with the traditional Qatari embrace and treated to the famed Qatari hospitality endorses beyond doubt that Baybars and the work of CMU-Q have been accepted and appreciated. Here and there And that transports Baybars to the start of CMU-Qs journey in Qatar, with just a handful of faculty members, a few staff members, some 45 students and no facility of our own; and now, 10 years later, we are in this beautiful campus of more than 40,000 sq.m., a faculty of more than 160 and 400 students. This place is live, real and vibrant with student activities. This could well be shrugged off as mere numbers; the real success of the institution is when it has truly replicated its home campus principles in an entirely different surrounding and cultural ethos. Baybars explains: Our contract with Qatar Foundation (QF) stipulates two important conditions. One, that the Qatar campus delivers all the prerequisites betting a CMU campus exactly the same curriculum,

similar quality programmes, that nothing be diluted; the second condition is that we admit only those students who would be admissible in the Pittsburgh campus. So it was not just the quality of the course but also the quality of students undergoing the course that had to remain uncompromised. And that, in essence, Baybars believes, is the reason behind the success of such a programme, in comparison with many such models replicated around the world. Carnegie Mellon has no precedent for what it is doing in Education City. It has presence (offering programmes) or afliations, and some joint ventures in other universities like in Portugal, China, Japan and Singapore, but not a branch campus as it has in Qatar. Universally, almost all the programmes which have followed the concept of a branch campus in other countries are, in one form or the other, a diluted version, says Baybars. Qatar is the only country

The Arab Spring has resulted in an exodus of intellectual minds. It is a shame. I get applications for jobs from deans of universities in Iraq, Libya and Syria. It takes time to grow deans.
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development > listening post

NEW PROGRAMMES ON THE ANVIL

Its early days, says Baybars, but new programmes are being contemplated, especially in areas relating to smart cities and cyber security.
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which has pulled it off quite well. They have not compromised on anything, and that is truly unique. That the country had the resources to pull it off is secondary, as the ambition of a knowledge-based economy was the driving force that catapulted the inception of these US-born, Qatar-bred campuses. Meeting all the standards stipulated by the QF was not an easy task. We had to go behind people to aggressively market our institution, but that did not mean that

we compromised on any of the standards we were expected to deliver, he says. The challenges were in nding faculty members who would move to the Middle East. It is not just transferring our staff but about moving complete families, uprooting them. We tried to move younger couples, single members, with some ties to this part of the world, so that the change and move would not have a huge impact on them, he adds. Even with all these trials, we have been able to bring and keep worthy talent. Then came the equally important task of getting the right students, or, in the initial years, just getting applicants. Initially, when we started the school here with no presence, no name, the challenges were to get enough applicants. It takes time, especially being in the eld of education, to get people to learn about the facilities, build our reputation, for word of mouth to spread to the community, he says. The applicants were less, as is expected in a small country like Qatar, says Baybars. But from those applicants, we chose the best and they had all the prerequisites that we looked for in our students in our Pittsburgh campus. But then in some cases an impetus was needed, which Baybars explains thus: There were some cases of students meeting most requirements but lacking in some criteria, and for them a

remedial programme to strengthen their background to survive in our system was created, like the Academic Bridge Programme, the Summer Programme etc. But I have to mention, he claries, that we have such programmes in the Pittsburgh campus too. While Baybars has outlined how the campus here is similar to the one at Pittsburgh, we probe him on the differences between the two institutions. Our actions here, he says, in terms of adding new programmes and increasing our student numbers, are mostly governed by QF. For example, we cannot decide that this year, instead of admitting 100 students we will take 150. That directive comes from QF. Each time we have added a new programme, such as the Information Systems programme in 2007 or the Biological Sciences programme in 2011, it has been at the invitation of QF. It is also a matter of size, as the Pittsburgh campus is huge, with close to 12,000 students while Qatar has 400, and 65 faculty members to Pittsburghs 1,400. Size also means that there is a variety in everything that we do there. The intellectual activities are numerous, with events, seminars and talks happening around the clock. While it does happen in CMU-Q too, the magnitude

is huge at Pittsburgh, he says. To validate what he has just stated, Baybars says that there are ve programmes in Qatar while the home campus has 70 departments in total. The torch-bearers Coming back to the deans favourite subject, his students, the torch-bearers of the institution, Baybars elucidates their success stories. The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship for Europe, the Middle East and Africa is given to 40 of the most deserving students from this huge geographical expanse. In 2012 two brilliant students (Sidra Alam and Hanan Alshikhabobakr) from CMU-Q won a scholarship and in 2010 and 2009 there was one winner each time. Sharing his pride by emphasising this achievement and comparing Qatars population with the rest of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, he says: From a population of 2 million we had two winners, while the rest of the winners were from a population of 98 million. Reecting on some other achievements by his students, Baybars shares the triumph of Amna Al Zeyara, a computer science student who won rst place in the undergraduate research competition at the 2013 Grace Hop-

FAST FACTS

In 2004, QF invited Carnegie Mellon to join Education City. As Carnegie Mellon Qatar celebrates its 10th anniversary, the campus now has 400 students from 42 countries. The university offers five undergraduate degree programmes, in Biological Sciences, Business Administration, Computational Biology, Computer Science and Information Systems. Students in Qatar join more than 12,000 Carnegie Mellon students across the globe.

per Celebration of Women in Computing conference in Minneapolis, USA. We wondered if this win reects the tech revolution the country is going through, but Baybars is quick to correct us and add that these achievements reect not the tech revolution but the high standards of Carnegie Mellon, with the best programmes, globally, in computer technology. We get credit for this. This is a good place to be, he insists. Having spent a majority of his time exalting the Pittsburgh campus and the spirit of innovation that the students there emanate, he still feels there are some traits of the students on the Qatar campus that he wishes students in Pittsburgh would imbibe: The respectful reserve that the students here reect is quite poignant. But he is quick to add that it is this spirit of casual condence that makes the students at Carnegie Mellon go beyond the norm, explore, invent and think beyond boundaries (the Pittsburgh campus has produced 19 Nobel laureates and 11 Turing Award winners to date). He puts it this way: The students in Qatar have a good genre, a mix of the best technology backed by a strong culture, and they are equally excited about their future.
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