Bridging the Cornell Campus Divide

Over the past few years, IthaQatar has grown from an idea to a program
that is increasingly bridging the physical and cultural gap between
students in Ithaca and Doha.

Seven thousand miles is a long way to the other side of a campus. Yet that’s the distance traveled by four Cornell students recently to join their classmates at WCMC-Q. As members of the IthaQatar (IQ) organization, undergraduates Allen Miller, Isabella Spyrou, Frances Kim and Jonathan Soh spent a week in Doha, promoting cross-campus exchange and the unprecedented international relations opportunity available in their Ivy League institution.

The Cornell IQ delegation was building on a student initiative begun in 2008 to establish stronger ties between the two campuses. On this visit, students focused on student life issues and the possibility of a sustainable IQ exchange program, which was successfully promoted by IQ members and recently approved by administration.

The drafting of the exchange program and arrangement of the Ithaca delegation visit was largely organized by executive members of the IthaQatar team in Doha—second-year medical student and IQ president, Maen Abou Ziki, first-year medical student and IQ vice president Zena Ghazala, second-year pre-medical student and IQ treasurer Abdulwahed Zainel, and first-year pre-medical student and IQ secretary Yassmin Ibrahim.

A key event of the weeklong visit was a presentation entitled “Life on the Hill” given by the IQ leadership, which included a slide show about campus life in Ithaca featuring descriptions of dorms, clubs and activities that color the day-to-day world of students there.

Second-year medical student and founding member of IthaQatar Pankit
Vachhani explains the organization, its roots, its function and where
it's headed in the future.

Aside from the social benefits students stand to gain from taking a semester abroad, the IQ exchange program will offer a different perspective on the learning environment, said David Robertshaw, professor emeritus of physiology at Cornell, Ithaca, and an advisor to IQ members who traveled to WCMC-Q with the students.

“What you find in Doha are small classes and close physical proximity between students and faculty,” Robertshaw said. “This is a rich academic environment for learning and for the transfer of information—students coming here from Ithaca would gain much in terms of information retention and general perspective.”

Additionally, Robertshaw, a former associate dean at WCMC-Q, said that the bonds between students and faculty members at WCMC-Q tend to transcend grades and are thus more like friendships.

“Often, in the US, a friendship between a faculty member and a student can break with the outcome of an exam—the students take the results personally,” he said. “For some reason, here in Doha, this doesn’t happen.

On the other hand, students traveling from Doha to Ithaca for a semester would gain perspective on what they have.

“Qataris will go to Ithaca and see the class size and realize that here, they really have it all.”

Report by Emily Alp