DOHA, QATAR -With the increased matriculation of incoming freshman and transfer students, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar has been busy recruiting new and visiting professors to add depth as well as breadth to its core group of faculty within each of the three undergraduate programs – business administration, computer science and information systems.
"At Carnegie Mellon, we continually strive to improve the overall academic experience and create a rich, intellectual place of learning for our students," says Robert T. Monroe, Ph.D., Associate Dean. "In addition to strengthening our core undergraduate programs, we have added faculty to help build out the breadth of our academic curriculum."
The fields of expertise for this impressive and experienced group include African and Islamic studies, communication design, history, mathematics, psychology, Arabic and entrepreneurship. The biographies include notable scholars, distinguished researchers and a prominent business entrepreneur:
S. Thomas Emerson, Ph.D., is an experienced entrepreneur and corporate executive. He is the David T. and Lindsay J. Morganthaler Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. From humble beginnings in a small town in Louisiana, Dr. Emerson followed his passion for electronics, studied at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Rice University in Houston, Texas. He founded three venture capital backed high technology companies, two of which became NASDAQ-listed companies. Dr. Emerson is a recognized expert in computer-generated speech and computerized call processing technologies. At Carnegie Mellon Qatar, he will be delivering courses on entrepreneurship for scientists and engineers as well as a more advanced course on topics in entrepreneurship. Lansiné Kaba, Ph.D., is a distinguished scholar and writer born in Guinea. Winner of the prestigious Herskovits Award given by the African Studies Association to scholarly work on Africa published in English, Dr. Kaba is the author of many works on Guinea, Islam and politics in Africa. At Carnegie Mellon, Dr. Kaba teaches courses on Islam, Africa and the Arab World, and a course on History and Literature of Liberation. Alexander Cheek is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Design, visiting from the Pittsburgh campus. He received his Masters in Design in Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon Pittsburgh. The focus of Mr. Cheek's program will be on communication design as related to information systems. His courses will introduce concepts that challenge the students to think about the human experience of design and how to translate that into actual products to make them useful, usable, desirable and sustainable. Angela Brunstein, Ph.D., is a Post-doctoral Teaching Fellow visiting from Carnegie Mellon Pittsburgh. Dr. Brunstein did her masters study in psychology and her doctoral program in Cognitive Science at the University of Hamburg. She has conducted extensive research in complex problem solving and learning. Her areas of expertise include e-learning, how people learn and medical decision making. Dr. Brunstein will teach two classes at Carnegie Mellon Qatar this fall: introduction to psychology and cognitive psychology. Christopher Sparshott, Ph.D., is a post-doctoral teaching fellow at Northwestern University in Qatar as well as Carnegie Mellon Qatar. After receiving his Bachelor's degree in history from Oxford University, he received a Masters and Ph.D. in Early American History from Northwestern University in Illinois. He will teach courses in Middle East and British history. In his teaching, he emphasizes the importance of using a wide range of historical material in order for students to understand the discipline of history.
The addition of the 15 new faculty for 2009 brings the size of the Carnegie Mellon Qatar faculty body to about 65. Approximately two-thirds of the faculty is part of the core team based in Qatar, with one-third on rotation from the Pittsburgh campus, visiting professors and eminent scholars. "We feel that this is the right mix for us now, as we bring a wide range of expertise from different areas in the education community. It helps to create the vibrant education experience that we are striving to provide our students," says Dr. Monroe.
The complete list of new hires joining the Carnegie Mellon Qatar faculty for the year 2009 are: Dan Baumgart, Visiting Instructor; Angela Brunstein, Ph.D., Post-doctoral Teaching Fellow; Alexander Cheek, Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor of Design; Kira Dreher, Visiting Instructor; S. Thomas Emerson, Ph.D., Associate Teaching Professor of Entrepreneurship; Hoda Fahmy, Ph.D., Visiting Assistant Professor; David Gray, Teaching Fellow; Zeinab Ibrahim, Ph.D., Assistant Teaching Professor of Arabic; Lansine Kaba, Ph.D., Visiting Professor of African and Islamic History; Divakaran Liginlal, Ph.D., Associate Teaching Professor Information Systems; Alan Montgomery, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Marketing; Daniel C. Phelps, Ph.D., Assistant Teaching Professor; Christopher Sparshott, Ph.D., Post Doctoral Teaching Fellow; Jeff Squires, Visiting Instructor and Dale Winter, Ph.D., Associate Teaching Professor.
ABOUT CARNEGIE MELLON
With more than a century of academic excellence and distinguished research, Carnegie Mellon University is a leader in education with real-world applications. Consistently top ranked, the University has more than 10,000 students, 72,000 alumni and 4,000 faculty and staff globally. Core values of innovation, creativity, collaboration and problem solving provide the foundation for everything we do.
At the invitation of Qatar Foundation, Carnegie Mellon joined Education City in 2004. Here, Qatar Foundation created a unique center for scholarship and research that is the ideal complement to Carnegie Mellon's mission and vision. Students from Qatar and 30 different countries enroll at our world-class facilities in Education City. Carnegie Mellon Qatar offers undergraduate programs in business administration, computer science and information systems, as well as executive and corporate education. Learn more at qatarcmudev.wpengine.com.
