The Georgetown School of Foreign Service in Qatar is in the process of constructing a new building that will include academic office space, classrooms, a library, and other facilities to accommodate up to 450 students. The building will allow the University to gradually increase enrollment at SFS-Q, which now stands at approximately 150 students.
So far, only the concrete foundation and the ground floor of the facility have been constructed. The building is tentatively set to open for students and faculty in the spring of 2010.
Officials at the School of Foreign Service in Qatar say they are working hard to ensure that labor conditions at the construction site are consistent with American standards.
“[Georgetown] brought in an external company, URS, to look at how the construction was being done and to have someone on the site full time to make sure that everything is up to international code and standards,” Charles Nailen, the Communications Director for SFS-Q, wrote in an e-mail. “We are the first civil building outside of the oil and gas industry that has done this.”
According to Dean James Reardon-Anderson, the global economic downturn will not affect the building project because the funding is coming from the Qatar Foundation, a philanthropic organization dedicated to education, science, and development projects in the country. While officially a non-profit and non-governmental organization, the Foundation’s Board of Directors is headed by Her Highness Sheika Bint Nasser Al-Missned, the wife of the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani.
Since the Qatar Foundation is paying for the project, Georgetown does not have any pricing estimates available, Nailen said.
