Graduation week began in Education City yesterday with commencement events for students from Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) and Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q).
HBKU’s Class of 2017 included 148 grads, up 33 percent from last year’s cohort of 111 students.
The grads hail from 37 different countries, though many of them are from Qatar as well.
The ceremony has begun! We are proud of our 148 graduates from 37 countries, with 41% Qataris. Watch #hbkugrad live: https://t.co/AmZLO0CcPn pic.twitter.com/XzlBskz9qg
— جامعة حمد بن خليفة (@HBKU) April 30, 2017
This year marked the first graduates to obtain master’s degrees from HBKU’s College of Science and Engineering. They were in Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS), Sustainable Energy and Sustainable Environment.
In addition to those 17 students, there were also:
- 87 graduates from the College of Islamic Studies;
- 18 from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences; and
- 26 with an Executive Master in Energy and Resources.
Dream big
During the commencement, keynote speaker Chaker Khazaal, a Palestinian-Canadian author and editor-in-chief of StepFeed and YallaFeed, talked about dreaming big.
Giving the commencement speech at the graduation ceremony of Hamad bin Khalifa University in #Doha, #Qatar. Honored. #HBKUGrad #قطر #الدوحة pic.twitter.com/fvY8CFSVLB
— Chaker Khazaal (@ChakerKhazaal) April 30, 2017
He said:
“An achievement is an idea once dreamt that turned into reality with hard work, persistence and redefining possibilities.
Today, you are ambassadors for the power of dreaming by becoming graduates and ambassadors for your university, for your country and for our region.”
Next year, HBKU will graduate its first batch of law students and the first students to receive doctoral degrees from the College of Science and Engineering.
NU-Q
Meanwhile, NU-Q celebrated its first graduation in its own building this year.
The journalism and communications school also produced its largest-ever class, of 47 graduates.
Students and staff moved into the new building, which took almost six years to complete, at the start of the winter semester.
It boasts three video production studios, a multimedia newsroom, a two-story research library, a black box theater, multiple editing rooms and even an in-house museum.
The 515,000 square foot, four-story facility was designed by famous American architect Antoine Predock and takes inspiration from Qatar’s “desert landscape.”
A total of 765 students will graduate from Qatar Foundation schools this week, including from Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (45), Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (57), Georgetown School of Foreign Service in Qatar (62), Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (109), HEC Paris in Qatar (137) and University College London Qatar (34).
Thoughts?