MSU officials traveled to Dubai last week and returned with reports of progress in the plan to be the first American university in the area commonly regarded as a hot spot for Middle East development.
“It’s tremendous progress,” said John Hudzik, MSU vice president of global engagement and strategic projects. “We have virtually reached an agreement on all of the programmatic and financial and support kinds of issues that take a lot of planning and so forth. All of these issues have really crystallized very nicely.”
The trip, which was the official public launch of the partnership between MSU and Dubai, was MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon’s first after finalizing the agreement in September. MSU will occupy space in the Dubai International Academic City in the United Arab Emirates, where, beginning in fall 2008, MSU students will be able to take classes and earn a degree as they would in East Lansing.
One goal of the voyage was to compare MSU plans with the logistics (utilities, ventilation, ducts, etc.) of the university’s space, said Dan Bollman, MSU design administrator in engineering and architectural services.
“It’s like one giant construction site,” he said. “As you go through that city, everywhere you look there are cranes in the air and developing going on. It’s a very active city, and there’s a lot of energy.”
Bollman said MSU is expected to occupy the first two floors of an already-standing building.
The university expects to complete a design by late December, Bollman said, and turn that design over to TECOM Investments in Dubai.
“They’re kind of responsible for developing all of (Academic City),” Bollman said. “We’ll possibly meet with them in January to make sure there’s a complete understanding and they’ll get the contractors going and start construction probably in the beginning of February. By the end of April, we should have our space pretty well occupied.”
Corinne Reardon, budget officer for the provost’s office, said other corporations and universities have established themselves in Dubai, and MSU will soon be among them.
“We’re expecting to have our online admissions form by the end of this week,” she said. “It’s real now.”
Reardon also said the university has hired a recruiter to be stationed in Dubai and established an e-mail address, dubai@msu.edu, for anyone with questions.
“There’s strong interest in having this be a win-win … for MSU, Dubai and Michigan,” Hudzik said. “(People involved with the Dubai project) want to look for these kind of partnerships and collaborations to be built in the next few years. There’s a commitment to building a real living learning campus type environment there.”
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