Good Luck!

As the academic year winds down, many of you will begin new chapters in your life. Some will be graduating and entering the working-world, some will be starting new internships and others will be traveling back to family and friends. Regardless of what comes next in your life, Housing and Residence Life wants to wish you the best of luck!

Wil Biddle, Housing & Residence Life Coordinator

Dear Residents, hope you are ready for a well-deserved rest after a busy year, and best of luck on finals. Congrats if you are graduating, we are proud of you, class of 2011! We hope you all have enjoyed your time here in Education City and hope you come back to visit in the future! If you are returning in the fall, we look forward to having you back and will be even closer to our new halls opening at that time!Have a brilliant summer!

Jessica Young

It has been a wonderful first year here in education city! I’ve really enjoyed getting to know so many students. I’d like to thank my CDA staff and so many other residents for being so welcoming in my transition to Qatar. I think some of my favorite events were the unplanned ones. Like accidentally getting lost after dinner one night and driving myself, Maham, Zahra and Benazir to Al Khor instead of back to EC. Or the FNL with desserts from around the world that turned into a Pakistani and Indian dance party. I’ve learned a lot about living in a small residential community and life in the Middle East. Next year I look forward to being more in my buildings, now that I have an office in SB2, and getting to know the new residents of SB3, SB2, and the Sustainability Villas. We have several new ideas in store for the villas and the other halls as well, and  I’m definitely looking forward to seeing them implemented in the fall. Best of luck to everyone this summer, I hope you enjoy it wherever you will be!

Justin Jeffery
I wish the best to our recent graduates, you all are starting an exciting, new chapter of your life and I hope you continue to achieve your dreams. I hope you always remember the wonderful experiences you had at Education City and amazing opportunities you were afforded during your time in Qatar. As you go forward, remember you are not only a representation of your great university, but also Education City, Qatar Foundation and the State of Qatar. For our students who are returning next year, I hope you enjoy your summer! Have fun, relax, enjoy spending time with friends and family and be safe. It has been a great year working with many of you and I look forward to seeing you next Fall and hearing about all your summer stories and successes.

Caleb Keith

It’s hard to believe it is already the end of the academic year. It seems like just yesterday that I was moving to Doha and preparing to start a new year. I can easily remember the excitement of residents moving back into the halls and then walking into the Ya Hala event, excited about the coming year. What a year it has been! The Education City Student Center has opened, we have made significant progress on the new residential complexes, and Housing and Residence Life welcomed four new staff members in addition to opening its first learning community.
However, even more exciting than those achievements was the opportunity to meet and interact with so many great residents. Whether it was during a Friday Night Lights program, a walk-through of a building, a Multiple Perspectives program, hanging out in the newly opened Student Center, or even the occasional conduct meeting, I greatly enjoyed the chance to meet so many of you. As I reflect on the past year, I am inspired by the ambition so many of your possess. It is amazing to hear individuals such as yourselves speak about the great things they wish to do with your future. I can only anticipate the great things we are going to hear you have accomplished in the years to come.
To those of you who will be leaving Education City to move on to the next phase of your life, good luck. May you take the lessons you have learned on this campus and apply them to your future as you change the world. To those of you who will be continuing with us next year, I hope that you enjoy the summer and I cannot wait to hear about the exciting things you do during the next academic term. To all of you, thank you for a great year and have a wonderful summer.


Belle Vukovich Kenoyer, Assistant Director, Housing and Residence Life
I’d like to take a moment to wish all of our residents good luck with their final exams and projects for the 2010-2011 academic year. I hope you were able to accomplish your goals for this year and are in the process of creating plans to achieve new goals for this summer and beyond. Whether you will be in Qatar or elsewhere this summer, take some time to slow down, explore, learn, think and most of all reflect on where you have been and where you want to go as you continue your journey through college. Have a great summer and we will see you in the fall!
For those of you graduating in the next week, I hope you are able to take some time to remember who you were when you first arrived in Education City and to examine how much you have learned about yourself and others in your time here. Have you found your voice as a young adult that enables you to communicate your hopes and expectations or your frustrations and disappointments in a manner that engages others in dialogue toward a new paradigm? Are you at once excited and nervous about what it means to graduate from college and become a new professional? Your next steps may seem a little uncertain or perhaps exactly what you are ready for, but it will be new territory for you to work as a professional in your chosen field. May this transitional time find you with the support you need in order for you to explore new ways of interacting in this world and enough challenge to spur you on towards even greater growth and development. Best of luck to you!


Arooj Rana
I wanted to take a moment to thank you all for a great year! As someone who was new to this country and this job, I was glad to have worked with so many intelligent, kind, and thoughtful young people. I know it hasn’t been a perfect year for most of us (myself included); as we all have made mistakes and wish we had tried harder on an exam, a project, an assignment or at life! But looking back at this year, I can happily remember the best moments without much challenge, such as many of your performances at the Cornell Coffee House or the CMU International Day. I can remember seeing so many smiling faces at RHD brown bags while we made breakfast late at night or painted quilt square for Multicultural March. But mostly, I enjoyed the individual conversations I had with some of you that helped me realize the smallness and grandness of this world simultaneously. Your stories and experiences have enriched my time here so far and I imagine that won’t change the longer I stay. Thank you so much for your stories and those moments!
As we close out the year, I want to wish all of you best of luck on your final exams and assignments. I know it’s a very stressful period, but PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO BREATH and relax as rest and proper health should also be part of your study routine. Also, many, many congratulations to this year’s graduates. I know you’ve worked hard and I’m excited for you to enjoy all the ceremonies in your honor, because you deserve them. If I don’t get the chance to see some of you before you leave, have a wonderful, relaxing and productive summer.