Chuck Thorpe to Head Computer Program in Qatar

CHICAGO, IL (May 13, 2004) - More than once in recent months, Chuck Thorpe has been asked why a family with a strong Christian faith would be interested in living in a Muslim country like Qatar.

To Thorpe, a member of Stoneridge Covenant Church in Allison Park, Pennsylvania, and a graduate of North Park University (then College), the question can be answered simply. He wants to impact his world for Christ and he'll get a chance to do so in an area rich in academic resources.

Currently serving as director of The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Thorpe has been given an opportunity to serve in a place that has become a major "think tank" for academics. He is the new director of a satellite campus in Doha, Qatar. And Qatar can learn much from Thorpe, long considered by academia as one of the leading minds in computer science.

Thorpe has agreed to a three-year commitment. The country is interested in using robotics in its thriving oil industry and Thorpe will be an integral part of the discussion process. However, he is primarily there to help bring in a few dozen students (a maximum of 50) to the CMU-Qatar campus in Doha's Education City this fall. Along with developing a course curriculum, Thorpe must order books for a new library and hook up new computer systems and other educational necessities while adjusting to a different learning environment.

"There are some very progressive ways we've done education," said Thorpe about CMU's program. "It will be a challenge. Qatar has always segregated men and women, so having men and women in the same classroom will be different for them. But they asked us to run things the way we do it in Pittsburgh."

The Thorpe family visited Doha recently and checked out the campus. They also had a unique opportunity to share their faith because of a cinematic phenomenon occurring in the city. Qatar has become a cinema hotbed for Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ in that area of the world - many Muslims were intrigued by the idea of discussing the film with Christians.

"It was the first Arab country to show the movie," said Thorpe, recalling an Easter week trip to Qatar with his wife, Leslie, during an interview in Chicago last month. "But it has had a big impact for a number of reasons. One reason is that it is a powerful film. Another reason is that it's in Aramaic and people there can understand about 50 percent of the dialect. But it's also powerful because the story of Christ and his passion has not been widely told in the Muslim world. Those of us who grew up in the Christian world are jaded - because we've heard it so much, it's become part of the culture. But imagine hearing it for the first time. The Muslim faith has a high regard for Jesus. They view him as the Messiah and believe that He will come back.

"And there are lots of openings for discussions of faith," Thorpe continued. "For instance, Leslie was furniture shopping with our housing coordinator. He would excuse himself five times a day for his prayers. It gave her an excellent chance to talk about his prayers and he asked us about our prayers."

Qatar is a country of 700,000 in population, but only 170,000 are considered citizens - the rest are guest workers serving in oil refineries, shops and schools. There are about 4,000 American civilians there, said Thorpe. Large populations of people from Oman, Syria and Bangladesh are also in Qatar, which already has established collegial educational relationships with Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Cornell University in New York and Texas A & M.

Now in its sixth year, VCU was the first American university to begin a degree-granting branch campus overseas. As Qatar's leadership considered how to bolster university educational opportunities for its country's students, Carnegie Mellon and Thorpe came to mind. "My former boss at CMU, Raj Reddy, was on the Qatar National Information Technology Planning Team, so when the Queen of Qatar asked Raj for advice on who would be a university to teach business and computer science, he suggested CMU," Thorpe said. "When CMU asked Raj who should run it, Raj knew of my international experience and suggested I'd be ideal."

To be sure, the Thorpes will have a few adjustments to make when they move to Qatar. While Qatar has declared freedom of religion - even donating parcels of land for major religions to build houses of worship - Christians will be a decided minority there. There's also the language barrier to consider. The family is learning Arabic to fit in better with the culture, although Chuck will speak English in doing the bulk of his work at Education City.

However, being in a foreign culture doesn't seem to bother Chuck Thorpe much. He grew up in Zaire (now Congo) as the son of Covenant missionaries Roger and Eileen Thorpe and appreciates how his upbringing has shaped his life. And his family is enthused about the new adventure also, having already had meals with Qatari in their homes/tents and enjoying the hospitality of their new friends.

"One of the delightful things in this process is how excited my family is about this," Thorpe said. "Leslie went with me on my first trip in June 2003 and thought this would be a very interesting opportunity. My kids were with me in February and fell in love with the place. That's part of the motivation - I appreciated the international background as a kid and thought it would be good for my kids to have that kind of experience also. In fact, my kids said, 'Let's find a house with neighbors from all over the world. If we wanted to have American neighbors, we could have that in America.'

"There are opportunities for the familiar, but there are also opportunities to be different, Thorpe continued. "While I'm not going there as an evangelist, I make no secret of my faith and there are opportunities for us to learn Islam and for our Islamic friends to ask about our beliefs. But the whole process is not just us teaching the Qatari, but for the Qatari to teach us."

To learn more about Carnegie Mellon's new Qatar campus, visit the CMU website at www.cmu.edu/cmnews/extra/040121_qatar.html.

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