A promotional brochure for Weill Cornell Medical College's Qatar branch singles out one CU alumnus for particular note: Willis Carrier 1901. It makes sense, seeing as Carrier invented air conditioning — and with the Qatari summer just beginning, the forecast for tomorrow is 98 degrees and sunny. (Chance of precipitation: 0%.) I'm in the capital city of Doha covering the graduation of WCMC-Q's inaugural class of physicians, a historic occasion that marks the first conferring of the MD degree by an American university on foreign soil. Fifteen students will receive the degree, some after studying at WCMC-Q for six years— two years of a premedical program and four of medical school. The graduation takes place Thursday at the Ritz Carlton, where the Cornell entourage is based. It's a luxury hotel, obviously, but amazingly enough it has a view of something even more sumptuous: The Pearl, a 4-million-square-meter artificial island now in the process of rising from Persian Gulf. So far, the week's festivities have include a convocation honoring all 122 graduates of Education City, a campus built out of the desert that — like much of the crane-dotted Doha skyline — is still under construction. (Other schools here are Texas A&M, Virginia Commonwealth, Carnegie Mellon, and Georgetown.) The event featured a speech by the Emir, the nation's ruler, as well as performances by the Royal Philharmonic and Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli. Each graduate received a memorable gift: a class ring designed by Asprey & Garrard, royal jewels to the Queen of England. — Beth Saulnier
Dateline: Doha
A promotional brochure for Weill Cornell Medical College’s Qatar branch singles out one CU alumnus for particular note: Willis Carrier 1901. It makes sense, seeing as Carrier invented air conditioning — and with the Qatari summer just beginning, the forecast for tomorrow is 98 degrees and sunny. (Chance of precipitation: 0%.) I’m in the capital […]