When Roda Al-Marzouqi (B.F.A.’02) and her classmates gathered in September 1998 for the first day of classes at the all- female Shaqab College of Design Arts in Al Rayyan, Qatar, their new home — the pioneer academy of an equally incipient district called Education City — was less the epicenter of a burgeoning academic metropolis and more a newborn idea taking its first breaths.

“It wasn’t only the first class [at the school], it was the first university in Education City,” Al-Marzouqi says. “We were a very small group, maybe 30 or 40 people. We took classes in two buildings, the only two buildings that existed at the time. It wasn’t much of a city back then.”

She and her friends called themselves “the experiment class.” By the time they graduated, the college had become the coed VCU School of the Arts in Qatar. Twenty-five years after that first day, Al-Marzouqi is a teaching assistant and academic support coordinator at her alma mater, and she has a backstage view of (and a primary role in) the school’s and city’s post-millennium boom. Education City today is home to more than a dozen universities and schools, a national library and a museum of modern art. And VCU’s presence on the Arabian Peninsula has grown into an arts community of more than 1,500. 

Here’s a sampling of all that change, by the numbers:

8

Universities today in Education City: VCU, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Texas A&M, Northwestern, Weill-Cornell Medicine, Hamad Bin Khalifa University and HEC Paris

35

Students — including a then-17-year-old Al-Marzouqi — in the first class at the Shaqab College of Design Arts. They came from seven countries. Today, 311 students attend VCUarts Qatar, representing 32 nations. 

3

Degrees available to the first class of students: fashion design, communications design (later graphic design) and interior design. Today, VCUarts Qatar’s degree offerings include bachelor’s degrees in art history and painting/printmaking and an M.F.A. in design.

>10,600

Students today in Education City, which is now also home to six pre-university schools under the auspices of the Qatar Foundation. The university students — studying media, international affairs, business, computer science, medicine, engineering and the arts — can take classes at their neighboring institutions and complete joint minors and certificate programs.

187

Alumni of the Qatar Leadership Exchange program, in which students from Qatar and Richmond host a delegation of peers from the other campus. This began formally in 2014, emerging from visits and study abroad programs between the schools dating to 2002. 

1,080

Alumni of VCUarts Qatar, representing 55 nations