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[globalnomad2]

Indeed, as Harriet pointed out in the "Avoid GMU at all costs" thread, GMU has improved, and is gradually teaching the sponsor company what a university is. They had no clue before. And some heads rolled, too. For example, one halfwit sponsor-co. bureaucrat answered a student's complaint about the dormitory by saying "If you don't like something, you can always leave the college." Uh-huh. Brilliant. The home campus provost from Virginia was less than impressed. The bureaucrat is GONE.

There are some definite advantages over the HCT system, where I worked for 5 years, followed by 2 years at the Petroleum Institute. The latter was fine, but Dubai Women's had the problem of nasty, spoiled little munchkins who sometimes put Osama bin Laden on their screensavers or sent emails to the Americans accusing them of being Jews. Besides, five years among a sea of 2,000 abayas is enough for me. I like a little more human diversity than that, frankly.

Our students at GMU are much more diverse; with men and women together, of course, from many Arab nations, from India, Philippines, and soon we'll have Americans from the home campus and, we expect, from others around the globe. This is a place where, perhaps, the majority of students self-select into a U.S. institution and so they are quite friendly and easy-going. I certainly don't see Osama on the screensavers, and not even a word about George Dubya--not that I'd mind that. They're more interested in George Mason.

We hope the salary problems have been solved, and in fact the starting salary is better than most HCT starting amounts. With the new campus that is supposed to be built in two years (I won't hold my breath), we'll even have on-campus villas.

EFL teaching load is currently 18 hours and they are hoping to reduce that...again, not holding my breath for that, but it's a possibility.

So...it's highly competitive with HCT now. One of our EFL staff used to work at Zayed U, by the way...she likes our GMU students much more.

In sum, last semester Sean Connery would have said "I'm waiting to be impresshed!" Now, no doubt, he'd shake his martini and raise a glass.