By Joey Aguilar/Staff Reporter

The Community College of Qatar (CCQ), in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage, will start a theatrical arts programme this upcoming semester, president of the college Dr Ibrahim Saleh K al-Naimi told Gulf Times.
Since Qatar has many theatrical activities and events, he said CCQ wants to further promote culture by opening a new programme for those who have the interest and passion for acting, musical theatre, piano, and dance.
With close collaboration with various government agencies and cultural organisations such as the Katara – the Cultural Village, Dr al-Naimi expressed optimism that students would  get the right exposure to develop their skills in theatrical arts.
He also cited the recently held Ballet Philippines performance which attracted a large number of spectators and guests from different communities and organisations.
The CCQ president said promoting culture and heritage to their students is built within their programmes.
“We have within the core courses that we try to teach such as Islamic culture,” he noted. “We teach history in Arabic although some of the programmes are taught in English but there is an Arabic component in that programme.”
Al-Naimi also vouched for the integrity and competence of their faculty members who have finished their masters (68.7%) and doctorate degrees (26%). “They had been providing ‘good education’ to our students.”
He said CCQ has a unique friendly environment since students and teachers have a close relationship with one another, which he considers as an advantage.
CCQ also features smaller classes with a faculty-student ratio of 1:17.5, flexible timing and what he described as a decent place to pursue higher education.
“We want to streamline students who had been given a second chance to study in the right environment and provide them the right education,” al-Naimi said.
“This is to help them either to go back to work with more skills or to advance and get their bachelors degree,” he said, adding that a lot of students in Qatar go to work after finishing high school without paying attention to higher education.
Besides theatrical arts, CCQ is also developing a new programme on Logistics and Supply Management this year, in collaboration with Aspire Zone. It will also have another programme on health information management and two more programmes next year: Information Technology and Engineering Technology.
From 11 faculty members, he noted that they now have about 160, who comprise different nationalities.
CCQ is the first public community college in Qatar and it collaborates with Houston Community College. From 308 students in 2010, the numbers grew to nearly 3,000 this year where majority (75%) of its population are female.