I. Plan of Operation 

The Middle East has been at the center of US foreign policy concerns for over 50 years. 

Yet, for most of our students it remains shrouded in stereotypes and reductionist images that only 

compound their cultural and intellectual distance from the region. To them, the region appears 

peculiarly distinct because they only see it as a place made up of violent and repressive political 

systems, illiberal and “traditional” human values and religious beliefs, and crumbling economic 

structures that only survive because of an accidental abundance of natural resources. As such, the 

Middle East is understood mainly as a looming and threatening antagonist in perpetual 

opposition to, and struggle with, the West. 

To counteract these persistently monolithic and short-sighted views, North Carolina State 

University is applying for Title VIa UISFL funding to develop a Middle East Studies 

undergraduate major. The guiding principle behind this project is to offer students at NCSU the 

opportunity to cultivate more systematically an intimate knowledge of the languages, histories, 

cultures and religions of the Middle East. Our current Middle East Studies minor (established in 

2004 through a previous UISFL grant) has proven highly successful in beginning this process 

with over 500 Arabic language students (in total) and 36 students who completed the minor in 

the past three. In combination with the 150 students who now enroll annually in our Arabic 

program, the ME Studies minor has demonstrated a strong demand for a more expanded program 

that can accommodate a larger number of students, as well as provide more extensive training in 

the field of Middle East Studies. Pedagogically we aim to establish a program that stands outside 

the insular paradigm which dominated the study of the Middle East in the past. In particular, the 

major in Middle East studies will be developed to help students understand and explore the 

region not as an isolated and peculiar place, but rather as a critical hub in a global network of 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 1 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e0 
 

 

 

 

people, ideas and commodities. For that purpose, and in addition to courses focused on the 

region itself, the major will integrate few courses and programs that draw links to South Asian, 

East Asian as well as European and American studies. Our purpose is to encourage students to 

understand how global processes manifested themselves locally through interactions with the 

realities of the Middle East, and how those processes in turn altered the existing cultural and 

religious values, socio-economic structures, and polities. To accomplish this goal, our project 

will have six areas of emphases: 

A.	 Develop an inter-disciplinary B.A. program in Middle East Studies at the College of 

Humanities and Social Sciences. This major will require students to complete the equivalent 

of 3 years in post-secondary education in one of the languages of the Middle East, in addition 

to courses in history, politics, religious studies and literature. The major will be developed in 

2010-2011 and implemented by Fall 2011. 

B.	 Increase the number of course offerings in Middle East and Islamic Studies. 

C.	 Expand the Arabic program from 3 to 4 credit hours per course, and add a 4th year of 

Advanced Arabic Language Instruction. In addition 

D.	 Establish a Center for Arabic Language and Culture Study in Cairo, Egypt in consortium 

with Northeastern University. This center will open in January 2011, it will house ME 

Studies majors from NCSU (among others) who will complete their 3rd year of Arabic 

language instruction in Egypt. 

E.	 Establish an internship program for NC State Middle East Studies majors to be based in 

Dubai and Cairo. The internships will be with Al-Arabiyya TV-Station and Nakheel 

Development Corporation both of which are located in Dubai, UAE and with Cairo-based 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative	� Page 2 

PR/Award # P016A100008	 e1 
 

 

 

 

 

work with NGO’s (Alashanak ya Baladi, St. Andrews Refugee Services, Resala, Refuge 

Egypt). 

F.	 Enhance the NCSU library collections relating to the Middle East with a particular focus on 

expanding our collection of scholarly literature focusing on energy and environment in the 

Middle East, as well as our M.E. language and literature collection. 

G.	 Establish K-12 outreach programs about the Middle East. This program will focus on 

establishing year-long contact between NCSU faculty and high school students and teachers 

in Southeast Raleigh High School and Clayton High School with the aim of encouraging 

minority students (defined along ethnic and socio-economic lines) to study the region. In 

addition, we aim to train a group of 10 Master Teachers who—with the help of an 

educational toolkit we will develop—will then conduct their own workshops across the state. 

A. Establish a B.A. in Middle East Studies 

NCSU intends to establish a Bachelors of Art program in Middle East Studies which will be 

a part of the Interdisciplinary Studies program (IDS) located in the College of Humanities and 

Social Sciences (CHASS). Students undertaking this major will be required to take 3 years of 

post-secondary education in one of the languages of the region either those currently taught at 

NCSU (Arabic, Farsi), or other languages taught at nearby institutions (Hebrew, Turkish). After 

their sophomore year students will be required to enroll in either a summer or semester study 

abroad program in the Middle East. Students travelling on either of these two programs will be 

eligible for study abroad scholarships available through recurring funding already procured from 

local community groups like the Egyptian American Club and the Triangle Lebanese 

Association. Additionally, this year we have obtained financial support from the government of 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative	� Page 3 

PR/Award # P016A100008	 e2 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the United Arab Emirates to fund students enrolled in the Summer study abroad program, and we 

will continue this partnership in the foreseeable future. 

Students who matriculate in this major will take a total of 36 credit hours in the history, 

politics, religion, language and culture of the Middle East. As is to be expected from such an 

inter-disciplinary program, there will be two core courses (History of the Modern Middle East, 

Introduction to Islam) required of all students, in addition to a number of electives they take from 

a required range of disciplines. Students focusing on Arabic for their language study will be 

expected to spend a semester in Egypt during their junior year; the cost of the program will be 

nearly the same as the cost of a semester of study at NCSU and thus it will not be financially 

onerous. Those students who are focusing on languages other than Arabic will be guided toward 

an appropriate study abroad program in the Middle East. In addition, after their junior year of the 

ME Studies major, students will be encouraged to spend a summer as interns in the Middle East 

either through programs we aim to establish with companies and NGO’s located in the region, 

through the US State Department internship program, or through another program of their 

choice. Finally, ME Studies majors will be required to write a senior thesis on a topic arranged 

with their academic advisor. 

Based on our current planning for this major, we expect that we will enroll 15 students in its 

first year of matriculation (Fall 2011) and increase to a steady-state enrollment of 80 students by 

Fall 2014. The core faculty who will be overseeing this program, and advising students, are: 

• Anna Bigelow (Islamic Studies), 

• David Gilmartin (History of Islam, South Asia and Imperialism), 

• Akram Khater (History of the Modern Middle East), 

• Jodi Stewart Khater (Arabic Language), 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 4 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e3 
 

 

 

 

 

 

• Mandana Limbert (Anthropology of the Middle East), 

• Inas Messiha (Arabic Language), 

• Nancy Mitchell (History, US-Mideast Relations), 

• Robert Moog (Political Science), 

• Thomas S. Parker (History, Ancient Middle East), 

• Dwight Stephens (Persian Languages, Critical Languages). 

In addition to this core faculty, there are other adjunct faculty who will be affiliated with the 

program. These are: 

• Larysa Mykyta (Francophone Literature), 

• Julie Mell (Jewish History), 

• Ron Sack (Ancient Middle East History), 

• Lauren Minsky (Indian Ocean History), 

• Owen Kalinga (African History) 

• Sandy Freitag (South Asian Visual Culture) 

It is important to note the research opportunities many of these faculty members can offer 

to our undergraduate students. For example, Tom Parker who has an active archaeological dig in 

‘Aqaba, Jordan—funded through numerous grants—can provide our students with the 

opportunity to participate in archaeological explorations and research in the region. Nancy 

Mitchell, a noted Jimmy Carter scholar, has taken some of our students to conduct research in the 

Carter Library pertaining to US foreign policy in the Middle East. 

Discussions about the major with various departments within CHASS are already well 

underway, and we have received strong support from the various constituencies for the 

development and institution of this program. In Fall 2010 the Middle East Studies Committee 

will submit a formal proposal to the College for establishing the ME Studies major, and the 

program will officially open to matriculating students in Fall 2011. 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 5 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e4 
 

 

 

 

 

B. Develop New Courses in Middle East and Islamic Studies 

In order to establish a broad interdisciplinary program in Middle East Studies, NCSU aims to 

increase the number of courses that are completely or partially related to this area of study. This 

will be accomplished through four strategies: 

1.	 Faculty Additions. Hire new faculty who work directly in this area: 

a.	 Lecturer in Arabic Language and Literature in the Department of Foreign 

Languages and Literature. 

b.	 Tenure Track Assistant Professor in Judaic Studies in the Department of Religion. 

c.	 Tenure Track Assistant Professor Energy and Environment in the Middle East. 

2.	 Course Development. Encourage existing NCSU faculty members to develop new 

courses on the Middle East and Islamic studies, or to expand their coverage of these 

subjects in courses they already teach, through funds designated for course release as well 

as through faculty seminars. 

3.	 Thematic Seminars. Create an intellectual dialogue about Middle East studies from a 

comparative perspective through a series of thematic seminars that will engage both 

nationally recognized Middle East scholars and NCSU faculty working on similar themes 

but in different regions, and in particular South and East Asia. 

4.	 Professional Development. Provide travel grants to NCSU faculty to conduct research 

related to Middle East Studies, and pertinent to their teaching. Establish, in addition, four 

annual seminars each of which will introduce the larger CHASS faculty to the scholarly 

work of one Middle East scholar and that will aim to develop new comparative research 

agendas. 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative	� Page 6 

PR/Award # P016A100008	 e5 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Faculty Lines 

NCSU has committed to three new faculty lines that deal directly with Middle East Studies. 

The first one is for a Lecturer in Arabic Language and Literature. The successful candidate will 

join the faculty in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. NCSU is asking for full 

funding of this position during the life of the grant, after which NCSU will assume full 

responsibility for funding the position. The hire will come in the first year the grant (FY 2010­

2011). The search for this candidate will take place also in Spring 2010 with an anticipated hire 

date of July 2010. This person will be expected to assist other Arabic language faculty in 

teaching first and second year courses. This will free the other Arabic language faculty members 

to design and teach a 4th year sequence of Arabic language courses, as well as specialized 

courses in modern Arabic literature. 

Secondly, NCSU will hire a tenure-track assistant professor in Judaic Studies within the 

Department of Religion. The search for this faculty member will commence in Fall 2010 or Fall 

2011 with an appointment expected to start either July of 2011 or 2012. This faculty member 

will be fully integrated into the Middle East studies program at every level: teaching, research, 

outreach, and scholarly workshops. We regard this position as critical to the intellectual project 

of moving our students away from an essentialist view of the Middle East that sees the region as 

monolithically Muslim in its social, cultural and religious orientation. In addition, to new 

proposed courses on Christianity and Ethnicity in the Middle East, the courses on Judaism, 

Jewish history, and contemporary Middle Eastern Jewish communities will allow our students a 

more nuanced view of the religions, history and sociology of the Middle East. 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 7 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e6 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, NCSU will hire a tenure-track assistant professor whose scholarship focuses on 

Energy and Environment in the Middle East, and who will teach within the International Studies 

curriculum. Since the successful candidate will teach under two separate rubrics (ME specialized 

courses, IS survey courses) the search for the position will be an open one within the College of 

Humanities and Social Sciences (History, Political Science, Sociology, Psychology). This will 

invite applications from a broad spectrum of scholars from amongst whom we will select the 

candidate who can best fulfill all the requirements. From the perspective of the Middle East 

Studies major, this position will not only add new courses but also allow the program to build 

links with other programs on campus. Amongst these would be the Nuclear Engineering program 

that has recently launched a program in Energy Security in collaboration with the Triangle 

Institute for Security Studies. Moreover, this position will provide us with further leverage to 

raise funds from private sources involved in the energy field in the Middle East. 

Course Development 

To ensure that we can provide students with a broad and interdisciplinary selection of 

courses on the Middle East and Islamic studies, we propose to offer release time to faculty to 

encourage new course development and/or revision of existing courses. This effort is partially 

intended to provide some new courses focused on comparative studies of the Middle East and 

South Asia, while others will look at encounters and interactions across the Mediterranean, and 

still others will be transnational explorations of themes that shaped the Middle East, and that 

carried Middle Eastern influences beyond the region’s geographical boundaries. We will strive to 

support both the core faculty of Middle East/Islamic studies specialists, as well as non-specialists 

who have a significant interest in the area (e.g., History of Science, Archaeology, Art & 

Architecture, and Literature). Selection will be determined by a committee (Anna Bigelow – 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 8 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e7 
 

 

 

 

 

 

Religious Studies, Robert Moog - Political Science, Inas Messiha – Foreign Languages and 

Literatures) based on a call for proposals sent out to all CHASS faculty. The selection process 

will strongly encourage the integration of non-specialist NCSU faculty into the Middle East 

studies program by allocating at least 33% of the course development resources to that category 

of faculty. Moreover, we will particularly encourage the development of comparative courses 

that integrate thematic elements of Middle East studies. Those who are selected will be required 

to participate in course development workshops that will meet twice (3 hours each time) during 

the course of the semester, administered by the Faculty Teaching and Learning Center at NCSU. 

The workshops will be designed to help faculty discuss common issues pertaining to the 

development of new content as well as pedagogical topics such as delivery of course material 

over the web. 

At this point we envision adding the courses listed below to our already existing 

curriculum, and teaching them in multi-year cycles. However, these are only examples and we 

will be soliciting applications from faculty members outside Middle East studies to help them 

develop comparative courses which include a significant module (between 15% and 50% of 

course time) pertaining to the Middle East. Some of the courses listed below will be funded by 

the Title VIa grant, but others will be undertaken with the assistance of internal CHASS course 

initiatives: 

1.	 Advanced Arabic ~ 4th Year Sequence: These are two courses (FLA 401 and 402) which 

will complete and complement our language offering in Arabic. 

2.	 Civil wars: A senior seminar history/sociology course that focuses on a comparative 

study of the causes, processes and repercussions of civil wars with particular attention to 

the Partition of India/Pakistan, the U.S and Lebanon. 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative	� Page 9 

PR/Award # P016A100008	 e8 
 

 

 

 

 

3.	 History of Egypt: This course looks at the history of modern Egypt (1805 – present). The 

general framework will be a political history that traces events from the foundation of the 

modern state. An additional focus will be on how an historical understanding of the 

creation of modern Egypt can be derived by looking at examples of various social or 

cultural currents. 

4.	 History of Iran: This course traces the history of Iran from the Safavid period to the 

present. It explores the changing dynamics of religious and secular authority, political 

and social organization, foreign intervention, oil and “modernization.” 

5.	 History of the Gunpowder Empires: a senior seminar that focuses on a comparative study 

of the last three Islamic empires (Mughal, Ottoman and Safavid) and which highlights the 

exchange of people, ideas and commodities between them. 

6.	 History of the Jewish People: This course surveys the major developments in Jewish 

history from the ancient Land of Israel to the contemporary State of Israel, tracing that 

history across a wide swath of geographical territories. 

7.	 Islamic Political Movements: The purpose of this course is to explore the diversity of 

movements, organizations, and political parties that fall within the concept of political 

Islam. The primary focus of the course will be on those groups operating in South Asia 

and the Middle East, although the students will be introduced to the broader range of 

political Islam. 

8.	 Mediterranean World: This course explores the cultural, religious, political, and 

economic encounters of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the geopolitical sphere of the 

Mediterranean from 600-1600 CE. 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative	� Page 10 

PR/Award # P016A100008	 e9 
 

 

 

 

 

9.	 Middle East Diasporas: This course will focus attention on the Middle East not as a static 

geography but rather as a cartography defined by the movements of people across its 

boundaries. By studying select cases of movements into the region and out of it the 

course will elucidate a Middle East that is historically and contemporaneously transregional. 

10. Popular Culture in the Middle East: This course looks at Middle Eastern societies 

through various forms of national and transnational mass mediated popular culture. In 

this material tradition is conditioned, or even created, by its interaction with social forms 

that transcend the local. 

11. Youth in the Middle East: A historical survey of the development of the category of 

youth, how they were viewed and tapped by community and state, how they experienced 

the events of the 20th century, and how they shaped those events. The course will look at 

political movements, educational experiences, cultural trends, and economic realities 

across the breadth of the 20th century. 

Thematic Workshops and Seminars 

NCSU proposes to hold over the two-year period of the grant two workshops germane to 

the study and teaching of the Middle East. Both workshops will be held in the middle of the 

spring semester. The first will focus on Energy and Environment in the Middle East, while the 

topic of the second conference will be Minorities in the Middle East. For each conference we 

will invite two outside scholars specializing in these subjects, and we will also invite a third 

scholar who works on these themes but within a different geographical milieu. 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative	� Page 11 

PR/Award # P016A100008	 e10 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 [1] Workshop 2011: Minorities in the Middle East. This workshop will explore
 

understudied populations in the Middle East—Muslim and non-Muslim minority groups—from a 

comparative perspective. Often overshadowed by the Muslim majorities with whom they live, 

these groups are nonetheless important contributors to the histories, economies, politics, and 

cultures of the region. At one level then, the aim of this workshop is to advance our knowledge 

of Middle Eastern history and culture beyond the dominant paradigm of Sunni Islam and to 

expand awareness of the particular contributions and challenges of these important communities. 

But more importantly, we intend to do so within a comparative perspective that seeks to raise 

conceptual questions about the idea of minorities in the Middle East. By incorporating scholars 

who have worked on the subject of minorities in the US we will create a conversation about the 

emergence and definition of the term and the limitations and opportunities inherent in its 

transplantation to the Middle East. And by inviting presentations on ethnic and religious 

minorities in Europe and South Asia we will open new venues for comparative inquiry into the 

subject that will transcend parochial and introverted studies and encourage a broader 

conversation between M.E. scholars and other academics. 

[2] Workshop 2012: Diasporas & the Making of the Middle East: Trade, Ideas and People 

Across the Indian Ocean. This workshop will focus on the Indian Ocean as the link drawing East 

Africa, the Middle East and South Asia together historically and in contemporary time. Trade, 

people and ideas flowed across these territories creating a thicket of connections inextricably 

tying the histories of the regions in fundamental ways. Starting from that premise, the workshop 

will look at communities of Indian merchants all up and down the Red Sea, as well as look at 

traders from the Middle East relocating to South Asia. It will examine Sufi networks and 

Christian missionaries among others by way of tracing the transmission and transformation of 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 12

PR/Award # P016A100008 e11 
 

 

 

religious ideologies. Modern labor migrations from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to the Gulf and 

other parts of the Middle East, as well as Yemeni labor migration to Indonesia will provide 

another set of connections, and another means of understanding how this trans-regional flow 

shaped local history, society and culture. As with the previous workshop, the invited 

presentations will be selected to foster a cross-fertilization of ideas between scholars working in 

different area studies, thus enriching our understanding and teaching of the Middle East. For this 

purpose, we will work with the Triangle Center for South Asian Studies, as well as with the 

Asian Studies faculty at NCSU to organize this workshop. 

The objective of these workshops is to foster an intellectual dialogue within the community 

of scholars at NCSU, to provide new ways of thinking about Middle East studies, and to help 

develop new resources for teaching these subjects which will be shared with local community 

colleges and high schools. While we fully expect each workshop to develop its own form, we 

anticipate that the morning sessions will be dedicated to lectures provided by the three 

participants and to discussion of the papers they present. The afternoon session will function 

more as a workshop to integrate the theme of the seminar into practical teachable units within the 

disciplines represented by the faculty in attendance. The dialogues in these seminars are certain 

to be enhanced by the rich resources we have in the Triangle with over 70 faculty members at 

NCSU, Duke and UNC Chapel Hill some of whom are specialists in the Middle East and Islam, 

while others have worked on the themes of the workshops. 

Professional Development 

As a natural complement to the workshops and course development grants, we propose to 

fund travel for research purposes through competitive travel awards. The director of the program 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 13 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e12 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Akram Khater) will be responsible for organizing the selection process by advertising the 

availability and purpose of travel funds, and by convening a committee to evaluate the grant 

proposals according to standard College practice. These grants are intended to send specialists 

and non-specialists in Middle East Studies to conduct research on topics related completely or 

substantially to this field of scholarship. The intent is not simply to advance the individual work 

of the selected faculty members. Rather, the main purpose is to use this funded research to 

enhance segments of their courses that deal with the Middle East and Islam. These grants can 

also be used to help cover the cost of attending teaching workshops related to the Middle East, 

where new pedagogical approaches and new content are the main focus. 

Aside from these travel grants we plan to initiate, with the help of the UISFL grant, a monthly 

series of seminars titled Middle East Sojourns. We will hold a total of four (4) of these seminars 

annually. We will invite all CHASS faculty to attend the seminars, but will limit attendance to 20 

individuals who will be selected on first-come first-serve basis. The seminar will focus on the 

research of one faculty member involved in Middle East studies. The informal lunch session will 

allow for greater personal interaction between the presenter and attendees and will help build 

links across CHASS between specialists in Middle East studies and non-specialists. It is expected 

that such interactions will help bring elements of Middle East studies into the courses of nonspecialists, while encouraging Middle East scholars at NCSU to explore larger questions. Most 

critically, we anticipate that such encounters will produce new comparative research agendas and 

courses that allow for collaboration between Middle East scholars and non-specialists in 

CHASS. 

C. Expand Arabic Program 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 14 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e13 
 

 

 

 

Language instruction is the cornerstone for the study of any region. Without a working 

knowledge of at least one of the languages of the Middle East, students will not be able to 

understand the culture and history of the societies and peoples of the region. Because of this fact, 

which became much more painfully apparent in the wake of September 11th events, North 

Carolina State University made the decision in Fall 2002 to fund for the first time one course in 

Elementary Modern Standard Arabic. The overwhelmingly strong demand for this Arabic 

language course subsequently led the university (in Fall 2003) to expand its offerings in the 

language by hiring a full-time lecturer. Partially with the help of the UISFL grant, the program 

grew between 2003 and 2008 to offer three years of Arabic language instruction, and to enroll 

over 150 students annually. To alleviate the ever increasing demand the university hired a second 

Arabic lecturer in 2008. In addition, the Arabic language coordinator and the Head of the 

Foreign Languages and Literatures department undertook a review of the program to determine 

its strengths and weakness, to assess the level and nature of demand for expansion of the 

program, and to chart on the basis of that review a plan for its future course. 

Based on the recommendations of that review, and with the anticipated support of the 

UISFL grant, we propose to expand the program in two ways: 

1. Increase days of instruction from 3 to 4 days per week 

2. Offer 4th year Arabic language and literature courses 

Because of the limited staffing situation and the high demand on the lower level courses, 

Arabic language instruction at NCSU is currently carried out three (3) days per week. This 

limitation puts our students at a disadvantage when they seek to pursue further studies either in 

intensive summer programs (like that run by Middlebury College), in graduate programs (like 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 15 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e14 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CASA, the National Flagship Language Program at the University of Maryland). While we still 

have a solid record of placement in these various programs we are convinced that we need to 

extend the number of instructional days in order to better situate our students vis à vis intensive 

and graduate studies. The second area of need identified by the review process is the addition of 

a 4th year of Arabic language and literature courses. The addition of these courses will better 

prepare our students to enter graduate programs in Arabic, as well as make them more 

competitive candidates for jobs within government agencies and other institutions where Arabic 

is a critical tool. It will enable our students to test at the High-Intermediate to Low-Advanced on 

the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency 

Interview (OPI) and Writing Proficiency Test (WPT).1

 Finally, the proposed increase in our 

Arabic language courses will also enhance the number of Middle Eastern courses available not 

only to our majors but also to those enrolled in the International Studies major. It is for these 

reasons that we are asking for Department of Education funding for an additional Arabic lecturer 

position which the university will subsequently fund after the conclusion of the grant. This 

lecturer will be responsible for providing first and second year instruction in Modern Standard 

Arabic at NCSU. 

It is important to note here that in addition to Arabic, students enrolling in the Middle East 

Studies major will have the option of taking Persian—a language already firmly established at 

NCSU with the generous help of a Title VI grant given to the North Carolina Center for South 

Asia Studies (an educational consortium of NCSU, Duke, University of North Carolina at Chapel 

Hill, and North Carolina Central University). Currently, NCSU offers 2 years of Farsi language 

courses, but we are working internally to expand that to three years. 

1 More on this in the Plan of Evaluation section 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 16 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e15 
 

 

 

 

D. Establish a Center for Arabic Language and Culture Study (CALCS) in Cairo, Egypt 

In addition to our highly successful Egypt Summer Study Abroad program 

(http://ids.chass.ncsu.edu/mestudies/studyabroad/) we would like to establish a semester-long 

program in Cairo. The program is being developed in collaboration with Northeastern 

University, and we expect to open the program in January 2011. As designed the program will 

take 30 – 40 3rd Year Arabic language students (primarily from NCSU and Northeastern 

University) to spend a total of five months in Cairo. The students will be housed in apartments, 

and they will take two required courses at CALCS; one will be an intensive Arabic program that 

covers the 3rd year of Arabic MSA, and the second will be a cultural studies course focusing on 

Egypt and the Middle East. In addition to providing a theoretical framework for understanding 

the forces which have shaped culture in the Middle East, the latter course content will be 

correlated to use the Arabic skills being developed in the first course by exposing students to a 

variety of cultural events, media encounters, debates with Egyptian students, and a host of other 

activities. Additionally, the students will be required to enroll in a service learning course where 

we will arrange for them volunteer opportunities with local Egyptian NGO’s. 

E. Develop Internship Program in Dubai and Egypt. 

We regard internships as another critical element in the educational career of our M.E. 

Studies majors. While language instruction and course work at NCSU will provide a solid 

academic basis, an internship will provide each of our participating students with a real-life 

experience in the working culture of the Middle East. Whether they work for a large 

development company like Nakheel Development Corporation which is charting the course of 

urbanization and real estate development in the Middle East or volunteer their time with Refuge 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 17 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e16 
 

 

 

 

Egypt working with Iraqi refugees, our students will be exposed to experiences and encounters 

that are impossible to duplicate in the classroom. In preparation for such an experience, we will 

hold training seminars for the students before they embark on their summer internships. These 

day-long seminars will provide them with information about what to expect in terms of housing, 

working culture, inter-personal relations, appropriate linguistic requirements, expenses, etc. Our 

Project Director in tandem with the Internship Coordinator (who is housed in the International 

Studies program) will monitor the students progress during their overseas stays, and will provide 

them with support they may need in case of difficulties. 

We have already begun preliminary discussions with various organizations in Cairo and 

Dubai and will continue developing these collaborative programs in June 2010. With the help of 

UISFL grant we expect to finalize the internship program by Spring 2012 in preparation for 

sending our first group of students in Summer 2013. 

F. Library Development. 

In order to provide our students with greater access to academic material about Middle East 

Studies, NCSU proposes to develop its collection of Middle Eastern literature in English 

specifically to respond to the increased undergraduate research needs of NCSU students. We 

have begun to work with the library collection development staff (for the humanities and social 

sciences, Darby Orcutt and Debbie Currie) to identify areas of need for development of our 

collection in a manner that facilitates undergraduate teaching and research commensurate to our 

program goals. At this point we have identified contemporary Middle Eastern literature both in 

the original language and in translation, as well as material on energy and environment in the 

Middle East as the two main areas requiring development. Moreover, we would like to enhance 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 18 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e17 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

our video library with instructional films, both features and documentaries. The library has 

committed a significant budget ($4,000/year) to begin to fill the broader general needs of 

teaching the Middle East. We propose to use the grant monies in the amount of $4,000 per year 

for the first year and $4,000 for the second year to augment the library’s commitment in the areas 

of special need noted above. Moreover, we will leverage this grant to raise further funds from 

private community donors in North Carolina to establish a special collection on Minorities in the 

Middle East. 

G. Outreach Activities. 

We have been vigorously engaged in outreach activities since we received our first UISFL 

grant. In general, these activities have fallen into two main categories: K-12, and public outreach. 

Over the past 5 years we have conducted nine daylong workshops with over 300 teachers from 

across the state. In addition, outreach program like our ME Film Festival has grown in 

attendance from 200 in total for five films, to over 2000 students over five films. This spring we 

will host our 6th annual film festival. We also hosted the first American trip for the Umm 

Kulthoum Classical Orchestra, and it was attended by over 600 people from NCSU. In short, our 

first UISFL grant has allowed us to enrich the students’ cultural experiences at NCSU and to 

provide a far broader perspective on what constitutes the Middle East. 

In reviewing our K-12 outreach program though questionnaires collected, and follow-up 

with teachers who attended our workshops we have decided to focus our future efforts on two 

projects. It is our aim to undertake two different sets of outreach programs that we believe will 

have a deeper impact on K-12 education, better prepare and attract high school students to ME 

Studies, and reach previously under-served communities who have little if any chance to learn 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 19 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e18 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

about the region. With the help of the UISFL grant (as well as a supplementary grant from 

ARAMCO) we plan two initiatives: 

1. Four teacher workshops annually 

2. Two year partnership with two high schools from under-served areas.

 [1] Teacher Workshops Using lists compiled by the National Humanities Center we will invite 

25 high school teachers each year to participate in a series 4 one-day workshops at NCSU which 

will focus on integrating Middle East studies in high school curricula. Using the North Carolina 

world history textbook (developed at NCSU) as our starting point we will concentrate each year 

on providing the teachers with cultural and historical material that they can use effectively in the 

classroom. For the first year we will emphasize the multiple and complex relationships between 

religion, society and culture in the Middle East. In the second year we will highlight the 

emergence of non-traditional types of politics in the region which deal with the environment, 

health care, education, and women’s and minority rights. The idea behind this series of 

workshops is to move teachers beyond the notion that the only politics in the region are those of 

authoritarian states, and to allow them to explore the various ways individuals and groups contest 

the power of even the most repressive of states. In both series of workshops we will include 

exposure to music, film, art, and primary historical documents and discuss their pedagogical use 

in the classroom to help students better comprehend the region. We will develop a packet of 

information for each workshop that will include reading material for the teachers. Workshops 

will include morning lectures from specialists, and afternoon break-out sessions to start 

developing lesson plans around the theme of the workshop. Finally, we will work with the 

College of Education, the NCSU World Literature program and the International Studies 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 20 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e19 
 

 

 

 

program to develop a website dedicated to providing middle and high school teachers with online resources for the teaching of the Middle East. This project will be publicized through direct 

e-mail and the Department of Public Instruction in North Carolina. 

[2] Two year partnership. We have identified two under-served high schools with which we 

intend to work to launch a 2-year project for the enhancement of Middle East Studies. The 

purpose behind such a project is to attract students who normally get little exposure to the 

Middle East, and to better prepare them for admission and study at NCSU. The project (which 

will not require funding from UISFL) will entail workshops for the teachers, presentations in the 

classroom by NCSU faculty, and most importantly linking the students from these schools 

directly with students in the Middle East. This linkage will take place through various social 

networks on the internet, but it will also include exchanges of short documentaries conceived, 

filmed and produced by students both here and the Middle East. The videos will focus on topics 

of interest and concern to youth (music, sexuality, art, religion, etc.). We have already secured a 

firm promise for funding from ARAMCO contingent upon receipt of the UISFL grant. 

H. Equal Access 

Certification of Compliance with Section 427 (ref. 427 OMB Control No. 1801-0004, esp. 

8/31/2001). All public activities of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences are made 

available to students, faculty, staff and when appropriate, the general public without 

consideration of gender, race, national origin, color, disability or age. Because of the nature of 

much of our proposed programming we anticipate that a substantial portion of the participants 

will be of international or heritage communities. All competitions (e.g. applications for 

workshop participation, selection of TA, etc.) are blind to the prescribed barriers noted in Section 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 21 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e20 
 

 

 

 

 

427, while hold all public events in venues that are accessible to everyone. The university’s 

regular facilities for aiding students with learning disabilities will be consulted for help. 

II. QUALITY OF KEY PERSONNEL 

Akram Khater – Project Director. The Director of the grant will be Akram Khater, Associate 

Professor of History at North Carolina State University. Khater received his Ph.D. in history 

from the University of California, Berkeley in 1993. His research has focused on social and 

cultural history of the Middle East in which he has published extensively. He was selected as 

“University Outstanding Teacher,” and “Outstanding Junior Faculty,” and the “University 

Outstanding Faculty Engaged in Extension.” He has held research fellowships from the National 

Humanities Center, CAORC Fulbright, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the 

American Philosophical Society. Administratively, he is currently serving as the director of the 

Middle East Studies program in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and he was the 

PI on the first UISFL grant. He has served as a member of the Program Committee for the 

Middle East Studies Association, and Member of the Board for the Women and Gender Studies 

program. Currently, he serves on the editorial board of various journals and book series including 

the International Journal of Middle East Studies. In addition, he has served on numerous NCSU 

administrative committees. 

Anna Bigelow – Project Co-Director Anna Bigelow is instructor in the Department of 

Philosophy and Religion at NCSU. She is completing her PhD from the University of California 

at Santa Barbara (2003) on shared sacred sites and inter-religious relations in India. Her MA in 

Religious Studies was completed at Columbia University in 1995. She specializes in South 

Asian Islam, Religious Conflict, and Comparative Religions. She has received fellowships from 

the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Social Science Research Council, the American 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 22 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e21 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Institute of Indian Studies, FLAS, and UCSB. She has presented at numerous professional 

meetings including the American Academy of Religion, the Triangle South Asia Consortium, the 

Annual South Asian Studies Conference at Madison, WI, and others. She has published articles, 

book reviews, and encyclopedia entries in numerous venues. In addition she teaches Islam, 

South Asian Religions, and Religious Conflict. 

David Gilmartin. David Gilmartin is Professor of History at NCSU. He received his Ph.D. from 

the University of California, Berkeley (1979), where he specialized in the relation of Islam to the 

creation of Pakistan. Gilmartin has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships for his 

research from such institutions as the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., the 

National Endowment for the Humanities, Senior Fulbright, American Institute of Indian Studies, 

American Institute of Pakistan Studies, and the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research 

Abroad program. In addition to dozens of specialized articles in academic journals, Gilmartin is 

the author of Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan (California, 1988). 

Jodi Stewart Khater. Jodi Stewart Khater has a MA in Arabic language from the American 

University in Cairo. She received her BA in Near Eastern Studies with emphasis on Arabic 

language and literature from Brigham Young University. She has received several fellowships 

pertaining to the study of Arabic, including two Fulbright grants to study in Egypt, one in 1982 

and one in 2002. She has taught Arabic (at the Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced levels) at 

NCSU, Duke University and Meredith College for the past ten years.and before that she was the 

VP of Marketing for the Middle East and North Africa for an American corporation. She has 

lived and traveled extensively in the Middle East and North Africa. She developed and expanded 

the Arabic language program at NCSU since 2002, she currently serves as the Arabic Language 

Coordinator as well as the Advisor for the Middle East Studies minor, and she is the co-Director 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 23 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e22 
 

 

 

 

 

 

of the Egypt Summer Study Abroad program. She serves on the Advisory Board for Arabic 

Language Online Courses, The NC Department of Public Instruction in collaboration with 

LEARN NC, UNC School of Education, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Mandana E. Limbert. Mandan Limbert is Associate Professor of History at NCSU. She received 

her PhD in Anthropology and Near Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan (2002). Her 

work explores religion, gender, oil, and notions of Arabness in the Gulf and Indian Ocean. She 

has received grants and fellowships from the Mellon foundation, Ford foundation, Fulbright, 

Fulbright-Hays, and the American Council of Learned Societies. In addition to numerous articles 

and book chapters, Limbert is co-editor of Timely Assets: the politics of resources and their 

temporalities, SAR Press (2008). Her manuscript, In the Time of Oil: piety, memory and social 

life in an Omani Town is in production with Stanford University Press. 

Ines Messiha – Ines Messiha is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign 

Languages and Literatures at NCSU. She received her Ph.D. in Modern Foreign Languages from 

the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) in 1996. Before coming to NCSU in 2008, Dr. Messiha 

was the Academic Director for the Penn State University (University Park) Summer Intensive 

Language Institute, as well as the Arabic Language Coordinator there from 2005 to 2008. She 

has taught Arabic since 2003 at the Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced levels. She has given 

numerous presentations and published several articles on topics relating to language instruction 

and literature. 

Nancy Mitchell. Nancy Mitchell is Associate Professor of History at NCSU. She received her 

Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University (1993), where she specialized in the history of US 

foreign relations. She also has an MA in theology and studied at the American University, 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 24 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e23 
 

 

 

Cairo. Mitchell's current interest is US foreign policy in the late 1970s; she contributed the 

chapter about Jimmy Carter to the Cambridge History of the Cold War, and she is completing a 

book about Jimmy Carter and Africa and the Middle East. In addition to specialized articles in 

academic journals, Mitchell is the author of The Danger of Dreams: German and American 

Imperialism in Latin America, 1895-1914 (Chapel Hill, 1999). She was the director of the 

Graduate Studies program at NCSU and has extensive administrative experience. 

Robert Moog. Robert S. Moog is professor in the Department of Political Science and Public 

Administration at NCSU. With a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1989) combined with 

his J.D. degree at Boston University Law School (1974), Moog specializes in comparative 

Judiciary. He has received awards and fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies, 

FLAS, Fulbright-Hays, and NCSU. He has authored several articles comparing Middle Eastern 

and Indian judicial systems in judicial and area-studies journals. In addition to extensive 

professional experience in the practice of law, In addition to experience in the practice of law, 

Moog has acted as a consultant on justice system reform projects in Afghanistan, Nepal, and 

India. He teaches regular courses on the politics of South Asia and the Middle East. 

S. Thomas Parker. Thomas Parker is professor in the Department of History at NCSU. With a 

Ph.D. in history from UCLA (1979) Parker specializes in both the history and archaeology of the 

Roman Middle East. He has written extensively on this subject with a monograph titled Romans 

and Saracens: A History of the Arabian Frontier, and over 100 articles published in scholarly 

and popular journals. Moreover, every other summer he leads NCSU students to ‘Aqaba, Jordan 

where he is conducting archaeological fieldwork on the Roman presence in the ancient port of 

Aila along the Red Sea in Southern Jordan. Professor Parker has been the recipient of various 

external grants and fellowships that include National Endowment for the Humanities Grants for 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 25 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e24 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interpretive Research, National Geographic Society Research Grants, Dumbarton Oaks Center 

for Byzantine Studies Research Grants, Samuel H. Kress Foundation Research Grants, and 

Joukowsky Family Foundation Research Grants. He is a member of the Board of the American 

Center of Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan and its past Vice President. 

Dwight Stephens. Dwight Stephens received his doctorate in Indo-European Historical and 

Comparative Linguistics. His special interests are the neural and psychic bases of 

consciousness, cognition, and language acquisition. He is on the faculty of the NCSU 

Department of Foreign Languages, has recently written a successful critical languages grant for 

the university, and is currently creating an online multimedia course in Persian. He is the 

Director of the NCSU Critical Languages Summer Program which is funded by a Department of 

Defense grant. 

III. BUDGET AND COST EFFECTIVENESS 

2010-2009: Year One 

1. Personnel 

a.	 Prof. Khater, Project Director, two course releases (equivalent to 33% time commitment) 

split between Federal request of $9,000, and NCSU match, $16,121. 

b.	 Prof. Bigelow, Project Co-Director, 10% time commitment, NCSU match, $6,200. 

c.	 NCSU Faculty effort with 10 faculty members at 7.5% of their time, NCSU match 

$39,000 

d.	 Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, Energy and Environment in the Middle East, 50% time 

commitment to ME Studies; search conducted fall 2010. 

e.	 Arabic Language Instructor NTT to help expand Arabic language instruction for 3 to 4 

days, and add 4th year of Arabic, Federal request of $40,000. 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative	� Page 26 

PR/Award # P016A100008	 e25 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

f.	 Fulbright Language TA Coordinator, to maintain FLTA grants and coordinate the work 

of FLTA fellows in the Arabic and Persian programs, Federal request of $2,000. 

g.	 Graduate Student Assistant, 150 hours at $12, Federal request of $1,800. 

h.	 Summer stipends for curriculum development of 6 courses at $1,000 for each course, 

Federal request of $6,000. 

2. Fringe Benefits are based on prevailing NCSU rate of 27% for faculty and 9.15% for 

Teaching Assistant. 

3. Travel: 

a.	 Professional Development Travel consisting of six $550 individual grants with Federal 

request of $800 and $2500 in NCSU matching funds. 

b.	 Federal request of mandated $1,644 for Project Director. 

c.	 Federal request of $2,300 for air fare two faculty member to travel to Egypt to plan 

Center for Arabic Language and Cultural Studies Program, with $2500 in NCSU match. 

4. Equipment, NA 

5. Supplies: 

a.	 Federal request of $4,000 for Library Acquisitions of monographs and journals, with 

$4,000 matching funds from NCSU 

b.	 Instructional material for Arabic and Persian language study (DVD, CD Rom, Software) 

and expendable supplies. Federal request of $600. 

6. Contractual: NA 

7. Construction: NA 

8. Other Direct Costs: 

a.	 Federal request for funds for outside evaluator ($1,610). 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative	� Page 27 

PR/Award # P016A100008	 e26 
 

 

 

 

 

 

b.	 Federal request of funds for honoraria for four workshop speakers for Teacher Education 

Workshop. ($2,000) 

c.	 Federal request to fund speakers at colloquium, with airfare for six at $500 each, per 

diem at $130 for two days each ($4,560), with $1000 matching fund. 

d.	 Federal request to cover costs of duplication and postage of program brochures and 

posters. ($700). 

9. Indirect Costs are requested at the Federal approved rate of 8 %. 

2010-2011: Year Two 

1. Personnel 

a.	 Prof. Khater, Project Director, two course releases split between Federal request of 

$9,000, and NCSU match, $16,875 (equivalent to 33% time commitment). 

b.	 Prof. Bigelow, Project Co-Director, 10% time commitment, NCSU match, $6,200. 

c.	 NCSU Faculty effort with 10 faculty members at 7.5% of their time, NCSU match 

$39,000. 

d.	 Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, Energy and Environment in the Middle East, 50% 

time commitment to ME Studies; NCSU match of $27,500. 

e.	 Arabic Language Instructor NTT to help expand Arabic language instruction for 3 to 

4 days, and add 4th year of Arabic, Federal request of $40,400. 

f.	 Fulbright Language TA Coordinator, to maintain FLTA grants and coordinate the 

work of FLTA fellows in the Arabic and Persian programs, Federal request of $2,000. 

g.	 Graduate Student Assistant, 150 hours at $12, Federal request of $1,800. 

h.	 Teaching Assistant for Core Course on Islam to allow for expanded enrollment, 

Federal request of $2,000. 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative	� Page 28 

PR/Award # P016A100008	 e27 
 

 

 

 

 

 

i.	 Summer stipends for curriculum development of 5 courses at $1,000 for each course 

for Federal request of $5,000. 

2. Fringe Benefits are based on prevailing NCSU rate of 27% for faculty, and 9.15% for 

Teaching Assistant. 

3. Travel: 

a.	 Professional Development Travel consisting of six $550 individual grants with 

Federal request of $800 and $2500 in NCSU matching funds. 

b.	 Federal request of mandated $1,644 for Project Director. 

c.	 Internship planning trip Fall 2011, NCSU match of $2500. 

4. Equipment, NA 

5. Supplies: 

a.	 Federal request of $4,000 for Library Acquisitions of monographs and journals, with 

$4,000 matching funds from NCSU 

b.	 Instructional material for Arabic and Persian language study (DVD, CD Rom, 

Software) and expendable supplies. Federal request of $1000. 

6. Contractual: NA 

7. Construction: NA 

8. Other Direct Costs: 

a.	 Federal request for funds for outside evaluator ($1,610). 

b.	 Federal request of funds for honoraria for four workshop speakers for Teacher 

Education Workshop. ($2,000) 

c.	 Federal request to fund speakers at colloquium, with airfare for six at $500 each, per 

diem at $130 for two days each ($4,560) 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative	� Page 29 

PR/Award # P016A100008	 e28 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

d.	 Federal request to cover costs of duplication and postage of program brochures and 

posters. ($800). 

9. Indirect Costs are requested at the Federal approved rate of 8 %. 

B. Cost Effectiveness in Relation to the Objectives of the Project 

The objective of the project is to broaden the study of the Middle East at NCSU, including 

Arabic and Persian language study, in response to a greater demand and need for expertise in this 

area. The project makes maximum use of NCSU strengths and requests federal funds to address 

weaknesses. The following is a summary of costs involved: 

1. Program Development: The costs of implementing Middle Eastern Studies at NCSU

 involves two course release for the project director, ten percent time commitment on the part of 

the project co-director, 7.% time commitment from Middle East Studies faculty, partial salary of 

the FLTA coordinator; the salary of the graduate assistant to develop brochures for the programs 

and assist in coordinating events as well as the evaluation of program and events. In the second 

year of the grant NCSU will cover the salary of the Tenure-Track faculty in Energy and 

Environment in the Middle East Once the major is approved, NCUS will cover the costs of the 

program. Given the size of NCSU, the development of the major in Middle East Studies has the 

potential to reach a large number of students. 

2. Curriculum Development: The costs of developing approved new courses involve summer 

stipends for faculty to develop eleven new courses. 

3. Language Development: The costs of expanding the Arabic consist of salary for the instructor; 

and the tuition remission for two FLTA fellows. After the grant, NCSU will pick up the salary 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative	� Page 30 

PR/Award # P016A100008	 e29 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

of the Arabic Language instructor. The costs in establishing the semester study abroad program 

in Cairo are for funding airfare and per-diem for a planning trip. 

4. Faculty Development: The costs of the faculty development seminar series, lectures and 

workshops consist of honoraria, meeting expenses, and travel as well as the time of the Project 

Director, Co-Director, and Coordinator. Some of the speakers will be recruited locally, which is 

in line with utilizing Triangle resources, and is cost effective. 

5. Outreach: Costs related to teacher education include honoraria as well as the time of the 

Project Coordinator and Co-Director; costs related to school partnership project include time of 

the Project Coordinator and Co-Director. 

Mandated costs include: external evaluators, who will come from Utah and North Carolina 

(the latter will reduce travel and lodging costs); faculty development travel to conduct research 

and attend pedagogical workshops, and travel expenses for the project Director to attend the 

annual project directors’ meeting for UISFL grants. 

IV. ADEQUACY OF RESOURCES 

The grant will be managed by Akram Khater (PI) and Anna Bigelow (co-PI). The College of 

Humanities and Social Sciences has committed to fund 27% of Khater’s annual effort in 

conjunction with the Title VIa funds providing the other 6% of his time in order to manage this 

grant. In addition, the Title VIa funds will provide Anna Bigelow with release time equivalent to 

16.5% of her time. This release time will allow Khater and Bigelow to undertake the 

management of the grant and their responsibilities will include the following: 

a.	 Akram Khater: Work with the NCSU Administration to develop and implement the Middle 

East Studies major; develop and co-direct the Center for Arabic Language and Cultural 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative	� Page 31 

PR/Award # P016A100008	 e30 
 

 

 

Studies in Cairo; administer the B.A. in Middle East Studies in collaboration with the Middle 

East Studies Committee; coordinate 2-year partnerships with 2 high schools in North 

Carolina; coordinate the logistics of events (travel, lodging, reimbursement processing, etc.); 

fund-raising for the Middle East Studies program. 

a. Anna Bigelow: Organize the Middle East Sojourns series; organize the Middle East Film 

Festival; chair a committee for selecting candidates for course development grants. 

On the other hand, Mandana Limbert will be responsible for organizing the thematic workshops 

that will be held each spring semester, with the support of a sub-committee selected from the 

larger Middle East Studies committee. Inas Messiha and David Gilmartin will be responsible for 

organizing the high school teachers workshops. The accounting for the grant will be done by 

Susan Book, the administrative assistant within the history department. 

Facilities Needed to Execute this Project. The language labs at NCSU are very well developed, 

with NCSU recently opening a state-of-the-art Language Technologies Center, which will be 

heavily used for Arabic instruction. The library is developing its core Middle East and Islamic 

Studies collection by targeting two particular areas: energy and environment in the Middle East, 

and Arabic language and literature. Augmenting our local library collection is the Triangle 

Research Library Network which electronically links the libraries of Duke University, UNC 

Chapel Hill and NCSU and that guarantees delivery of any book within 48 hours to the home 

institution of the student. In total, the D.H. Hill Library at NCSU owns more than 25,000 

monographs directly related to the Middle East, about 200 journals, and close to 100 audio-visual 

resources. Moreover, the constituent libraries of the TRLN provide our students with access to an 

additional 140,000 monographs, 300 journals and nearly 1000 audio-visual items relating to the 

Middle East. 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 32 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e31 
 

 

 

 

 

V. PLAN OF EVALUATION 

Language Evaluation. Kirk Belnap (Near Eastern Languages, Brigham Young University) has 

agreed to be the language evaluator for our program. Belnap is an Associate Professor of Arabic 

at Brigham Young University and the director of the National Middle East Language Resource 

Center, a Title VI LRC that brings together language experts from more than twenty universities. 

He is also co-P.I. with Robert Blake (U.C.-Davis) on the award-winning website Arabic without 

Walls and director of BYU's STARTALK summer Arabic high school camps. He will visit in the 

Fall of 2011 to evaluate the quality of our Arabic language instruction. He will be given full 

access to the students and the instructors for that purpose, and he will provide recommendations 

for improving the quality of instruction. 

In addition to Professor Belnap’s external review, we will institute a series of assessment 

tools within the Arabic program with the aim of ascertaining that our graduates are attaining a 

High-Intermediate to Low-Advanced score on the on the American Council on the Teaching of 

Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and Writing Proficiency Test 

(WPT). To supplement this testing we will design and implement a reading/listening test. All 

three tests will be given to our students upon their return from their semester study abroad at the 

Center for Arabic Language and Cultural Studies in Cairo, Egypt. Finally, we will require all 

graduating students to present a portfolio of their written work during the final semester at 

NCSU to be evaluated and assessed by the Arabic Language faculty. The purpose behind these 

tests is to assess the effectiveness of our program, to identify any shortcomings in our pedagogy 

and institute the necessary changes, and to provide our students with independent assessments 

that will allow to better compete for admission to graduate schools and/or the job market. 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 33 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e32 
 

 

 

 

 

 

Teacher Workshop Evaluation. Every teacher workshop will include on-site questionnaires for 

the participants. This questionnaire will not only be an assessment tool for the workshop, but a 

systematic way for improving the workshops for subsequent years, and more importantly for 

identifying the areas where high school teachers feel they need help in teaching their students 

about the Middle East. In addition, in the second year of the grant we will follow-up with the 

participants of the first year’s workshops through classroom visits and interviews to determine to 

what extent they were successful in incorporating the material from the workshops. Based on this 

we will identify the best teaching practices as they relate to the Middle East, and seek to 

incorporate them in the teacher workshops which will be held during the second year. Assessing 

the success of our partnership initiative will be carried out by tracking those juniors and seniors 

who participated in our various activities in the partner high schools. Specifically we will want to 

evaluate their rate of application to NCSU, and whether they will pursue a degree in Middle East 

Studies upon enrolling at our university. This assessment will be undertaken in collaboration 

with the College of Education at NCSU. 

Program Evaluation. Beth Baron from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York 

has agreed to act as the evaluator of the NCSU program in Middle East Studies. Baron is 

Professor of Modern Middle East studies at CUNY, and is the co-director of Middle East and 

Middle Eastern American Center (MEMEAC). She was the PI on a previous UISFL grant to 

develop M.E. Studies ct CUNY, and is currently the Director of the MA program in ME Studies 

at the Graduate Center. She has also served in numerous administrative capacities on the 

constituent committees and board of directors of the Middle East Studies Association, and is 

currently the Editor of the International Journal of Middle East Studies. Thus she is eminently 

qualified to assess our program and its progress in fulfilling the needs of our students, as well as 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 34 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e33 
 

 

 

 

the expectations outlined in this grant proposal. Professor Baron will visit the campus in the 

Spring of 2012 to assess the newly established M.E. Studies major. 

Aside from Professors Baron and Belnap, we will institute a systematic evaluation of the 

student experience by providing all students entering into the program with a questionnaire that 

asks them specifically about their own expectations with regard to the program. Upon 

completion of the Middle East Studies major an exit interview will be conducted with each 

student to assess their measure of accomplishment of their aforementioned goals. We will ask 

each of these graduating students about the positive and negative aspects of their experience in 

the program and collect that into a preliminary report by Spring of 2012. We will incorporate the 

most significant findings of this report into a re-designed program to better satisfy the 

educational needs of our students. We will also work with the College of Management to 

evaluate the program through focus groups selected from among the majors in the program. 

VI. COMMITMENT TO INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 

NCSU has always considered International Studies as a key element in the university. 

Recently, and as part of the UNC Tomorrow initiative, NCSU has renewed and expanded this 

commitment under the rubric of Global Readiness. As stated in the May 2008 NCSU’s response 

to the UNC Tomorrow report: “As one of two doctoral, research-extensive universities within the 

UNC system, NC State’s role is to discover new knowledge while infusing that knowledge into 

our undergraduate and graduate teaching programs. We will expand their opportunities to 

develop an international perspective and improve their leadership and communication skills 

through a network of out-of-classroom activities.” 

This commitment has been translated to practical applications. For instance, and as of today, 

over 35% of the faculty on campus is involved in International studies and programs. Within the 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 35 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e34 
 

 

 

 

 

College of Humanities and Social Sciences the number of faculty dealing with some aspect of 

international studies increases to 45%. The number of courses available within CHASS that are 

of international nature exceeds 230. Currently, we provide our students with over 32 study 

abroad programs from which to choose, and the University as a whole has over 100 cooperative 

programs with various foreign academic institutions. Finally, and as an indication of NCSU’s 

commitment to International Studies, an undergraduate major was developed three years ago and 

in that time it has matriculated over 360 students, and it is the fastest growing major on campus. 

Administratively, the College—under the leadership of Dean Jeffrey Braden—has targeted 

international studies as one area for intensive development within the rubric of our compact plan, 

which sets the intellectual and structural priorities for the next five years. As a signal of that 

intent, Dean Braden has wholeheartedly agreed—in these times of constrained financial 

resources, and very few faculty searches are authorized—to conduct a search for an International 

Studies Tenure-Track professor with specialization in Energy and Environment in the Middle 

East. Moreover, CHASS has established the position of the Director of International Programs, 

in addition to NCSU’s Vice Provost for International Affairs. Finally, the university is 

undertaking a feasibility study to establish a branch campus in South Korea in collaboration with 

the South Korean government. 

VII. ELEMENTS OF THE PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PROGRAM 

A. Contribution to International Studies and Foreign Languages: The proposed activities in 

program, curriculum, language, and faculty development will contribute to the implementation of 

a fully-approved Middle Eastern Studies major at NCSU by the end of the grant period. The 

Middle Eastern Studies Program Committee (chaired by Akram Khater) will implement this 

program by designing the B.A. Intent to Plan, and Request for Authorization to Establish a New 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 36 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e35 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Degree and guiding it through the approval process, by generating a momentum across NCSU, 

and by developing the necessary courses and programs. NCSU’s Middle East Studies web site 

will also be an important part of the promotion of the new courses and program, but more 

importantly, the Director of the project will design and oversee a marketing campaign targeting 

incoming freshman and high school seniors. 

Developing new courses that place the Middle East within a comparative rubric of studies 

will go a long way toward breaking the insular paradigm that has dominated the teaching of— 

and learning about—the region. Moreover, it will enable our faculty members to establish new 

intellectual links with those working on other regions like South Asia and the Mediterranean. 

Arabic and Persian language study will be central to the creation of Middle East Studies majors 

and minors. This is why the addition of new Arabic courses will give our students the ability to 

better prepare for graduate schools as well as professional employment. 

The Faculty Development component of workshops and a seminar series will contribute to 

the implementation of the Middle East Studies programs by creating working teams and common 

themes as well as providing content and guidance in curriculum development. 

B. Interdisciplinary Aspects of the Program: The major and minor in Middle Eastern Studies are 

by definition interdisciplinary. Courses will be offered in Foreign Languages, History, 

International Studies, Religious Studies and Political Science. By design, the B.A. in Middle East 

studies will require students to take courses from across these disciplines. In addition, the 

required study abroad and service learning component that will be embedded into the major, will 

assure that our students are receiving a well-rounded education. 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 37 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e36 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Faculty Development workshops and seminar series will be interdisciplinary, mixing 

anthropologists, historians, language and literature specialists, political scientists, and religious 

studies scholars. Topics have been chosen that cross disciplinary borders, and the speakers 

selected will come from a range of disciplines. 

C. New and Revised Courses: We are creating eleven new content courses and calling for the 

integration of material on the Middle East and its diaspora into general courses in response to 

student interest in the Middle East, and the need to better understand the people and the region. 

We have identified and will design new courses that shape the curriculum (core courses and 

capstone seminars) and in areas where there are gaps in the curriculum, which will also 

contribute to the cohesiveness of the major and minor in the Middle East. While the area of 

emphasis of new courses targets comparative studies of the Middle East, we will encourage new 

courses that meet programmatic needs. Faculty Development activities will contribute to the 

revision of courses, particularly in updating materials and content. 

D. Improving and Expanding Language Instruction. With funds from Title VI, we will expand 

our Arabic Language program from 3 to 4 credit hours per course, and we will add a 4th year of 

Advanced Arabic language courses. In addition we will build on the resounding success of our 

Summer Arabic Program which was initiated in Summer 2009, and we anticipate that it will 

grow to be the center for ROTC Arabic language instruction in the Southeast region. Through 

the grant we will also establish a new semester-long Study Abroad program will be launched in 

Egypt in January 2011. This program will be the hallmark of our Arabic Language program in 

that it will provide the students with an immersion program (linguistically and culturally) as well 

as include a critical service-learning component. 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 38 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e37 
 

 

 

VIII. NEED FOR AND PROSPECTIVE RESULTS OF THE PROPOSED PROGAM 

Need for Proposed Program: We have a documented need for the development of a Middle 

East Studies major, and for the expansion of our Arabic program, along with the various 

constituent initiatives we propose to undertake through the UISFL grant. The demand for Area 

Studies and International Studies is the fastest growing at NCSU. In 2005, Akram Khater (the PI 

on this UISFL grant) developed and implemented an International Studies major. The major 

began to matriculate students in 2006 and in that brief span of time it has grown to over 350 

majors. Of this cohort, over one-third of the students hold declared concentrations focusing on 

the environment, international relations and the Middle East. Added to these numbers are over 36 

students who have completed the Middle East Studies minor. Lastly, the enrollment of over 150 

students annually in the Arabic language courses provides another indication of the pressing 

demand for courses and programs focusing on the Middle East. Given these numbers, the 

constantly high demand for spots on the Egypt Study Abroad program (over 65 applicants this 

year alone), as well as the survey we conducted to ascertain the level of interest in a Middle East 

Studies major, we can safely conclude that the proposed major will enroll 15 students in its first 

year, and grow consistently thereafter to reach 80 which is the maximum number of students we 

envision enrolling under our current allocated resources. 

Prospective Results: In 2003 NCSU received a UISFL grant to develop a new program in 

Middle East Studies. During the life of the grant, and after its conclusion, we have established a 

thriving Arabic language program; established a substantive Middle East Studies minor; 

implemented a very popular study abroad program in Egypt; instituted an annual film festival (in 

its 6th annual iteration); organized two successful academic conferences which attracted national 

and international scholars; more than doubled the number of courses and faculty specializing in 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 39 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e38 
 

 

 

 

 

the Middle East; and implemented an extensive outreach program. The presence of such a 

vibrant program was a major contributing factor in the receipt of a Department of Defense grant 

to develop a summer program in Arabic language instruction for ROTC cadets, as well as the 

receipt of an ARAMCO outreach grant. 

Based on this track record, and the strong support we have from the College of Humanities 

and Social Science, we are confident that we will be able to use UISFL funds to accomplish all 

of our goals for this grant. We will establish, expand and sustain a ME Studies major, we will 

build an even more successful and extensive Arabic language program, we will increase the 

number of faculty and courses dealing with the region, we will design and implement an 

intellectually rich environment of collaboration in research and teaching, and we will better serve 

our students and their need for greater knowledge of the languages, histories, cultures, religions, 

politics and societies of the Middle East. Additionally, we will expand and deepen the purview 

of our outreach programs to better high school students for studying the Middle East at the 

university level. 

X. COMPETITION PROGRAM PRIORITY 

Competitive Preference Priority NCSU a land-grant comprehensive university which 

requires require entering students to have successfully completed at least two years of secondary 

school foreign language instruction and thus fulfills the UISFL Competitive Preference Priority 

for FY 2010. 

Invitational Priority 2 Funding from the UISFL grant will establish the Middle East Studies 

major which includes the enhancement and expansion of our Arabic language program. 

North Carolina State University ~ Project Narrative Page 40 

PR/Award # P016A100008 e39