Allen Hibbard was explaining how Middle Tennessee State University developed one of its newest international endeavors when suddenly his talking stopped and his arms raised.
He’d recalled an important aside.
Before doors to the Middle East Center would swing open, someone at MTSU was going to have to decide what to put on the plaque above those doors.
“What to call it?” Hibbard resumed with a chuckle, reminding himself of yet another question, one many American college students traditionally struggle to answer.
“What is the Middle East?”
When classes begin today at MTSU, the Middle East Center will be known as just that. And as the name suggests, it will offer language classes in Arabic and Hebrew and include an 18-hour minor “Introduction to Middle East Studies.”
Hibbard and university administrators expect the center to go a long way toward answering the question “What is the Middle East?”
“Obviously, the timing is interesting because of the events making news,” said Hibbard, an English professor and director of the Middle East Center. “Our hope is that this becomes much bigger, and eventually we develop Middle East studies into a major.”
Talk of establishing a Middle East Center at MTSU began a few years ago when university President Sidney McPhee asked Ron Messier, then a professor of Middle East history at MTSU, to research existing programs in Middle East studies.
“I think his exact words were, ‘Shouldn’t MTSU have a Middle East program?’ ” recalled Messier, now teaching at Vanderbilt University. “I did some traveling and some looking around, and then I submitted a report on what I thought MTSU should do.”
Messier retired from MTSU in the spring of 2005 and “Allen (Hibbard) picked up the ball,” Messier said. “It’s a very exciting time for MTSU to be starting this. There’s a growing demand at the college level for courses on the Middle East, especially language courses.”
According to the Modern Language Association, enrollment in Arabic courses jumped 92 percent between 1998 and 2002. At the time, only 10 percent of U.S. colleges offered Arabic courses. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, and emerging battles in the Middle East have pushed the percentages much higher, said Amy Newhall, executive director of the Middle East Studies Association.
“Before Sept. 11, Arabic was one of the lesser-taught classes in U.S. colleges,” said Newhall, an assistant professor in Near Eastern studies at the University of Arizona. “Since that event, we’ve seen a 100 percent, and in some cases a 400 percent, increase in such college classes being offered.”
MTSU Executive Vice President and Provost Kaylene Gebert said adding the minor and the center was part of a plan to offer students a chance to “internationalize” their studies.
“It is linked to our academic master plan,” Gebert said. “We also expect our faculty, students and the community to take advantage of the chance to learn about the Middle East cultures.”
A steering committee formed by MTSU surveyed universities such as Georgetown University and Georgia State University, which have similar programs in place. The committee surveyed MTSU faculty and found there were about 20 faculty members with either graduate training or professional experience in Middle East studies.
“From there, with a two-year federal grant of $71,000 per year from the U.S. Department of Education and matching funds from the university, we started building on the faculty that we already had,” Hibbard said.
The MTSU history department hired Sean Foley, a recent Ph.D. from Georgetown University with considerable expertise in modern Middle East history. He will be teaching “Topics in Modern Middle East History: Arab/Israeli Conflict” this semester.
Muhammad Masud, a Fulbright language teaching assistant from Jordan, will be teaching Arabic, and Sonja Hedgepeth, from MTSU’s department of foreign languages and literature, will be teaching Hebrew.
Putting instructors in the classroom isn’t easy for many universities that offer Middle East courses. Zachary Lockman, chairman of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at New York University, said he had frantically been trying to fill two Arabic teaching spots in his department.
He said that the downside to the growing number of universities adding to their Middle East programs is that the pool of instructors to teach such courses is quickly drying up. Add to that new and tougher restrictions on visas and it’s easy to see how difficult building a Middle East program can be.
“Middle Tennessee State is fortunate,” said Lockman, who’s the incoming president of MESA. “People who can teach Arabic can work anywhere they want. Most go to the federal government. It’s kind of the hurdle that’s placed in the path for many schools wanting to offer more Middle East classes. It takes work to get these programs off the ground. A lot of work.”
Hibbard, who also gives credit for helping develop the center to the likes of Richard McGregor at Vanderbilt and others, knows all about the work.
He has spent recent weeks scrambling to make sure everything and everybody is in place for the new semester. Among his tasks: making trips to the airport to pick up new instructors, including Masud, who flew in from Jordan. Masud had never been in the U.S.
Hibbard has helped some of the new staff find housing and taken them to Wal-Mart in search of personal items and supplies. He’s helped lead them through orientation sessions at the university and prepared them for their first day of teaching in America.
After a couple of weeks as airport shuttler, apartment finder, Middle Tennessee ambassador and welcome wagon, Hibbard is finally prepared for the new semester and to swing open the doors to the aptly named Middle East Center.
