Texas colleges are busy building campuses and relationships in the Middle East

May 19, 2008
By JEANNIE KEVER
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Lots of college students spend a semester in Paris or Barcelona. If you're enrolled at the University of Houston, you might consider Damascus.

American universities are extending their global reach, and the Middle East is the new frontier.
Texas A&M University has an engineering school in Qatar. And this spring, A&M and the University of Texas at Austin agreed to multimillion dollar contracts to help create a new university in Saudi Arabia.

"From almost every perspective, the Middle East is an important region, whether it's energy, religion, conflict, culture or art," said David Leebron, president of Rice University. Leebron traveled to Israel last year to explore relationships between Rice and schools there. the rest