Carnegie Mellon University kicks off Distinguished Lecture Series

"The philosophy behind the Distinguished Lecture Series is to bring in futurists: people from all over the world who have different messages and different areas of expertise. This helps our students see where their education can be plugged in once they graduate," says Gloria Khoury, assistant dean for student affairs at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.

"Another great thing about this series is that we have an opportunity to show that Carnegie Mellon has so much more to offer than business administration and computer science. The heart of the Carnegie Mellon education is cross-disciplinary collaboration and exposure to all sorts of topics and people, and this series is an ideal vehicle to carry that out."

Freed's visit to Carnegie Mellon Qatar included a lecture on her book Artists and Their Museums on the Riviera and a screening of her award-winning documentary film A Model for Matisse: The Story of the Vence Chapel, a film that presents the relatively unknown and tender relationship that existed between artist Henri Matisse and the woman he considered "the true initiator" of the revolutionary chapel he described as the masterpiece of his life's work -The Chapel of the Rosary.

Freed also hosted a lunchtime lecture entitled Understanding Second Language Fluency and Second Language Learning in A Study Abroad Context for teachers of foreign languages. Her academic research addresses the learning of second languages, a topic on which she writes and lectures internationally. She has written more than 60 articles, books and reviews on this topic.

The Distinguished Lecture Series hopes to bring three or four speakers to Doha per year.