How GU-Q gives the next generation a head start
The GU-Q community celebrates the conclusion of the three-week Georgetown Pre-College Summer Program.
At 4:25 pm on a Thursday in July, Ruth Kidane (GU-Q ’29) stepped to the podium in the GU-Q atrium and began calling high school students to the stage.
One by one, they made the short walk forward—a distance that, beneath the gaze of proud families and a sea of raised phones, seemed considerably longer.
The ceremony marked the end of the Georgetown Pre-College Summer Program, known as GPS.
Since 2009, GPS has opened the university’s doors to more than 700 high school students from across Qatar and around the world, more than eight in 10 of them Qatari. It forms part of GU-Q’s wider pre-college programming, which has provided nearly 20,000 participants over the years with academic preparation and exposure to university-level learning through programs such as Model United Nations and Georgetown Global Challengers.
This year, 76 students took courses in critical reading and writing, international relations, global politics, world geography, and artificial intelligence, with optional preparation for the SAT exam.
“It is a special curriculum designed to create a unique, challenging, and enriching educational experience,” said Zain Assaf (GU-Q ’23), the Student Development Officer who oversees the program.
For high schooler Abdullah Azhar, GPS offered an early introduction to the demands of the next stage of his education, something he had not had before beginning his A-levels. “Now I know that when I go to university next year, I won’t have that same issue again,” he said.
Jack the Bulldog gives GPS participants, including Abdullah Azhar, a proper Georgetown welcome.
Throughout the three weeks, current GU-Q students served as peer tutors, supporting classes and facilitating activities. They still remembered how uncertain high school could feel, with its constant comparisons, fears of falling behind, and nagging sense that everyone else understood something you did not. But they were also far enough beyond those experiences to offer reassurance, and to show participants what might come next.
Alex Bonjoc (GU-Q ’27) was one inspiring example. After previously serving as a GPS peer tutor, she returned this year to help organize the program and emcee its closing ceremony.
The instructors offered an even longer view. The program’s five instructors were all GU-Q alumni. Among them was GU-Q staff member Adeen Malik (GU-Q ’23), who served as program director this year.
That continuity was not lost on Acting Dean Clyde Wilcox. “Each generation helps prepare the one that follows,” he said at the closing ceremony. “That is one of the program’s greatest strengths.”
Acting Dean Clyde Wilcox addresses students and families at the closing ceremony.
For some participants, like Obada Khaled Diab (GU-Q ’19), GPS becomes a path to GU-Q. After joining GPS in 2013, he enrolled at GU-Q, graduated with honors, and went on to conduct research that contributed to a United Nations report on education in Syria.
Obada’s trajectory reflects a broader pattern: among Qatari and local students who enrolled at GU-Q in 2025, one in two had previously participated in one of the university’s pre-college programs.
Others will follow different paths. They may attend universities elsewhere in Qatar or abroad, pursue different fields, and perhaps never again share a room with the people who sat beside them that summer.
The program is designed for them, too.
On that Thursday afternoon, all those possible futures were gathered in the atrium, waiting to be called forward.
Ruth first invited the students who had completed the program with distinction to the stage. The remaining participants followed in groups as peer tutors read their names and instructors presented their certificates.
From the audience, it was difficult to tell who had arrived at GU-Q three weeks earlier, who had studied there for years, and who had already graduated and returned.
For three weeks, they were Georgetown students.
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