Canada’s University of Waterloo has agreed to open a campus in the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, where the university hopes to accept 100 to 150 engineering students by this fall, the Kitchener-Waterloo Record reports.

Waterloo is the first major Canadian university to plan a campus in the United Arab Emirates, following moves there by Michigan State University, New York University, the Sorbonne, and other leading international institutions.

The university will offer programs in chemical and civil engineering initially, followed by financial analysis and risk management, and information-technology management, according to Waterloo’s Web site. Students will spend their first two years in Dubai and complete their last two years of instruction at the university’s main campus, in Ontario.

Waterloo will share classrooms, libraries, laboratories, and other facilities with its local partner in Dubai, the Higher Colleges of Technology.

As with many Western universities that have decided to open ventures in Gulf countries like the United Arab Emirates, some faculty members at Waterloo have voiced reservations about operating in a country with a dismal human-rights record, the Record reports.

Although Waterloo is the first Canadian university to plan a campus in the Emirates, the University of Calgary and the College of the North Atlantic, a Newfoundland-based community college, have been operating in neighboring Qatar for several years. —Andrew Mills