The Ohio State University’s Middle East Studies Center (MESC) has taken great strides to promote cross-cultural interaction, support scholarly exchange with other academic institutions, and foster the intellectual growth of our students pursuing Middle East studies. Everyday, through these activities, we have increased understanding of the everyday lives of Middle Eastern people. We provide weekly opportunities to learn about such topics such as the popular uprisings in Northern Africa and East Asia, updates on Afghanistan, seminars on jihadi extremist groups, and others. The Center reached 1183 through its outreach program during Academic Year 2016. 198 of these participants were educators, and 474 were students of all ages (157 of those were OSU students). Over 35,000 people have participated in our programs over the past 10 years (2006-2016). We have prepared over 1000 military officers since 2010 to be culturally effective upon deployment. Online engagement has increased 10-fold over the past five years, with webinars and active blog and social media engagement.
These numbers demonstrate that the Center, along with an active community of scholars of the Middle East, is actively making knowledge of the Middle East accessible to:
· P-12 teachers and their students
· the news media
· the military