The Center is very active in strengthening community college faculty expertise on the Middle East organizing workshops and institutes to improve Arabic language instruction and increase general knowledge about the Middle East.
The Center is a founding member in a partnership with the Seattle non-profit OneWorld Now!, which for over a decade has offered Arabic language and global leadership training to minority and disadvantaged high school students in the Seattle public schools.
To strengthen K-12 teacher understanding of the Middle East, the Center conducts annual intensive summer institutes focused on important issues in the Middle East. Recent institutes have been explored the topics of: Iraq, U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East, modern Iran, and the history of Christians in the Middle East.
At the state and federal level, the Center offers briefings to educate our Congressional delegation and policy makers on issues vital to the trade and national security in the region.
The Center is active in securing outside grants, which have included a project funded by the United States Institute of Peace that brought front-line caregivers from Palestine and Israel together to work on strategies to confront Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder caused by violent conflict; and a project funded by the U.S. Department of State to create a Middle East informational portal to increase news available from the Arab world.
