Assistant professor Sahar Khamis is sponsoring a student exchange program that uses the Internet to connect UM undergraduates with students in the Middle East twice a week. Khamis has integrated the program into the curriculum of her Arab Media course and her efforts were recently chronicled in Maryland International, a newsletter of UM's Office of International Programs. The story is on page six of the publication—click here for a .pdf version of the magazine.

Khamis has also accepted an invitation to join the advisory board of Islamopedia, a collection of rulings and religious opinions addressing the most debated topics of Islamic tradition today: gender, sexuality, non-Muslims, violence, secularism. In the near future, Islamopedia will present scholarly analysis of and commentary on these rulings and opinions. The Web site is sponsored by Harvard University's Islam in the West program.