Empire State College was asked to start an international distance learning program in Nicosia, Cyprus, in 1997. The program moved to Beirut, Lebanon, in 2004. It currently serves 220 students, and had 117 graduates in 2006. Two CDL area coordinators, Betty Lawrence and JianHao Chen, were part of a group of 13 college faculty and administrators who were in Lebanon when the 2006 war started. The following gives you a sense of their experience of leaving.

Q: When were you first aware of the situation?

BL: We first heard on Wednesday evening [July 12]; we had heard about the two captured soldiers. Two members of our group were scheduled to fly out on Thursday, noon, which was the day the Beirut airport was bombed.



Q: What was your initial reaction?

BL: Initially, on Wednesday, we weren’t too scared, because we knew we were in the safest part of Lebanon. Our educational partners [American University of Technology/AUT, and American University of Science and Technology/AUST] had, by design, located us in Kaslik, about sixteen miles north of Beirut. And when we’re there, the whole team is busy working, and our attention is focused on our students. Things changed a bit on Thursday, when we learned the airport had been bombed.

Q: What happened then?

JC: We had thirteen different people with thirteen different perceptions of the situation. We ended up moving to the other side of our hotel as other guests left, because the side we were on had a power plant about a mile away. We were mostly concerned that the borders would close, as we started hearing rumors that people who had gone to Syria couldn't get through and had to return. We started talking about leaving, about the pros and cons of using different routes. Eleven of us decided to leave, and two decided to stay and wait for U.S. government evacuation.



Q: What route did you end up taking?

BL: We originally planned to go to Syria and fly out of Damascus. The bus that was arranged for us had taken others on that road. Our plans changed, though, when we heard that the bus driver couldn’t make it back to Beirut, because the one main road between Beirut and Damascus was so clogged with traffic going toward Damascus—drivers took over both sides of the highway. We planned on going north to Aleppo [the second largest city in Syria] and flying home from there. Our plans changed again in Aleppo. Even though we had e-mail flight confirmations, only tickets issued by a travel agent are recognized as valid in Syria. We ended up taking taxis into Adana, Turkey, catching a plane that stopped in Ankara on its way to Istanbul, and eventually flying home from Istanbul.



Q: This sounds like a harrowing experience. How long did it take?

JC: We ended up leaving our hotel at about 7 p.m. on Friday night [July 14], and rode for the whole night, getting into Syria at around 1-2 a.m. We left Aleppo around 8:30 Saturday morning. As we approached the Syrian border, there was just a long line of cars, and a longer line of people on foot, carrying luggage, wheeling wheelbarrows. We couldn’t even see the customs office. We felt very lucky at that point to have transportation and help.

BL: We wouldn’t have made it without help from our good friends, Marcel Hinain of AUT and one of our 2002 graduates, Nicolas Biraq, who arranged for transportation, interpreted for us, smoothed our way, helped with our passports, and did everything to ensure our safe leaving. After Marcel left us in Aleppo, it took him two days to return home to Beirut.

JC: On Friday, when we were waiting for arrangements, Marcel even took some of us out walking, invited us to his mother’s house, gave us coffee, and in all ways offered help and support. That was a moving experience. Not only were we welcomed, but we also experienced first-hand life going on in an environment in which, all around, were buildings that had been bombed in the past.


Q: When you did leave, what was your trip like?

BL: Hot. We left in the evening, because we knew that if we were in border lines for hours in a non-air-conditioned situation and 90-100 degree full sun, we’d have a bus full of heat exhaustion. We made sure to take bottled water, snacks, toilet paper, hand wipes. There were no or a very few crude bathroom facilities on the route. We also decided to take extra passport photos before we left, in case we needed them.

JC: A funny image is eight of us crowding into a car to go find a place to get the photos taken.

BL: As we traveled, a lot of people tried, but couldn’t sleep.

JC: I wanted to look out and see what was happening.

BL: I was able to sleep a bit, finally, from exhaustion.

JC: You missed a monkey in a cage at a rest stop in Aleppo….There was no place with shade to sit once we were out of the bus. We all stuck together, though, as a group, to support one another.

BL: The experience brought us through both Christian and Muslim areas, on roads that we learned had later been bombed, and in some places that were not that welcoming.


Q: Were you able to keep in touch with your families at home?

BL: The only working phone at one point of the trip was the taxi driver’s phone. Thank goodness for the internet and for text messaging on cell phones! We linked to the internet at every possible point, and we text-messaged quite a bit to let others know we were safe.

JC: I purposefully didn’t contact my wife, because I knew she’d worry. I also knew she’d be busy with her work and with our young daughter, so she didn’t have much time to watch the news on television. But my parents in China called her asking how I was doing….

JC: One thing we learned from this experience was to have cell phones with which we could at least text message around the world.



Q: What else do you bring away with you, from this experience?

BL: In addition to wanting to go back to Aleppo—a place full of history—in some calmer time, I learned that having a U.S. passport helped smooth the way. More importantly, I learned again about true commitment. Even after the airport had been bombed, our students showed up for their residency classes, presented their final projects, and kept on with their work. Our students and their whole families are committed to their getting degrees.

BL: It’s difficult for students to pursue higher education in Lebanon; it’s hard to get a visa to study elsewhere, and to study at a Lebanese university, students have to pass the equivalent of an International Baccalauerate to gain admission. Programs like Empire State College’s Lebanon Residency Program are the only alternative for higher education for many students.

JC: And I learned that programs like this are important educational opportunities for U.S. faculty, to get a better understanding of a different culture and different educational approaches, and for students to get to know Americans.

Q: So what happened to the other two faculty who decided to wait for U.S. Government evacuation?

BL: We kept in good communication. While they waited (9 days more), the population of the hotel kept shifting, as tourists left, families from southern Lebanon moved in on their way to the safer mountains in the north, and then more Americans moved in as the U.S. Embassy sent them there to await evacuation. They reported that our students kept calling them and offering help. Finally, they ended up on a ship to Cyprus, and from there flew home.