James Piecowye

James David Dean Piecowye (born 1965) is an Associate Professor at the College of Communication and Media Sciences at the Dubai campus of Zayed University. He is the also the host of popular radio talk show Nightline on Dubai Eye radio channel. He, along with Giorgio Ungania hosted the first TEDxDubai conference on Saturday, October 10, 2009.
Personal life
Piecowye was born in North Bay, Ontario, Canada.
Piecowye grew up in Ajax, Ontario, Canada and attended Ajax High School. In 1983-84, Piecowye was selected as a Rotary Exchange student and went to South Africa where he lived in a suburb of Johannesburg called Bedfordview.
Piecowye obtained a BA honours from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, an MA in political science, public policy and administration, from Concordia University in Montreal and after a stint with a PhD in political economy at the University of Ottawa, ended up writing his doctoral dissertation under the direction of Dr. Marc Raboy, at the University of Montreal.
After working at Vanier College in Montreal, Quebec, Canada as a lecturer and as a visiting assistant professor at SUNY Plattsburgh, Piecowye and family moved to Dubai, where he took up the position of Associate Professor in the College of Communication and Media Sciences, a part of Zayed University.
A little-known fact about Piecowye is that he was awarded The Gold Cross, one of the highest honours in the Canadian Scouting movement, and later the Medal of Bravery from then Governor General Jules Leger for his heroic efforts during a boating accident in 1975, when he was just nine years old.
Professional life
Piecowye started his academic career at Vanier College in Montreal teaching in the Humanities Department and under the trust and guidance of Dr. Jin Kim at SUNY Plattsburgh realized he had a talent for teaching a variety of communication related courses.
Today Piecowye is an associate professor at Zayed University’s Dubai Campus, where he has been a member of the Communication and Media Sciences College for 10 years.
Piecowye is very active at Zayed University constantly trying to link theory and practice together and has become a firm advocate of the use of WEB 2.0 technology in the classroom and beyond.
According to Piecowye, he believes that unless you can do what you teach you do not have any credibility. Taking this mantra to heart, Piecowye has been working at the Arabian Radio Network’s DubaiEye News, Talk and Sports radio station as a talk show host for a program called that examines current events in the UAE.
TEDxDubai
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.
Piecowye, along with Giorgio Ungania, was the co-curator of TEDxDubai 2009. The Conference was attended by 1,000 delegates and was the first and largest in the Middle East.
Zayed University
Piecowye has been a part of the Zayed University community for 10 years where he has worked on projects such as Zayed Media Lab and ZU60 to help bring his theoretical teaching to life in a real practical manner.
Arabian Radio Nework
Piecowye hosts the popular program called Nightline on DubaiEye FM where he, along with local residents discusses various spheres of life in Dubai.
Blogging on re-imagining education
Piecowye firmly believes that the global education mindset is out of sync with reality and has made it his mission to bring a university education to anyone who wants it through a combination of online and interactive experiences. There is no reason a high school graduate in Kenya should not be able to get an education as valuable as that from Harvard without leaving the village! So why not start the project here in the UAE?

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