In Arabic it means to gather or come together. With a brand overhaul, that is exactly what the recently renamed Linajma team plans to do. After a complete renovation in its brand name and image, Linajma — formerly known as Miniverse — offers a new collection of mini courses taught by faculty, staff and students. The team hopes this identity remodeling is enough to garner the attention and participation of the NYUAD student body.

Alex Heald, a writing GAF at NYUAD, oversees the program as one of its coordinators. He realized early on that the original name was not representative of the program’s initiative. Despite the name change, the purpose of the program remains the same.

“We felt like it was a great program, but it had a name that didn’t mean much,” Heald explained. “We haven’t radically altered the structure of the program.”

Although, improvements have been made to get the word out about Linajma, including a Facebook page to market the courses and an organized course brochure with detailed descriptions of what is available.

The Linajma team has big plans for bridging the university community within Abu Dhabi by inviting other university students to join the classes.

“We would emphasize the ones that are internal [within the NYUAD campus], so that they could get an idea of what we have to offer,” Heald said.

But, before they go ahead with plans to expand, Linajma needs to establish its name within the NYUAD community. Enrollment rates have increased since the brand change.

“We had 30 students sign up for art courses last semester,” Heald said. “And we have over 80 sign ups this semester.”

Sophomore Mohit Mandal signed up for the Chez Chef course.

“I wanted to get more cooking experience,” Mandal said. “I can barely boil an egg without causing a fire. I love food and I love meeting new people, so enrolling for the course was a real no-brainer.”

Despite the recent heightened awareness of the Linajma program, there are still some hurtles to overcome.

“One of my biggest frustrations is that we had a lot of amazing student-taught courses that, due to time constraints or lack of interest, [didn’t] have enough students to make it happen,” Heald said.

Freshman Jules Bello experienced problems with low-enrollment for her a cappella Linajma course. Bello only received two sign-ups for the class, which required a larger group for the full experience of learning to harmonize as singers.

Bello was hoping to spark interest in an a cappella SIG through the course.

“We really just wanted to start introducing people to a cappella in a non-competitive and stress-free way, without auditions and performances and whatnot,” Bello said. “To lay ground for what could be a formal a cappella SIG. But, there’s still hope.”

Overall, Linajma cut three of its 15 offered courses for the spring one session, due to low enrollment rates.

With a humorous title for his course, “Drawing: Getting Past the Poopy Stage,” junior Brett Bolton had better luck in gathering a sufficient number of students.

“Most of the students are actually interested in learning to draw,” Bolton said. “Like everything else with our student body, they are progressing incredibly fast.”