NYU - POLY Abroad: Origins of Abu Dhabi and Shanghai campuses
The readoption of NYU’s engineering school came under the University’s 2002 inaugurated president John Sexton. President Sexton’s tenure brought about the “New World” NYU, and he helped forward a lot of the University’s biggest projects to date. Finally, out of the woodwork of financial struggles the University recognized several concerns and goals for the University such as “ the need to expand, strengthen, and energize the arts and sciences, the academic core of the university” (6). Sexton’s most notorious project was the creation of the “Global Network University”; a focus on growing the international presence of NYU. In the beginning there was a “focus on expanding outside of Europe to locations such as Accra and Buenos Aires”
In November of 2007 the NYU Abu Dhabi Project was first announced and it was coined “the first elite, comprehensive liberal arts, sciences, and engineering university in Abu Dhabi to be operated by a leading American research university” [9]. Alfred H. Bloom, the previous president of Swarthmore College was appointed at the helm as the Vice Chancellor of the new University campus. With Swarthmore being one of the leading American campuses and colleges that come to mind when thinking of a leading liberal Art’s College, the appointment for the leader of the new campus was nothing less than ideal. The new Abu Dhabi campus would be comprised of a world center for advanced research, as a strictly selective liberal arts college, and graduate programs that are “all fully integrated with each other and connected to NYU in New York”; creating a unique global network university. The first cohort of students started at the new university in fall of 2010 and welcomed 148 students to the inaugural class.
The second degree granting campus that was added to NYU's Global Network University was NYU Shanghai. The specific approach of NYU Shanghai compared to NYU Abu Dhabi is a “on direct and critical engagement with the great ideas of the past and the present, on the development of the essential skills of analysis and communication, and on in-depth knowledge of one or more disciplines”(10) It was founded in 2012 also under President Sexton’s big expansion and partnered with China’s East China Normal University and helped make NYU “ the first American university to receive independent registration status from China's Ministry of Education” [8]. The vice chancellor of the campus was the previous president of Cornell University and previous dean of the University of Michigan.
The partnership between East China Normal allowed for students to take classes on their campus until the actual nyu campus was built in the pudong district. Although expansion into different countries that the global network tries to adapt have a lot of pros, there are still forign laws that dictate certain aspects of the university life in these countries. This can be more prominently seen in an expansion to a country like China where the Chinese communist party governs. There is a mandatory civic education course introduced in 2018 on orders of the party for Chinese national students [10]. Additions like these have been deemed a walk away from NYU’s academic freedom but unfortunately are a burden and potentially continual burdens for a project such as the Global network. The unique partnership allows half of its student base to be nationals of china and the other half goes to international students from anywhere.
The push for globally integrating NYU went beyond just creating these campuses but also facilitating its local student base to take advantage. NYU has done this by creating educational paths for their students that involve international requirements. For example the Global Liberal Studies Program merged the current liberal studies curriculum at the College of Arts and Science with an international abroad component. The Stern School of Business also does this with their Business and Political Economy Program that combines course work with three of NYU’s global network schools, Shanghai, London, and the home campus. Stern also has a year-long Masters of Science program that partners with NYU Shanghai for college graduates in Data Analytics and business computing. In 2012, NYU also added the Global Institute of Public health, available for undergraduate, graduate, and phD programs, and takes all of NYU’s global network partnerships and integrates them into a global health degree.
The global network project also went beyond just opening campus’s outside of the US but also opening networks across state lines. In 2012 along in addition to other new campuses, NYU also opened up a Washington D.C. location with the hope of opening up opportunities for students and faculty “who each year travel to Washington to pursue internships or study opportunities, more than an acknowledgement of widespread faculty research interests, more, even, than a linking America’s capital of government with its capital of commerce” [11]. The focus of the campus falls in line with the location that it is in; with the curriculum entailing “government, politics, public administration, and journalism, among other fields” [11].
Overall The original founders of NYU would not be able to imagine how vast their school had become. NYU has consistently looked beyond the numbers and has taken a step into the future and created the most globally connected university in the world. The world is accelerating into a future that is more internationally connected and the University has provided that and and even more seamless access to the students and faculty it serves.