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ABU DHABI — When new freshman arrive on campus in Abu Dhabi this fall, they'll see a very different world than students in New York. But one thing won't be so different: tackling the core curriculum.
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For President John Sexton, creating NYUAD came with the opportunity to craft a new curriculum from the ground up.
"We can bring people here from New York and unleash them here to create an ideal world," he told WSN in an interview in Abu Dhabi last weekend.
Faculty committees in New York, with both NYU and NYUAD faculty, began preparing the curriculum in 2007. It has a stronger focus on its core curriculum than most programs in New York do.
In fact, the eight courses in the core curriculum closely resemble the Liberal Studies Program in terms of structure. The curriculum is divided into four categories and NYUAD requires that students take two classes in each.
The core can be completed anytime before graduation, but students must complete five out of the eight courses, taking at least one in each category, during their freshman year. Students will also be required to take three multidisciplinary courses focusing on topics that range from the environment to interactive media and technology.
"I see this as the most important initiative in higher education," NYUAD Vice Chancellor Alfred Bloom said. Addressing students during a February candidates weekend, he emphasized the multidisciplinary nature of the NYUAD curriculum.
"[These will be] courses that put together biology, chemistry, physics and computer engineering," Bloom said.
Through the core curriculum and electives, students will gain a broad background in the liberal arts, Bloom said, and only after that will they choose to concentrate in one of the school's 18 majors. During their fourth year, students will complete a Capstone project, working one-on-one with a faculty member and in a year-long seminar class.
Classes will be intimate. Promotional materials boast that core classes will have no more than 15 students. But in the first year, these classes will likely be even smaller.
The university hired 40 professors to teach the 100 to 150 students of this fall's entering class. The teacher-student ratio will be approximately 1:3 during the first year. It is expected that over time the ratio will grow to 1:8. The Washington Square campus has a faculty to student ratio of 1:11.
While NYUAD will offer several pre-professional tracks, including journalism and business, the school will not focus on a strictly professional education. At the most recent candidates weekend, one prospective student asked Bloom about the limited number of courses in finance offered. Bloom said those courses are there for students to get a sense of the field, not to receive a comprehensive education in business.
Students come to NYUAD "to understand the complexities of the world" and then go to business school, he said.
