NYU's rapidly expanding global presence may soon grow even bigger with the addition of two more study abroad sites in Argentina and Israel, university officials said.
The sites would be the university's first in both South America and the Middle East, respectively.
The university has study abroad sites in eight cities - not counting summer program sites - and currently leads in the U.S. in sending the most students abroad every year, according to the International Institute of Education. Yaw Nyarko, vice provost for globalization and multicultural affairs, said creating each site takes time and effort, but that the university is moving along in discussions for its next two possible campuses.
"We are in advanced stages of our exploratory planning," Nyarko said in an e-mail. "We have started conversations with small faculty groups at NYU, which is where our plans always begin. Our local meetings in each case have been exceptionally productive."
The first step in the process is to discuss, with small faculty groups in the university, the feasibility of having sites at each location, Nyarko said in an e-mail.
After these initial discussions, Nyarko makes follow-up trips with university staff to the proposed sites.
Nyarko said he made a follow-up trip to Israel this past January and is planning to make another one to Argentina.
"At this stage we envision the site will be a hybrid mode, where students take classes from an NYU site as well as directly enrolling in local universities," Nyrarko said.
Cassie O'Hara, a GSP freshman, said she thinks it's great that NYU is expanding its study abroad sites across the globe.
"I think it's a good idea to create a site in Israel because of the large Jewish population at NYU," O'Hara said. "Having so many study abroad sites is also advantageous for students because many students wouldn't have the opportunity to travel for short amounts of time otherwise."
Along with feasibility issues, the university must address a large number of legal and administrative concerns with the two countries' state and federal governments, before it can establish a study abroad site in either.
"We are hopeful that we will be able to work out those details because of the exceptionally strong interest on both ends," Nyarko said. "But we are still in the exploratory stage, which is advanced enough to say it is likely we will open a study abroad site in these two countries, although not certain."
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