As seen in the Washington Square News.
PARIS – A record number of students are participating in NYU’s study abroad program in Paris this fall, study abroad officials here said.
“It’s only in expanding that we can evolve,” student-life assistant at NYU in Paris Carolyn Gonglefski said. “It’s great for the program – there’s no doubt it’s brilliant for the future of the program.”
More than 100 undergraduate students and 16 graduate students, are enrolled at the Paris program site this fall. The program will continue to expand, with 126 undergraduates signed up for the spring semester, said Beth Epstein, assistant director for academic affairs.
“I’m excited as things continue to grow,” Epstein said. “I’m pleased because it indicates that we’re doing a good job.”
Founded in 1969, NYU in Paris is the university’s second-oldest study abroad site. Only the Madrid location is older. The program offers courses for both French-speaking and non-French-speaking students at its own campus, in Paris’s 16th arrondissement, and also arranges for exchange classes through an agreement with the University of Paris system.
As student enrollment increases, site administrators are improving their cultural offerings to continue their mission to immerse students in the French experience, Epstein said. The program has added more educational conferences to its schedule, including a recent homage to French film icon Jean Rouch at Le Musee de l’Homme.
“In the past year we’ve been expanding our cultural program offerings,” Epstein said. “We really try to make the center an exciting place for intellectual exchange.”
Administrators are also adding more classes to keep up with demand at the site. Classes are currently offered in literature, history, political science, anthropology, sociology, philosophy and art history. The larger the enrollment, the greater the ability the program has to offer a broad range of classes, Epstein said.
On the downside, the increased popularity has staff and students grappling with maintaining the quality of the Paris experience.
“We want to preserve the capability of having a connection to Parisian culture,” Caroline Montel-Glenisson said. “We don’t want to become an American island. We don’t want to become NYU’s Greenwich Village campus – it is not our philosophy.”
CAS sophomore Kara Lorion said that despite the increased class size this year, the site does not seem overly crowded.
“I think that while the class size is large for NYU in France, it is small compared to NYU in New York,” she said. “[If the program grows] we may not have enough interaction with French people because there might be too many American students around.”
The availability of real estate is also becoming an issue. NYU in Paris currently occupies a single building, and finding housing for students is difficult in a tight Parisian market, housing coordinator Sarah Feeley said.
This semester, the university found housing for 85 of 101 undergraduates and two of 16 graduate students. Feeley said she is getting ready for next semester’s even larger class by “seeking out more landlords and networking with the current landlord base.”
Despite some of the NYU in Paris site’s growing pains, the staff and students said they are happy that the program is getting more recognition and participation.
“It’s always good to be well-known and [to] have people come,” Montel-Glenisson said. “We hope to have all those people with us.”