Welcome to the website of NYU Abu Dhabi. NYU Abu Dhabi is a new initiative to develop a comprehensive liberal arts campus in a major gateway city to the Middle East.
This site describes the plans for NYU Abu Dhabi, including its projected scale, programs, and relationship to NYU's main campus in New York. It offers information about the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and about the academic programs that will be launched there in advance of the opening of our campus. We encourage you to check back often. NYU Abu Dhabi is under active development and new information will be posted regularly.
NYU Abu Dhabi will be a full-scale liberal arts college, with select graduate programs driven by advanced research. The first class of students will be enrolled in the fall of 2010. Over time, the campus will reach a size of over 2000 students, selected according to the same high standards governing admission to NYU. Faculty will be appointed according to NYU credentials of scholarly, creative, and pedagogic accomplishment. The faculty will include professors based in the Washington Square campus as well as faculty permanently residing in Abu Dhabi.
The college and graduate programs will offer a wide range of NYU degrees in the humanities, arts, sciences, and social sciences, developed under the complete and determining academic oversight of NYU, and of the same quality as NYU programs in New York. Like NYU in Washington Square, the NYU Abu Dhabi campus will be governed by full academic freedom.
Study abroad is a hallmark of NYU education, and so it will be at NYU Abu Dhabi. Students will be encouraged to spend at least a semester in one of NYU's other sites, including the Washington Square Campus, and NYU students based in New York will be welcome to spend a semester in Abu Dhabi. NYU's renowned professional enhancements of its core academic programs will be developed at NYU Abu Dhabi as well.
The agreement to build NYU Abu Dhabi is the happy outcome of an alignment of NYU's goals for global education with the forward-looking vision of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. The Emirate's leadership is deeply committed to creating a world-class research university driven by NYU, and to funding the entire endeavor, including the design, construction, and operation of an entirely new campus. This historic partnership and the projected role of NYU Abu Dhabi within NYU's global network are described in NYU Abu Dhabi and the University as Global Network.