Supporting Your Students

Mentoring NYU Abu Dhabi students for academic success involves guiding them in thoughtful academic planning, decision making, and goal setting. A powerful place to start is by asking your students: “What is your learning strategy for thriving in this course?” This will prompt students to actually identify their tools for success and where the support is available to do meet their goals.

3 Ways to Support Students in Your Class

Holding Effective Office Hours

Close student-faculty interaction is a key characteristic of NYU Abu Dhabi, office hours are excellent opportunities for student mentorship, and can enhance student motivation and learning.

What are office hours?

Office hours are student-faculty consultations where students may ask additional questions related to course content, get feedback, seek clarification on assignments, and get academic support. Faculty at NYUAD are required to hold office hours.

Enhancing Office Hours

Office hours are used by faculty and instructors to reinforce the tone they create in their courses, giving students the impression that they are available, personable, caring, and ready to listen and provide aid. Learn how to use office hours to successfully expand the possibility to improve teaching and learning.

Our teaching-related support videos are currently only available to the NYU/NYU Shanghai/NYU Abu Dhabi Faculty via login.

Office Hours Best Practices

Student Success Coaching

Academic and personal coaching is available for your students:

Student Success supports students with academic and personal coaching to help students thrive at NYUAD. Our success coaches meet with students individually to provide one-to-one coaching where they share strategies, build specific skills and create action plans to help students meet their personal and academic goals. 

These coaches can help your students with the transition to and through their college years. You can refer students here if you think they need more guidance on self-regulated behavior, and how to navigate college-life practices. These services are important, because when students can reach their full potential, it significantly improves their well-being, creates a more meaningful academic journey — and most importantly — fosters a greater sense of belonging for them.

Who is the NYUAD Student Learner?

It is critical to understand who the NYUAD learner is to support effective teaching and deeper student learning. Each learner from our diverse student body is distinctive, but they all share a desire to learn, and to live together in Abu Dhabi, UAE. This video shares some practical strategies for fostering belonging in your classroom amongst NYUAD’s diverse student body.

Our teaching-related support videos are currently only available to the NYU/NYU Shanghai/NYU Abu Dhabi Faculty via login

NYUAD Success Coaches can help students with:

  • Identifying what it means to be a successful college student
  • Goal-setting
  • Building capacity around college-level study techniques and exam preparation
  • Resiliency
  • Cultivating or improving time management skills
  • Combating imposter syndrome
  • Managing stress
  • Navigating classroom dynamics
  • Managing communication with faculty
  • Cultivating healthy relationships
  • Supporting first-generation and low-income students with accessing university resources
  • Schedule a session with the Student Success team

For questions, or to make a referral contact:
Tina Wadhwa, Director, Student Success and Well-being

Library for Learning

The NYU Abu Dhabi Library provides resources and technologies needed for research and teaching and an extensive range of physical and electronic resources for the NYUAD community.

Writing Center

The Writing Center is a resource for students to gain 1-to-1 support, and it is also through the Writing Center that workshops are administered for Core Curriculum classes at the request of faculty. Instructors are activated via consultation with faculty, they help design a bespoke writing workshop for the class, and then invite students to follow up with visits to the Writing Center.

The Writing Program's Directors offer 1-to-1 faculty consultation regarding the teaching of writing across the curriculum. The Directors can help with syllabus design, the development of writing prompts, and conversations about commenting on papers. The Directors also collaborate on faculty development workshops for the faculty in the core. Contact Sabyn Javeri if you would like to set up a consultation.

Visit these two sources for detailed guidance on how to teach writing:

 

John C. Bean, Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, Second Edition, Jossey-Bass 2011. 

“Learn to design interest-provoking writing and critical thinking activities and incorporate them into your courses in a way that encourages inquiry, exploration, discussion, and debate, with Engaging Ideas, a practical nuts-and-bolts guide for teachers from any discipline. Integrating critical thinking with writing-across-the-curriculum approaches, the book shows how teachers from any discipline can incorporate these activities into their courses.” Kerry Walk, Teaching with Writing.

Learning Accommodation Support

NYU is committed to providing equal educational opportunity and participation for students of all abilities. The Moses Center for Student Accessibility works with NYU students (across all sites) to determine appropriate and reasonable accommodations that support equal access to a world-class education. Students can submit an online application for academic accommodations directly with the Moses Center. Faculty will be informed via a letter from the Moses Center if any of their students require accommodations.

For the administration of academic accommodations during this period of online learning, please contact Aisha al Naqbi, the Moses Center liaison at NYUAD.

Health and Wellness Support for Students

Located on the ground floor of C2 building, the Health Center provides medical, counseling and dietitian services to NYUAD students. The Health Center deploys a best practices model of healthcare for our global student body in consideration of their unique needs, available resources, and regional laws. Contact the Health Center for student appointments.

Students also have access to a number of wellness initiatives facilitated by Wellness at NYUAD. They aim to provide a nurturing, challenging and supportive environment for students to develop physically, emotionally, personally and socially as part of their wellness journey. Programs include an array of fitness, athletics, wellness, and well-being workshops.

Fast Facts

Discover more about the make up of the student body and faculty at NYUAD.