After half a year of careful preparation by the Graduate and Advanced Education Office, the Graduate Lounge finally opened on the fifth floor of the academic building. This lounge serves as a study and recreation space exclusively for graduate students at NYU Shanghai. On the evening of September 16th, graduate students, faculty, and staff gathered in the space to enjoy themselves in the lounge and celebrate the start of the fall semester.
The Graduate Lounge, which is over 160 square meters, was designed to provide graduate students with an exclusive space to study and relax. Over the course of the design process, the Graduate and Advanced Education Office worked closely with students, asking for their advice on the furniture, layout, color scheme, and overall style. The great effort made by the office and the students finally paid off now that this Graduate Lounge has become a well-designed multifunctional space equipped with a wealth of facilities, including computers, projectors, journals, and both open and private study spaces.
The delicate decorations for the event made the lounge even more attractive. Violet lanterns with riddles were hung at the gate to celebrate the mid-autumn festival. Anyone who solved a riddle could win a limited edition mooncake with an NYU Shanghai logo on it. The diverse menu also added spice to the mixer. Everyone enjoyed tasty dishes, including burgers, chicken kabab, pancake, and delicate desserts, while mingling with old and new friends.
Joanna Waley-Cohen, the Provost of NYU Shanghai, and Eric Mao, the Associate Dean of Graduate and Advanced Education at NYU Shanghai, joined the crowd and made welcome remarks. Eric did a roll call of graduate programs, which enlivened the atmosphere at once. Joanna expressed her best wishes to all the graduate students and her satisfaction with the new space, “I’m really happy that what we have is not only a graduate community, but a place the community can use.”
Master and PhD students also shared insights into their daily life here in Shanghai. Jamie Lleishman, a first year from the Social Work master program, felt excited about studying in a multicultural environment, “If I just studied in New York, I would be very much domestic focused. And here in Shanghai, we get to constantly do cross-cultural comparison between Chinese and non-Chinese.” The second-year Master student Li Jiajun spoke highly of the TESOL program, “This program enables us in-service English teachers to take classes in our spare time, so that we can put the world-class and cutting-edge teaching methods we learned from the courses directly into daily practice.”
We hope that all of the graduate students can enjoy the Graduate Lounge in the future.