New York University
Whether you are arriving on campus for the first time or gearing up to welcome our newest Violets, the start of a new academic year marks a moment of transition for everyone at NYU. That feeling of ebb and flow is reflected in this year's NYU Welcome Theme, “Changing Tides.” Starting college isn’t just a change of scenery; it’s a wave of change, an ending and a beginning where students are leaving behind familiar environments while stepping into a new one. Like currents in the ocean, our diverse paths intersect and influence one another, crashing together to create a community stronger and more dynamic than any one stream.
News and Research
In and of the World
Undergrads spending time at the university’s many global sites have been publishing their art and writing in student-run magazines that help to crystalize moments of transformation and exploration away from home. Hard copies of the NYU Berlin magazine Durch, for example, are distributed to all students and staff at the site. “We’re definitely losing the permanence of our media right now. Everything is subscription-based and streaming-based,” says one student editor of the decision to go print-only.
Away and Writing Every Day
Silver School professor Fred Ssewamala was raised as an orphan after losing his family to Uganda’s civil war in the 1980s. As a global health researcher, he has devoted 20 years of his career to developing support for children in remote villages, including the one where he grew up. The interventions are designed with one overarching goal: to improve the odds for youth who live with HIV and have lost one or both of their biological parents to the disease.
Hope for Ugandan Children Facing HIV
Strip out the dramatic lighting, the fancy cameras, the craft food table, and are you still making a movie? NYU Los Angeles instructor Chris Cole, a filmmaker and former video producer at Apple, says yes. “There’s something so liberating when a filmmaker, at any level, goes back to the essentials,” Cole explains. And so he’s tasked his students with learning the fundamentals of filmmaking using only their smartphones. Relying on natural light and real Los Angeles locations, they are writing, directing, and editing three- to five-minute works with the little computers they carry with them everywhere.
Smartphone Cinema: Your LA Story
In and of the World