Starting with the 2018-2019 academic year, the Office of Global Education is to introduce a new system of handling student flights.

Before, students would receive their preliminary itinerary and have 48 hours to confirm their tickets before receiving their final flight details. Under the new process, students will submit a form outlining their preference before the booking is made.

“We are not changing the student travel policy, just the process. We’re giving students more agency by giving them a form with which they record the fact that they will be leaving from their home base to their study location, the dates, and then if they are requesting exceptions, they tell us right there, in the form,” said Katerina Grim, Assistant Vice Provost of Global Education Administration.

Mrs. Grim explained that the change was made in response to NYU Abu Dhabi’s growing student body.

“What prompted this change is the fact that the office averages 10-12 emails per student to negotiate their travel after they saw their preliminary ticket. This process takes two months in total. We would need more staff to resolve this issue and adding staff to work on ticketing exclusively takes resources away from student programing, for example,” stated Mrs. Grim.

The form will go live as soon as the Office of Global Education completes the list of students and their study locations for fall 2018. It is expected that the form will be released in the upcoming week. Students will then have one week to complete the form, which should take between 10 and 30 minutes.

The scope for flexibility is to remain the same. A typical permissible change would be the date of the flight.

Mrs. Grim thinks the change will benefit the student community.

“I think students will welcome this change. We spoke to the representatives of Student Government and they all liked the idea. Students always wanted agency, so we’re giving them this opportunity,” concluded Mrs. Grim.