In front of brand-new premises, a stone's throw from France's National Library (BNF) in Paris's 13th arrondissement, workers perched on a forklift are busy working on the façade. Inside, furniture is being unpacked and final touches of paint are being applied. On November 13 and 14, the University of Chicago will officially inaugurate its new Paris campus, where some students have already started the new academic year. "These are the final adjustments, the finishing touches, but we're on schedule," said Sébastien Greppo, the center's executive director, happy to have reached the end of the line.
Seven years have passed since the time the University of Chicago acquired the lot. The wood-and-glass building, built around a grand central staircase, was designed by world-renowned architect Jeanne Gang, herself a native of Chicago, Illinois. The façade is encircled by columns of Saint-Maximin stone, a tribute to Haussmannian architecture and that of the older buildings of UChicago, as the students call it.
Inside, there are classrooms equipped for video-conferencing, a 120-seat amphitheater, libraries, a reception area, a terrace planted with trees and relaxation areas. In all, the university will have invested 30 million euros to provide a new setting for the 125 or so students who will be able to study here each term under the same conditions of excellence as in Chicago.
Intensive courses
"It had become a necessity in view of the growing number of requests to come and study in Paris," said Greppo, who had already been running the previous center since it opened in 2003, a few streets away on Rue Thomas-Mann, which had reached saturation point and is therefore closing its doors. "The idea of offering study abroad programs gained momentum in the late 1980s and early 1990s. One of the aims was to show our undergraduates [undergraduate students aged 18-21] that the Chicago campus is not the center of the world."
The plan to set up in Paris, put forth by the College of the University of Chicago (the structure that brings together undergraduates), was initially met with some resistance, as there were concerns about the safety of young Americans who had been dropped into another country. Also, how could they be sure that, by joining foreign universities, they would benefit from the same quality of teaching as in Chicago? And what about university years, which are divided into trimesters in the US and semesters in France?
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