Responding to a growing trend toward international real estate market investment, the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate recently offered its graduate students the opportunity to participate in study tours to Singapore, Poland, or Columbia as participants in the newly created Three Continents Program.
NYU Schack graduate students were given the option of selecting one of three courses, “Corporate Finance,” “Planning and Design Issues in Development,” or “Comparative International Real Estate.”
Students could then select one of three destinations, ensuring a critical mass of travelers and a mix of academic interests and projects on each trip.
“We’re thrilled with the feedback we’ve received from the students who have taken advantage of these study tours,” said Rosemary Scanlon, NYU Schack divisional dean.
“Our students will benefit from the variety of the international experiences to which they are exposed. We believe this opportunity will help them immensely as they embark on their professional careers in real estate.”
Nearly 40 participants visited Singapore, including students and faculty members and administrators. The group met with 18 companies, including CBRE, Inc.; Lend Lease Corporation; PwC, LLP; Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) and visited The Sandcrawler — LucasFilm’s new Singapore HQ — with Aedas, a leading international design practice.
The Colombia trip offered 14 students and faculty the opportunity to visit three cities: Bogota, Medellin, and Cartagena.
The Poland trip included 16 students and faculty members who traveled to Warsaw and Krakow.
They focused on learning about the Polish, and wider Eastern Europe regional, real estate markets.
“Our inaugural Three Continents Program offered students three very different hands-on, international real estate experiences this semester,” noted Professor Derrington. “Each year, we plan to offer new destinations for our students to provide a well-rounded global real estate education. If the success of this first year is any indication of what’s to come, we anticipate more and more students will participate in this innovative program.”
These international study tours were in addition to a three-day study tour to Toronto in the previous October and a three-day study tour of construction and development in Miami in January 2014. In total, approximately 25 percent of current graduate students participated in the domestic and international study tours in the 2013-2014 academic year.
