Thanks to a recent renovation, the second floor of the Lowenstein Center is home to a brand new welcome center for undergraduate admission, where potential Rams can learn about all that Fordham has to offer.
For decades, the admission office at Lincoln Center served as the place where staff greeted visitors and staged tours. But the space was confined to a few small offices adjacent to the second-floor lounge, and in recent years it had become difficult to accommodate a growing number of guests.
In the 2017-2018 academic year, admission staff welcomed more than 14,000 visitors to the Lincoln Center campus. That included nearly 6,000 prospective students—a 68 percent increase in student visitors from 2010.
The new welcome center, which remains on the second floor of Lowenstein, is designed to comfortably accommodate many more people than before. Its offices have been reconfigured, and the space has expanded to include a large presentation room with a state-of-the-art display screen, a workspace for student employees, and a new seating/reception area.
“The new space gives us an opportunity to greet prospective students and their families in a way that is far more gracious and inviting than we have been in the past,” said John Buckley, vice president for admission and student financial services.
The renovated center has replaced what used to be the second-floor lounge. But the University has taken several proactive steps to maintain the amount of study space available to students. A new lounge on the plaza level (PL-100) was recently opened and offers ample seating. And there are additional lounge options on campus, both in Lowenstein and in 140 West.
Three new seating areas are also currently being installed, said Frank Simio, vice president for Lincoln Center. In the west wing of Lowenstein’s third floor, there will be 24 new seats, along with electric outlets for laptops and phone chargers. In the Quinn Library, there will close to an additional 100 seats available in quiet study areas. And on the eighth floor of Lowenstein, there will be a smaller seating area, also with electrical outlets. The first two areas will be available to students before final exams begin.
The seats in the library will be in QuinnX (an abbreviation for Quinn Annex), an open stack area that holds more than 260,000 titles. It is located down the law corridor from the library entrance.
“Opening QuinnX answers the need for additional quiet study space for Lincoln Center students and provides for open browsing of the stacks, which is so valuable to faculty and researchers,” said Linda LoSchiavo, director of University Libraries.
The new admission welcome center will open for business this month. In celebration, the center will host a reception with refreshments for students and staff on a date to be determined.
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