A WARM WELCOME
FROM THE CHARTOUNI FAMILY The Chartouni Family Lobby, made possible thanks to the generosity of AUP parents Nabil and Samantha Chartouni, will play a vital role in improving the University’s international profile. First impressions are, after all, everything.
Nabil and Samantha Chartouni, parents of Monica Chartouni ’18, provided an early commitment to AUP Ascending, fully funding the creation of AUP’s new foyer in the Quai d’Orsay Learning Commons. The aim was to give the University a beautiful, welcoming space in which to greet visitors from all over the globe. Walking into the Chartouni Family Lobby, visitors are met by an open area filled with light. One can see through to the library stacks in the glass atrium that connects the building to the Combes Student Life Center and browse the artwork on display in the adjoining Fine Arts Gallery. “I think it looks very neat, modern, bright and airy,” says Nabil. Following their daughter’s enrollment at AUP, Nabil and Samantha, themselves an international couple, were motivated to 43
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give by the University’s cross-border ethos. “I thought the combination of having an American university in Paris, mixing the two countries like that, was really great,” he explains. “I’m very much encouraging the continuation of this mission.” The couple has always supported academic institutions that their children have attended. “I think education is the key to everything,” says Nabil. “Those who can should help a little bit to offer those opportunities to others.” He recalls an old adage, still relevant today: if you give someone a fish, you will feed them for a day, but if you teach someone to fish, you will feed them for a lifetime: “It was an expression of support for the program, a motion of support for the University as a whole.” By making the support of state-of-the-
art services for the next generation of global explorers a philanthropic priority, Nabil and Samantha are helping ensure AUP students reach their full potential as they prepare to move forward into international careers. At the Quai building’s opening celebrations on Thursday, March 21, President Celeste Schenck spoke from a podium in the lobby, where she delivered a speech inaugurating AUP’s new home on the Seine. “May it welcome our visitors, scholars, researchers and concitoyens de Paris with AUP’s characteristic openness to the array of differences that define us,” she declared. This warm welcome would not have been made possible without the kind support of the Chartouni family.
