University of Saint Joseph’s green campus ready in 2013

The University of Saint Joseph conferred licentiate degrees to 190 students on Saturday

The new campus of the University of Saint Joseph (USJ) should be ready in the spring of 2013, said dean Ruben Cabral.
Cabral explained that the new campus is in the second phase of construction. “The building’s foundation has been ready since March, which was the most difficult part of the process,” he stressed.
Currently, the USJ has been receiving applications for the construction of the building itself. Until the end of the year, a bidder must be chosen, Cabral told the Macau Daily Times.
The new campus will be located in a 1.5 hectare site in northern Macau with approximately 36,000 square meters of usable space. The Ilha Verde Campus will accommodate around 2,400 university students and 800 students from the senior secondary school of Colégio Diocesano de São José.
According to the institution’s plan, the new space will be a green campus, engineered to be energy-efficient and to minimise waste; making vast use of roof gardens and green spaces; designed to minimise greenhouse gas emissions; state-of-the art classrooms with the latest multi-media capabilities, sports facilities including an Olympic swimming pool, a theatre, auditorium, specialised rooms for music and the fine arts, digital library, food court, etc.
The Ilha Verde campus will also include accommodation for 250 students and faculty members. The site will also house a chapel, a bookstore, restaurants and a community centre, all of which will be open to the public.
But the administrative services and research departments will continue their operations at the old campus, in the NAPE area.
Cabral was speaking on the sidelines of the commencement ceremony for new students.
On Saturday, the USJ conferred licentiate degrees to 190 students, most of them in Business Administration (69), Social Work (51) and Government Studies (36).
In the meantime, on October 8, the USJ graduated six doctors and 82 masters, in a ceremony in which the Reverend Father Luís Sequeira SJ was awarded a Doctorate of Religious Studies Honoris Causa.

A.L.