Student Housing: VT renovations will create housing shortage
By Tonia Moxley for The Roanoke Times
Ongoing building improvements at Virginia Tech will result in a shortage of student housing this fall and student cost increases, probably for years to come, officials say.
But the renovations will also bring an Ivy League housing concept to one of the state’s largest public universities.
About 500 students who had hoped to return to on-campus housing this fall will not get a room assignment, Tech has announced.
The pending renovation of West Ambler Johnston Hall will close rooms that would have served about 800 students, Vice President for Student Affairs Ed Spencer said.
The reopening of East Ambler Johnston, which has been remodeled, will offset that number by 300, leaving a deficit of 500 beds, Spencer said.
First-year students are unlikely to be affected, as they are guaranteed campus housing. But second-year and older students will feel the pinch. In a typical year, about 9,000 students live on campus.
The shortage is likely to hit transfer students hard, Tech Student Government President Bo Hart said.
“But luckily, there are a lot of places to live off campus,” he added.
Housing services offers an online listing service for apartment and house rentals in and around Blacksburg, and an off-campus housing fair for students is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday in the Squires Commonwealth Ballroom.
West Ambler Johnston is scheduled to reopen in fall 2012, but housing shortages are expected to continue for several years as the university implements its long-term plan to refurbish or reconstruct all pre-1983 residence halls. At least one residence hall will be offline for the next several years, Spencer said.
Tech often touts its on-campus living costs as among the lowest in the state, but Spencer said the recent annual rate increases of about 9 percent are also likely to continue.
After West AJ — as it is popularly known — reopens, Rasche and Brodie halls will be demolished and rebuilt to house up to 1,110 students, including the entire Corps of Cadets, Spencer said.
Following that, Pritchard and Lee halls will be renovated.
The growing pains are “signs of a healthy housing program,” Spencer said.
The majority of construction will be financed with bond issues, and the loans and interest repaid with student housing fees, Spencer said.
Tech’s board of visitors approved a budget of $75 million for the total Ambler Johnston remodel.
Hart characterized the opening of the newly refurbished East AJ as exciting. That hall will house a new student life concept at Tech called the “residential college.”
While new to Tech and public colleges and universities in general, the model is very old, beginning in England at Oxford and Cambridge and adopted early on by Harvard and other Ivy League schools.
In this model, students of all ages and fields of study have for generations lived together amongst some of their professors, creating an integrated and more diverse community than traditional dormitory life.
Unlike Tech residence halls organized around themes that bring like-minded students together — such as substance-free housing, or interests, such Oak Lane’s Greek housing — diversity will be the cornerstone of the residential college concept, said Frank Shushok, associate vice president for student affairs.
That includes diversity of age, background, ethnicity, gender and field of study.
“We want to have the musician and engineer, the poets and the biologists living side by side,” Shushok said. “It creates a level of dialogue and interest that’s different.”
The colleges will also integrate social life with learning by providing a theater and similar amenities. Theater performances and movies will be followed by moderated discussions, for example, Spencer said.
Shushok is shepherding the pilot project at East Ambler Johnston.
When West AJ reopens in 2012, it also will be converted to a residential college. Both programs are being developed in conjunction with the university’s honors program, and will house honors students.
It is hoped that students will return year after year to live in the colleges, and will pass on a sense of the communities’ history and traditions to new students as they arrive, Shushok said.
Each hall will have a live-in “faculty preceptor,” a tenure-track position that will provide intellectual and symbolic leadership, Shushok said.
The preceptors will recruit 20 or 30 other faculty members from various disciplines to commit to relationships with the colleges and their residents.
After both programs are up and running, Shushok said, officials will evaluate whether or not to expand the model to other residence halls.
