{"id":3344,"date":"2017-06-20T13:58:51","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T13:58:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/?p=3344"},"modified":"2021-06-30T13:04:48","modified_gmt":"2021-06-30T13:04:48","slug":"residence-hall-construction-to-modernize-campus-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/20\/residence-hall-construction-to-modernize-campus-housing\/","title":{"rendered":"Residence hall construction to modernize campus housing"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jay Whitehead<\/strong>,\u00a0<\/span>Memphis University School<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Starting in the fall of 2018, students will have the chance to experience a new, modernized living experience on the WKU campus. WKU Housing and Residence Life created a 10-year plan that will optimize the on-campus living experience for current and future students.<\/p>\n

Mike Reagle, assistant vice president for Student Affairs and executive director of Housing and Dining, said the construction of Hilltopper Hall, in the \u201cValley\u201d parallel to College Heights Boulevard and next to the Kentucky Museum, will allow \u201cswing space\u201d to destroy the Barnes-Campbell and Bemis Lawrence halls while still allowing the same number of students to reside on campus.<\/p>\n

Hilltopper Hall will have a 24\/7 cafeteria, Reagle said. In addition to the 400 beds and a 24\/7 cafeteria, it also will have more space for studying, social encounters and recreational space for fitness.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt ends up being kind of like a mini hotel,\u201d Reagle said.<\/p>\n

Northeast and Southwest halls are also undergoing reconstruction that will include more space for common areas like a large kitchen and dedicated student success spaces.<\/p>\n

The Northeast and Southwest halls were originally constructed in 1957 as four separate halls. The rooms that were created fit the life experience that most college students had at that time.<\/p>\n

\u201cA number of students in the \u201860s and \u201870s came from homes where they usually shared rooms and bathrooms,\u201d Reagle said. \u201cAt that time, those types of dorms were normal to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost kids going to college are coming from homes where they have always had their own room and bathroom. Now you send those kids to these residence halls where they would have to walk down the hall and share a room with about 25 to 50 of their closest friends. It\u2019s a whole other world for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most universities have reconstructed their residence halls to fit this modernized way of living.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order for universities to keep up, you have to continue to build these types of things because otherwise, students will choose other universities instead of yours,\u201d Reagle said.<\/p>\n

A part of modernizing the residence halls of WKU campus will be the introduction of pod-style housing.<\/p>\n

\u201cPods are similar to suites where you have a shared bathroom between two rooms with a small kitchen,\u201d Reagle said.<\/p>\n

Pod-style housing will answer the students\u2019 complaints of the community bathrooms and showers. Instead of sharing a bathroom and showers with 25 to 50 people, students now will share a bathroom with four to six students.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019ve found from students living in that condition is that they didn\u2019t like it,\u201d Reagle said. \u201cBut what I have heard from most students is that they wouldn\u2019t trade it for anything because they got to know everybody from their floor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge with pod-style housing is that you won\u2019t get to meet and build relationships with people on your floor,\u201d Reagle said.<\/p>\n

Even though pod-style housing is what the students want, the connection between students on the floor will be different.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you build this type of environment, which is what the students want, you limit the ability to have that community that you really want,\u201d Reagle said.<\/p>\n

Despite a slight increase in rates, WKU residence hall and apartment annual rates will remain more affordable than the average rate for similar residence halls and apartments in Kentucky universities, according to the WKU Housing website. The construction projects will not increase the tuition cost for the students. The housing rates will increase to align with the Kentucky system average and will contribute to housing operations, programming and future projects.<\/p>\n

WKU provides different types of housing options depending on a student\u2019s desires and financial stability.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can build whatever we need to build as long as we can bill out the students who want to live there,\u201d Reagle said. \u201cAs the cost of higher education goes up, you\u2019ve got to have this balance of providing people what they want and what they have the ability to pay for.\u201d<\/p>\n

WKU has many different living options based on gender, class exclusives or other features like single beds that will be more available in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour best system gives the most amount of choices for students,\u201d Reagle said.<\/p>\n

WKU will also be adding a semi-suite, 200-bed annex to the Bates Runner Hall in 2024 and a conversion from traditional to semi-suite style rooms in the McCormack Hall in the fall of 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an exciting time. It\u2019s exciting to see new things coming up. It\u2019s exciting to see what we can provide for the students,\u201d Reagle said. \u201cA lot of what we do is actually preparing students behind the scenes to actually be able to go to class and get an education. We are the infrastructure behind that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jay Whitehead,\u00a0Memphis University School Starting in the fall of 2018, students will have the chance to experience a new, modernized living experience on the WKU campus. WKU Housing and Residence Life created a 10-year plan that will optimize the on-campus living experience for current and future students. Mike Reagle, assistant vice president for Student…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,465],"tags":[],"staff_name":[],"class_list":["post-3344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-x17"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3344"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3346,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3344\/revisions\/3346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3344"},{"taxonomy":"staff_name","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/staff_name?post=3344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}