Last year at this time, Central Oregon Community College’s residence hall was only 76 percent full. This year, it’s bursting at the seams.
The outcome left faculty and staff pleased.
“Our goal was to do better than last year,” said Paul Wheeler, On-Campus Housing Coordinator. “Our highest goal was to have [residence hall] 100 percent full.” said Wheeler.
Being over-capacity was not on their radar, he added, until applications began to flood in.
The residence hall has a housing capacity of 320 students, Wheeler said, but fall term began with 329 students living in the residence hall.
As of move-in day on Sept.22, 333 students were signed up to move into the residence hall. There were four no-shows and two cancellations. There were 327 students moved in, as well as two students on the waitlist. Total, there were 329 students anticipated.
COCC wanted to accommodate as many students as possible, so single rooms were turned into doubles, while doubles were turned into triples.
“We didn’t know exactly what to expect,” said Andrew Davis, Director of Student Life.
Efforts to advertise were more successful this year than the previous, he said.
The housing marketing team took efforts to raise awareness with social media, Davis added, with advertisements placed on Facebook and Pandora, to utilize geo-fencing.
The team also did more in personal recruiting than ever before to gain awareness for life in the residence hall.
Move-in day brought a lot of positive energy as students began to explore their new homes on campus.
“This is the most efficient move-in yet,” Wheeler commented. “By 2:30 p.m. we had all but about 75 students moved in.”
Thus far, there have been no major issues in the residence hall.
“We have been dealing with normal adjustment situations, mainly roommate situations,” Wheeler said. The plethora of students in residence hall has made it difficult to re-arrange students due to roommate complications, he said.
Students from all over the country – Hawaii, New York, Alaska, New Jersey etc. came to Central Oregon to attend COCC.
“I talked to a new student from New York,” Davis said, “he said he googled ‘best place to live’ and ‘best place to go to school’ and he came up with COCC.”
Wheeler said he was “pleasantly surprised.”
“Thankfully, we had the commitment of the institution throughout it all,” he said.
Housing faculty are still expecting students to be registering for winter term housing, which opened Monday, October 2nd.
Both Wheeler and Davis, as well as the housing faculty’s priority is to continue to fill each room in the residence hall, then discuss future building development.
By Olivia Webb | The Broadside
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