President Steven Leath and Senior Vice President Tom Hill were among ISU officials welcoming students to the residence halls this week. Photo by Bob Elbert.
With Iowa State leaders estimating a fall enrollment in the neighborhood of 31,000 students, the residence department was in overdrive this summer preparing to meet its goal of housing about one-third of them. As of early this week, the department reported it found spots for just under 10,575 students in campus housing for fall semester. That's an increase of nearly 6 percent over last fall's record-setting group of 9,976 students living on campus.
| On-campus occupancy since Fall 2003-12 | |
| Fall |
Total students assigned* |
| 2012 | 10,572* |
| 2011 | 9,976 |
| 2010 | 9,403 |
| 2009 | 9,106 |
| 2008 | 8,936 |
| 2007 | 8,585 |
| 2006 | 8,154 |
| 2005 | 7,909 |
| 2004 | 8,032 |
| 2003 | 8,422 |
| *Residence halls and apartments combined; 2012 number estimated | |
This Friley Hall house den will be home to up to four students this fall. Photo by Bob Elbert.
A few other details about move-in week:
- The housing inventory includes about 10,170 permanent spaces and 428 temporary spaces in floor dens in every hall except Eaton, Martin and Buchanan halls.
- Besides the temporary spots, the growth in the housing capacity since last fall comes primarily from reverting former triples and quads to full status (likely they've served as double rooms recently), and from opening nine of 10 floors in "The Towers" Wallace Hall as double-occupancy rooms. Last fall, students occupied just five floors of "super single" rooms in Wallace. (The 10th floor will remain super singles this year.) These two changes created about 300 more permanent spaces for students this fall.
- The goal is to find permanent spots before winter break for all students in converted dens (not because they're anxious to move, but in order to return that community space to the floors).
- The residence department added nine custodial positions in the last year, including four weekend positions. It also converted several graduate assistant hall director posts to full-time positions.
- About 750 returning student volunteers will help first-year students and their families move in to residence halls Tuesday and Wednesday this week.
