For the third consecutive year, Ohio State broke its record for student population, and the university is spending millions to make room for its growing numbers.
To fit those students on campus — along with increasingly larger future freshmen classes — the university plans to spend $290 million expanding and improving campus facilities.
OSU plans to complete the South Campus High Rise Renovation and Addition Project by August 2013. The project will connect Park Hall to Stradley Hall and Steeb Hall to Smith Hall, providing room for 360 more students, said Molly Calhoun, assistant vice president for Student Life, in an e-mail.
The university also plans to complete the Hall Complex 2 expansion, a new six-story dormitory being built behind the 11th Avenue Parking Garage that will add 526 beds by 2012, Calhoun said.
The budget includes completed renovations of Jones Tower and the Lane Avenue Residence Hall and the ongoing renovation at Kennedy Commons, she said.
“In addition, we are currently working on a plan that would envision more housing in the north and (Olentangy River) districts,” Calhoun said. “The details have not been worked out, but we have plenty of capacity in those areas to add up to 4,000 additional beds if needed.”
New dining facilities and recreation space are included in the plans.
The expansion is driven by one goal: to make OSU a premiere university.
“We’re not growing just to grow,” said M. Dolan Evanovich, vice president of strategic enrollment. “We want to be one of the very best public universities in the country and world.”
Besides building projects, OSU’s plan to become one of the best calls for increases in student enrollment.
According to the Fifteenth Day Enrollment Report for autumn, 64,077 students are attending the main and regional campuses this year, a 1.4 percent increase from last Autumn Quarter.
This year, the Columbus campus also posted a record-high population of 56,064, a 1.9 percent increase from 2009.
The record-breaking quarter comes on the heels of OSU’s announcement of a strategic enrollment plan titled “From Excellence to Eminence: The One University Plan.”
For the past two years, the university has been holding the freshman class to about 6,600 students, said Allen Kraus, the director of marketing and strategic communications for the Office of Enrollment Services.
One goal of the plan is to add about 100 freshmen a year to the Columbus campus from 2011 to 2015, Evanovich said.
For OSU President E. Gordon Gee, the new record represents an important step toward that goal.
“These latest measures of distinction are important mile-markers in assuring that we are fulfilling our profound public purpose as Ohio’s land-grant and research university,” Gee said.
