 "Photo: Caity Colvard")
With the number of Texas Tech students living on campus at a 19-year high and overall-enrollment figures at their second-highest level, crowded residence halls and bustling dining facilities are sure signs of growth at Tech.
Sean Duggan, managing director of University Housing Services, said the number of students living on campus grew by approximately 650 since Fall 2006, bringing the number to 6,250 this fall, which is the highest it has been since 1988.
The increase in on-campus residents did not cause any significant problems during the beginning of the semester, Duggan said, which is promising because Tech did not build any new facilities beforehand to accommodate the growth.
"We were able to manage the housing availability very effectively, and we didn't have any students in temporary housing or anything like that," he said. "Everybody moved right in to their bed."
According to a Sept. 13 preliminary report from the Office of the Provost, the number of freshmen enrolled at Tech is 4,524, which is more than a 15 percent increase from the same report last year. Total enrollment for Fall 2007 is 28,408, which includes undergraduate, graduate and law students.
This year's total enrollment includes almost a 1 percent increase from last year and is second only to enrollment in 2003.
The preliminary report is based on the number of enrolled students on the 12th day of classes and will not be official until enrollment levels are calculated after the tuition-payment deadline Sept. 20.
Samuel Bennett, director of Tech's Hospitality Services, said other than the occasional long line at a dining hall or at the Union Plaza food court in the Student Union Building, the influx of freshmen and the university's overall growth in students has not severely impacted food service on campus.
"Business is up, don't get me wrong, and every place is pretty much busting at the seams, but we appear to be handling it so far," he said. "This is the highest on-campus residency we've seen in 19 years, which surprised me when I heard that number. We were really bracing for much worse than we expected."
The major problem for Hospitality Services, Bennett said, is not serving the volume of students waiting in line for food but hiring enough employees to work in the myriad food-service locations around campus.
"I hope it is going smoothly for the customer because the back of the house, on the employment side, has been really rugged," he said. "It's a problem of hiring enough employees. We can't hire enough. We're short, to a degree, almost everywhere."
Matthew Ducatt, managing director of the Student Union Building, said traffic levels in the SUB have been higher this year than they have in the past. He estimates up to 20,000 people come into the building on busy days. This is an increase from the 15,000 during busy days in 2006, but the building still is not overloaded.
"This is a great facility, but we need to look at ways to serve a growing student population, and that's a good problem to have," he said. "We're basically at 246,000 square feet. That's probably right in line with our current student population, and as we grow, we need to look at doing different things."
Ducatt said he thinks the best way to plan for growth is listening to the needs and wants of students who voice their opinions to him and the building's staff.
"We're always here to listen and incorporate ideas we get from the students, he said. "It's such a fluid facility; we're always trying something different."
Kathleen Lynch, a freshman petroleum engineering major from Katy, said the high levels of on-campus residency have not affected her negatively.
"I don't feel like a lot of people live on campus," she said. "A lot of people, other than the freshmen, seem to live off campus, so it doesn't seem to be that crowded at the dorm. Sure, it's crowded at the Student Union during the middle of the day, but that's pretty much it."
James Brink, Tech's senior vice provost for academic affairs, said growth at Tech is necessary when it comes to state funding.
"I think we have to face a reality in Texas," he said. "That is that the funding system in Texas from the state depends on student enrollment and how many hours students enroll."
The administration is being careful, Brink said, not to compromise the value of a Tech degree as it seeks higher enrollment numbers.
"We're very interested in seeing to it that we have growth, but we do not want to compromise academic standards," he said. "We could grow. We could grow tomorrow by simply dropping our academic standards, but that would not fulfill the part of our mission for us to improve our undergraduate degree programs."
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