Student housing demands are changing and the Office of Housing and Residence Life is trying to find a way to make the living facilities more attractive to students.
Anderson-Strickler, a consulting firm, is conducting a survey for the Office of Housing and Residence Life to come up with ideas for the current facilities.
The timing for this survey is due to most of the existing facilities debt being paid off in 2002.
“It’s an ongoing process that’s going on this whole semester,” said Harry Steele, director.
“What we decided to do before we sink a lot of money into renovating or building or doing anything, is to get an outside company to come in,” said Bonnie Burchett, associate director. “They’ll come in and look at what we’re doing and review us from top to bottom.”
Anderson-Strickler will meet with focus groups of students on and off campus, distributing written surveys to all students. Focus groups will also meet with Greek organization members and international students.
A national survey from the National Association of College and University Housing and a customer satisfaction survey will also be taken into account during the study.
“They also will compare us with our competitors,” Burchett said. Competition ranges from apartments, to students’ homes, to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
Anderson-Strickler just re-cently completed a study for UT-Knoxville.
Burchett said, “We’ll get back a report, feedback, concerning that and they’ll bring their expertise of looking at hundreds of universities across the country.”
The goal of this project is to allow Housing and Residence Life to remain competitive with off-campus housing, provide a stronger bond between residence and academic life, and maintaining a financially self-supporting housing operation that will meet current and future demands for student housing.
“We’re pretty excited about that opportunity because I think that it will help us to make plans for the future,” Burchett said. “The university think, will then have to decide where do we want to go and how do we want to get there.”
For more information, call the Office of Housing at 439-4446.

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