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CEDAR CITY — With less than a month until the semester begins at Southern Utah University, officials are scrambling to house the school's largest freshman class to date.
SUU anticipates up to a 9 percent increase in its student population this fall and more growth in coming years, the Cedar City-based university reported Wednesday. With the influx, on-campus housing filled up with early admission students, and off-campus spaces are being snatched up faster than expected.
Some university employees are helping out by letting students into their homes — before even meeting them.
Teshia Williams, who works in marketing communications at SUU, offered a bedroom Thursday to a freshman girl from American Samoa. Williams doesn't know the girl's name but said she felt moved to offer her a place to stay after speaking with her brother, who lives in northern Utah.
"He was kind of worried about where his sister is going to live," Williams said, "(and) he's three or four hours away and just felt like, 'Wow, I can't even come down here to look at these places.'"
Williams, whose son left an empty bedroom in her home when he began serving an LDS Church mission, said being a mom motivated her to help out the incoming student.
"I just felt his concern," she said, "and I felt, as a mother, that this girl as a freshman coming in, (she) may be a little bit scared to go to school (not) knowing where she was going to live. Why not give her somehwere, welcome her, and let her live here until she can find a place and get on her feet?"
The girl will arrive in Cedar City in mid-August. Others in Cedar City would be willing to do the same for students if they knew the extent of the housing pinch, Williams said.
This community, since the founding of the university, has proved that in times of need, members will step forward to help.
–Scott Wyatt, SUU president
"I think that it's great if people can open up their homes to these kids coming in that don't have anywhere to live," she said. "Some people don't even know it's going on right now, so it is good to get the word out."
With move-in day approaching, SUU officials have petitioned community members with rental spaces to contact the university.
"This community, since the founding of the university, has proved that in times of need, members will step forward to help," SUU President Scott Wyatt said in a prepared statement.
SUU was left without one of its longtime housing options in 2011 when Juniper Hall, a 50-year-old "sleep and study" style dorm, had to be vacated just weeks before the semester's end when its decrepit heating system gave out. More than 200 students were relocated, bunking up with residents in other dorms, community members or in a Main Street hotel.
At the time, Dean O'Driscoll, then-vice president for university relations, said the university was preparing to get along for several years with diminished on-campus housing before it could demolish and eventually replace Juniper Hall.
SUU officials said this week they are now evaluating options to increase on-campus housing, while attempting to connect incoming students to other housing options around town in the interim.
SUU's fall semester begins Aug. 24.
Predictions for the upcoming school year and 10-year projections indicate that higher education across the state will be growing, bringing in as many as 50,000 additional students over the next decade, David Buhler, commissioner of the Utah System of Higher Education said. This fall marks the beginning of that growth, he said.
"We need to have … academic capacity of people to teach and advise and so forth. We've got to have the physical space, and we've got to have virtual capacity," Buhler said, referring to a school's technical abilities providing online services to students as well as online classes. "I think that all, and if not all then most, of our public universities and colleges will see growth in the fall."
Despite the housing conundrum, SUU officials call the growth a win, attributing the growth in part to a push in recruitment, marketing and admissions processing.
Contributing: Stace Hall, Ben Lockhart Email: blockhart@deseretnews.com Twitter: @benlockhartnews
