UHDS News

[Corvallis Gazette-Times, March 21, 2013] — The Corvallis Planning Commission unanimously passed Oregon State University’s proposal for a new residence hall Thursday night.
The vote came at the end of a three-hour meeting that included some contentious testimony from residents concerned about parking and traffic.
OSU hopes to build a residence hall that would house up to 300 students on what is now a parking lot whose boundaries are Southwest Adams Avenue, Southwest Washington Avenue, Southwest 13th Street and Southwest 14th Street.
The proposal required city approval because it represented an adjustment to OSU’s master plan. The commission also passed a recommendation on a Land Development Code text amendment that must accompany the master plan adjustment.

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— James Day

Read the full article.

Over Winter Break, one of the first visible phases of a new campus construction project along Jefferson Way occurred with the removal of a row of trees along the north side of Jefferson Way between Fairbanks Hall and Sackett Hall (across from Hawley-Buxton).

The trees were removed to make way for construction of several new campus buildings, including the new hall for the College of Business named Austin Hall, and a new Asian & Pacific Cultural Center. Over the next two years, this area will be abuzz with activity to construct these two new campus centers and parking in the area will be limited at times.

Austin Hall

In the fall of 2014, the newest building on campus will be a home for Oregon’s future business leaders and embody the authentic character of Oregon State that inspires students and faculty. Located on Jefferson Way near the Women’s Building and across the street from Weatherford, the new home for the College of Business will be the anchor of a developing quad on campus.

Austin Hall, named to reflect the $10 million commitment from alumni Ken and Joan Austin, will be an expansive 100,000 square feet that will include ten classrooms, a 250-seat auditorium, collaborative team rooms, more than 70 faculty offices, staff and program offices, a café and event space. Ground-breaking for the estimated $50 million project is scheduled for Spring 2013.

Artistic renderings: Austin Hall.

Asian & Pacific Cultural Center

In 2002, Oregon State University made a commitment to cultural centers on campus to honor diversity and enrichment of student life. At present, the APCC is inadequately housed in a small house on the corner of Northwest Jackson Avenue and Arnold Way, at the far northern edge of campus. The students of the APCC needed a larger facility able to accommodate all of their needs and activities, including areas for quiet study, dance performances, and community feasts. A location closer to the campus core was requested that better supports the APCC’s goal of educating the greater OSU community about the Asian and Pacific Islander cultures.

The new APCC will provide a learning and gathering place for Asian, Pacific Islander, Indian, and Middle Eastern students to celebrate and share their cultures and heritage. It will serve as a supportive and welcoming educational environment where knowledge and traditions can be shared among each other and with the greater OSU community. The proposed Asian & Pacific Cultural Center (APCC) will be constructed on the north side of Jefferson Way within the OSU National Historic District. Presently, this location is the southeast corner of the Women’s Building Field, a recreation field. The center is still in the design phase and a groundbreaking and completion date have not been set.

Artistic rendering: Asian Pacific Cultural Center.

Learn more about these projects at the following links:

• Austin Hall project
• APCC project
• OSU Campus Master Plan
• Video: Tour the changing landscape of OSU

[Corvallis Gazette-Times, Jan. 30, 2011] — When Oregon State University President Ed Ray told an audience of 60 at LaSells Stewart Center during a presentation on the university’s $2.06 billion economic impact Jan. 19 that students annually spend about $11,000 on non-academic expenses, he didn’t divulge the details of this area of the report.

“We don’t want to get into what they spent their money on,” Ray joked; member of the audience giggled in response.

However, a closer look at the numbers found by ECONorthwest, a Eugene-based economic consultant group hired to examine the impact of OSU, shows that full-time students aren’t spending money so much on debauchery — hinted at by Ray and the presentation’s audience — as they are on off-campus housing.

The findings further illuminate a growing housing issue in Corvallis, where high demand fueled by skyrocketing student enrollment has caused rental prices to increase and availability to plummet — so much so that the area’s rental vacancy rate has hovered around 1 percent for much of the past year.

ECONorthwest gathered data from OSU’s financial aid and scholarships office and from university budget reports, including the estimated $9,444 students will pay for room and board, an average total that the financial aid and scholarships office determined after surveying students, examining local rental rates and using University Housing and Dining Services’ on-campus housing prices.

After subtracting on-campus housing and parking fees and various student fees, ECONorthwest found that the university’s students spent $250 million on off-campus expenditures in the 2010-11 academic year, said Paul Thoma, an economist for ECONorthwest, in an email.

Dividing that total by 22,977, the average number of full-time students enrolled at OSU’s Corvallis and Bend campuses during 2010-11, yields a total of $10,880 in off-campus expenses.

That total includes spending by students living on campus whose housing costs aren’t figured in to the nearly $11,000 average (on-campus students numbered 3,989 in fall 2010), and it takes into account spending on books and supplies, personal items, travel and miscellaneous fees. …

Read the full article by reporter Gail Cole on the Corvallis Gazette-Times site.

Oregon State University, semi-quiet during the summer, was flooded with students Monday for the first day of fall-term classes. The university expects to enroll 25,000 this fall.

More than 3,000 of those students on campus were freshmen, including Nicole Elsmore and Caitlin Brenton. They took a long lunch at Arnold Dining Center and discussed their morning classes: chemistry for Elsmore, and college composition and algebra for Brenton.

Read more from the Corvallis Gazette-Times. (Published Sept. 27, 2011)

Video: “A look at the new OSU International Living-Learning Center”