https://facilities.uchicago.edu/construction/woodlawn_residential_and_dining_commons/
I drove by the construction site yesterday and all the towers are up. Right now workers are putting up windows and fixing the interior. Woodlawn Residential Commons (WRC) will be ready for Class of 2024.
According to UChicago website, WRC will have 891 units and can accommodate 1,298 students. Using the ideal class size asserted by Dean Boyer (total College population of 7,000) , WRC can accommodate 74% of the incoming class.
Yet, will WRC be wholly first years? Highly unlikely. It will be a herculean effort to foster house culture if Residence Life just put 1,300 first years in a new megadorm. Most likely scenario will be a mix of mostly first years, a sizable number of second years and probably some third and fourth years. But then this setup will open the Pandora Box.
1. Where do you pull a whole bunch of second and third years from existing dorms without disrupting their original house culture?
2. How do you grow house culture in the mega dorm? Note Campus North is already big with 800 students. WRC is 50% bigger. In fact, WRC can sleep close to Campus North and Campus South combined together. There will be a lot of houses to establish new identities and cultivate their own culture..
3. We know Stony is closing. So I would assume the entire Stony population will be moved to WRC. That is a no brainer. But would Residence Life close I-House and move everyone to WRC? That is a distinct possibility. So for all parents that have kids assigned to I-House, it may as well be the swan song for undergrad at I-House. Your kids may be moving dorms en masse next year. By 2020-2021 school year I-House will then revert back to its original role to accommodate international scholars and grad students.
4. Another possibility as suggested by @JBStillFlying is to let grad students (to be more specific, Law School students) to live in WRC. They will appreciate the short commute to Law School. But it may upset Dean Boyer's cherished plan to put all the College students in dorm.
All in all the arrival of WRC will completely upend the current dorm culture at the College. Probably it will take 2 to 3 years to sort things out.
I drove by the construction site yesterday and all the towers are up. Right now workers are putting up windows and fixing the interior. Woodlawn Residential Commons (WRC) will be ready for Class of 2024.
According to UChicago website, WRC will have 891 units and can accommodate 1,298 students. Using the ideal class size asserted by Dean Boyer (total College population of 7,000) , WRC can accommodate 74% of the incoming class.
Yet, will WRC be wholly first years? Highly unlikely. It will be a herculean effort to foster house culture if Residence Life just put 1,300 first years in a new megadorm. Most likely scenario will be a mix of mostly first years, a sizable number of second years and probably some third and fourth years. But then this setup will open the Pandora Box.
1. Where do you pull a whole bunch of second and third years from existing dorms without disrupting their original house culture?
2. How do you grow house culture in the mega dorm? Note Campus North is already big with 800 students. WRC is 50% bigger. In fact, WRC can sleep close to Campus North and Campus South combined together. There will be a lot of houses to establish new identities and cultivate their own culture..
3. We know Stony is closing. So I would assume the entire Stony population will be moved to WRC. That is a no brainer. But would Residence Life close I-House and move everyone to WRC? That is a distinct possibility. So for all parents that have kids assigned to I-House, it may as well be the swan song for undergrad at I-House. Your kids may be moving dorms en masse next year. By 2020-2021 school year I-House will then revert back to its original role to accommodate international scholars and grad students.
4. Another possibility as suggested by @JBStillFlying is to let grad students (to be more specific, Law School students) to live in WRC. They will appreciate the short commute to Law School. But it may upset Dean Boyer's cherished plan to put all the College students in dorm.
All in all the arrival of WRC will completely upend the current dorm culture at the College. Probably it will take 2 to 3 years to sort things out.