New residence hall will help meet student demand for on-campus living

In recent years, Indiana Tech has seen steadily increasing demand from students for on-campus living space. It has become commonplace for there to be a waiting list for space in existing residence halls each fall, making it a challenge to accommodate all the students who wish to live on main campus. This has remained the case even since the opening of Tech’s most recent residence, Summit Hall, in the fall of 2019.

To help meet demand for on-campus living options, the university broke ground this summer on a new residence hall on Schick Street, north of Washington Boulevard and adjacent to the existing Kalbfleisch Hall. The new facility will include 124 rooms spread across four floors, featuring both private rooms with baths along with single bedrooms with shared bath facilities between each pair of rooms. There will also be common areas on each floor, including kitchen space on the first floor for residents to use in preparing their own meals, and outdoor gathering spaces around the building.

The new residence hall will be completed in the summer of 2024, ready for students to move in for the fall semester. The new hall will bring the total number of beds on campus to 812. As the project progresses, stay tuned for news and announcements about the name for the new hall, a full list of building features, photos, video tours and more.

Dr. Dan Stoker, Indiana Tech’s Vice President for Student Affairs, says that current and prospective students helped define the features of the new residence hall.  “As an important part of the process, we surveyed prospective students and conducted focus groups with current students,” he shared. “The feedback we received helped determine everything from the style of rooms to the room rates the market would bear for them. As a result, we’ve been able to design a new residence that will set the standard for university housing in our region.”

Indiana Tech is already well-known for the quality of its on-campus housing, one of many factors that have contributed to the rising demand among students to live on campus. “We are very intentional about working together to create a world-class student experience here at Indiana Tech,” Dr. Stoker notes. “Our entire campus community contributes to making Indiana Tech a welcoming, engaging, supportive place where students want to live. It’s been a welcome challenge to meet the demand among domestic and international students to live right in the middle of everything happening here.”

The benefits go beyond meeting student housing demand, too.  Indiana Tech, like many universities, experiences higher levels of student success and retention among students who live on campus than among those who don’t. “Students feel like they are more a part of things when they’re living right here, and it shows in their participation in classes, events on campus, student organizations and more,” Dr. Stoker says. “The higher level of engagement that comes from living on campus sets them up well to succeed in college and beyond.”