Staff Turns Dakota Wesleyan Alumni Building Into Dorm

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Student enrollment at DWU is up, meaning the school has more students than dorm rooms.

Student enrollment at DWU is up, meaning the school has more students than dorm rooms.

By Brian Allen KSFY

In five days, the Dakota Wesleyan University campus in Mitchell will be packed with students...literally.
Enrollment for this year is up over last year and that's good.
Here's what's bad: the school is now scrambling to find room for everyone who wants to live on campus.
Here's how they're getting it done.

All DWU employees are pitching in this week...cleaning, building and getting everything ready for students to come back to Mitchell.
But as administrators do the math they're realizing something.

"We've had somewhat of a housing crisis..." Amy Novak is the executive vice-president at Dakota Wesleyan.
Due to more offerings in their nursing program and a new requirement that some students on scholarship have to live on campus....they have more students than more dorm rooms. "We're about 30-40 students up from where we were at this time last year."

So to make do, Dakota Wesleyan is getting creative:
For example, development offices have been moved out of the Grandy Alumni Center and it has now become on-campus student housing.
These are hopefully short term solutions.
Theresa Kriese is the school vice-president of business and finance. "We have developed a housing task force that will be looking at alternative housing so we can develop more housing on our campus."

Until then, more work to make more room for more students. "This is a good problem to have."

Dakota Wesleyan wants as much on campus housing as possible because they believe it helps students in their studies by making them feel like they're really part of something.

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