UALR Outgrowing Its Space

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock is spreading out and making room for students along the way. The campus is considering building a new dorm, somewhere near the current one. The current one holds three hundred beds which are all booked up for the fall. The waiting list to get in is 30 students long. But most students at UALR are not the traditional kind. "I have a stepson that`s 10 and a daughter that`s 12, and my husband," said Gwen Kleiser. She makes the trip from her family in McGee at least twice a week. "It`s the closest university that offers masters in counseling within driving distance. I`m 2 hours away, the next campus would be Fayetteville," she said. Hers is a situation many students at UALR have in common. "There are a lot of people here who`re place-bound, and work here, and have families here," said UALR Provost Dr. David Belcher. Five years ago, in 1999, the campus enrollled over 10,700 students. This year`s enrollment is up slightly, to 10,900. Forty-five percent of them are 25 and over. The university says the slow growth is good, but with only one dorm, they`ll need to consider another. "One of the things the faculty and students have been telling us is that we need a greater sense of campus community and one way we dan do that is build more resident facilities," Belcher explained. Other signs of growth include new parking lots and a new events center to open in the spring. "That too will bring a sense of community to the campus, because people will come there not only from on-campus, but also off-campus for the various events that we`ll have there," Belcher said. UALR is still in the process of purchasing University Plaza, that would extend the campus to the corner of University and Asher. The school says they`re not sure yet what they`ll use it for, but the purchase should be complete by the end of the year. Meanwhile, if the campus does decide to build a new dorm, it would use about $20 million from a bond package for the University of Arkansas System.