The SAU Buzz

Issue date: 3/4/10 Section: News

Media Credit: The Buzz/ File Photo Ambrose offers plenty of housing options including Hagen Hall (top) which offers single rooms in apartments and New Hall (bottom) which is apartment style with double rooms. Hagen is the current academic community and next year, it will be New Hall

Living on campus at St. Ambrose University is highly recommended for freshman and sophomore students, because it increases interaction with others and builds relationships. Once those relationships are built in the first or second year, students have the privilege of moving out of Rohlman Hall, Bechtel Hall, Davis Hall or Cosgrove Hall and into preferred housing. Another way to get into preferred housing is by applying for academic housing as a sophomore. For the past three years of academic housing it seems like it changes every year, but this year it is not the only thing that has changed. Junior and seniors also get a chance to move off campus without having a cap on their financial aid and scholarships.
Academic housing is relatively new to the SAU campus and may seem like it has been moving from building to building and it has. Each year juniors and seniors feel like they have gotten cheated out of their living privileges due to an academic wing in a preferred building.
Academic housing started in Tiedemann Hall, as an honor for academically driven sophomore students.
"We felt that it was a really good location for it, the problem was we wanted academic housing to seem like a real honor," Matt Hansen, assistant dean of students and director of Residence Life and housing, said. "That year we were full and we started placing sophomores that did not get into academic housing in Tiedemann. So the end result was it seemed like less of an honor then we wanted it to be because it was no different from the sophomores."
Hagen was then looked at as a good location for academic housing but the challenges for the Residence Life Department grew. The challenges with Hagen were the four and six person apartments, but the benefits seemed to weigh out the challenges.
"I think it has worked this year but the advisor community and the students really felt that moving toward New Hall made good sense," Hansen stated. "They are all four person apartments and the academic floors would only take two floors. There was some feedback that people couldn't get into Hagen when it was promised to be a senior building and we took half of it away, but really the placement was really difficult because groups of six and groups of four were applied and it was messy."

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