Music from The Blaze competes with the chatter of passing students as they walk down Taylor Mall. Each year it seems like more students find themselves walking the familiar path to class. Classes seem fuller, crowds look larger.
This year, 9,367 students are taking classes downtown.
The Downtown campus opened in 2006 and has grown substantially in its five years of operation. Students taking classes at the Downtown campus have increased by around 1,100 people since last year, or 14 percent, said Terri Shafer, associate vice president of marketing and strategic communications for ASU’s Office of Public Affairs.
The campus was projected to cater to 15,000 students, so for now, Shafer does not see an immediate space problem.
Walter Cronkite School Dean Christopher Callahan, who was recently appointed vice provost to the campus, said he is surprised by the campus’s growth.
“If you had told me personally, five years ago, that we’re going to go from no campus to a campus with four colleges, thousands of students taking classes, a full dorm across the street — I would say you’re nuts,” he said.
With recent talk about moving ASU’s law school to the Downtown campus comes an additional possible issue of space for the campus, as well as housing. The Arizona Board of Regents must also approve any movement of a school.
During the last Board of Regents meeting, the three state universities requested approval of their Fiscal Years 2013-2015 Capital Improvement Plans. According to the board book for the meeting, ASU’s plan did not include any request about relocating another school downtown. The Downtown campus is the only one of the four campuses not mentioned in ASU’s plan.
Shafer said she and others cannot make any speculations about what would happen if another college moved downtown.
With the rapid growth of the campus, measures will have to be taken to accommodate new needs, especially with housing. If numbers keep growing at this rate, Taylor Place will overflow.
Currently, Taylor Place is the only dormitory servicing the downtown campus. In 2008, Taylor Place had 445 residents, and this year there are 1,115 students living there. The building’s maximum capacity is 1,254.
Callahan said there have been discussions about expansion, but they remain just that — discussions. He also said it’s likely the next dorms to be built would be apartment-style housing for upperclassmen and graduate students.
Richard Stanley, senior vice president and university planner for the campus, agreed the campus has grown more quickly than anticipated. Stanley said the original conception for Taylor Place included a third tower and the current two-tower facility presents an issue of space that is inevitable in a growing campus.
“The city owns a property over on McKinley Street. That is a possibility,” Stanley said.
Stanley originally thought it would take longer for students to “warm up” to the Downtown campus. Part of the growth could be attributed to a high level of student interest in what the campus has to offer.
However, another contributing factor is the requirement for all freshmen to live on campus. Some students like those in Barrett, the Honors College, are required to live on campus two years, increasing the number expected to live in Taylor Place.
Tower one is devoted to freshmen, plus some community assistants. Yet an overflow of some freshmen students into tower two is a sign of the increase in the student body.
Samantha Lloyd, a senior broadcast student who went undeclared her first semester so she could live in Tempe, said she has noticed an increase in online journalism classes since she came to ASU. This may be one way Downtown campus officials are coping with the rapid growth that they cannot physically sustain.
Lloyd says she feels the campus has not grown as much as she expected. She says she would still choose Tempe today because she feels there isn’t enough to do downtown.
However, there are plans to give Downtown students more options. A new extension of the Lincoln Family YMCA will be added for students, Callahan said. Its completion is expected as early as next school year. Plans for a cafe area next to the post office and additional construction of Civic Space Park are also possibilities for the future of the campus.
Contact the reporter at annika.cline@asu.edu
