It was finally move-in day for Haley Griffin, a first-semester freshman at UTSA, where she’ll be a psychology major when classes start Monday.
She had anticipated this day for over a year.
Under the beaming Tuesday afternoon sun, dozens of students moved their belongings into Chaparral Village. Griffin pushed a heavy cart, while next to her, her dad pushed two at once. They each broke a sweat alongside the other students and parents moving in.
A cart flipped over and spilled Griffin’s belongings onto the hot sidewalk. While frustrated and tired, they handled the mishap calmly and stayed focused on getting to building seven.
Griffin is one of 4,600 students flocking to campus for UTSA’s move-in week.
UTSA has traditionally been known as a commuter school for most of its 34,000-plus students, but as enrollment rises, so has demand for housing on campus.
Students aren’t required to live on campus, but a growing number of UTSA students are seeking on-campus living at faster rates, filling up housing availability to full capacity months before move-in day, said Christi Fish, senior executive director of university communications.
Meanwhile, UTSA is planning to break ground this fall on a new, $87 million residence hall on the university’s northwest San Antonio campus, putting the university closer to its goal to have 5,400 beds by 2025. The 160,000-square-foot Blanco Hall will be built at Barshop Boulevard and Tobin Avenue and house about 590 first-year and sophomore students.
Once completed, the new hall will put the university at 5,183 beds.
Just off the main campus, there’s capacity for another 7,200 students in 11 apartment complexes that feature direct services including a daily shuttle service, Fish said, and other students live in the surrounding area.
There is currently no planned housing for students at the university’s growing downtown campus, “but continued growth in the urban core will require us to constantly assess the demand,” UTSA senior associate vice president of real estate, construction and planning Corrina Green said.
The students who do live on campus get a full college experience, Fish said, with amenities like on-campus dining, proximity to the library and camaraderie with peers.
There are currently five residence halls on UTSA’s main campus, plus a housing community managed by a third-party company, Campus Living Villages.
At each hall, two to three student resident assistants help connect residents to resources on campus and host events to promote community.
Dashyra Cleveland, a resident assistant, said she noticed more people at the RA training this year. Combined with an increase of people in the shared bathrooms and full parking lots, she said more people want to live on campus because most classes are being held in-person.
Out of five classes, only one of Cleveland’s classes is online.
According to Cleveland, spots filled up across all the residence halls months before move-in, even though UTSA is surrounded by plenty of apartment complexes along UTSA Blvd.
“For housing, housing was already booked in April or May. We were at full capacity a few weeks after the link dropped,” Cleveland said.
Veronica Salazar, chief enterprise development officer for UTSA, said students’ desire to live on campus is growing.
“UTSA is a university on the rise. That growth comes with creating spaces for students to live and study,” Salazar said. “Students are saying, ‘We want a full campus experience.’”
Griffin hopes that living on campus will help her better understand the community and meet other students, as well as stay on track in her studies.
“If I wasn’t living on campus, I don’t think I’ll still be attending college,” Cleveland said, adding that living in university housing will keep her on task. “I’m right by the library, so let me go to the library real quick because I’m on campus.”
This story has been updated to correctly refer to the cost of Blanco Hall and the size of the student body.
