"The new residential village will give us some relief, but we need to keep moving forward."

-Regina Sargent

Increased demand for on-campus housing has New Jersey's nine colleges and universities struggling to accommodate their resident students. It is estimated that 20,000 high school seniors this year vied for 9,000 slots statewide.

At the beginning of the semester, Montclair State had 300 students on its campus housing waiting list. Regina Sargent, director of Residence Life, has managed to place 100 of those students and hopes to provide lodging for the 200 remaining on the list by January. She also is eagerly awaiting the opening in the fall of the University's new student residential village on Clove Road, which will house 840 juniors and seniors.

Drawing on the 14 years' experience she gained as associate director for Student and Staff Development/Residence Life at Binghamton University in New York, Sargent recognizes that her responsibilities to resident students are not satisfied once she provides a bed. She is attempting to build a residence life culture that will enrich students' social and academic experience at the University.

Q. How are you managing the overflow of resident students?
A. We're constantly placing students wanting to live on campus as vacancies arise. We probably will be able to house most of them, but we don't yet know what the returning student population will be in January. We're trying to make decisions and communicate to students on the waiting list what the probability will be for them to obtain housing come January based on how many current resident students will cancel, study abroad or graduate. We've asked those students to let us know by the end of November.


Q. How much relief will the new residential village bring to resident students?
A. Montclair State houses approximately 2,300 students, but we're growing. We anticipate that 40 percent of our student population will live on campus by 2008. The new residential village will give us some relief, but we need to keep moving forward. We're working on plans for additional phase two housing, which involves tearing down the old Clove Road apartments and replacing them with what we hope will be a new 1,000-bed facility that may include classrooms and community space. We're dreaming now, but we need to move quickly because we're aiming for an opening date of fall 2005. We're also discussing a freshman and sophomore dining hall and how to go about renovating the existing buildings.

Q. How does Residence Life's agenda fit into the University's strategic plan?
A. Several initiatives in the strategic plan talk about partnering with academic programs to provide opportunities for faculty to work with students beyond the classroom setting. We're considering specialty floors where students from particular programs live together in special interest housing. For instance, Dean [Robert] Prezant of the College of Science and Mathematics (CSAM) and I are talking about students from CSAM living on a floor together. This will allow faculty to do some evening programming so science and mathematic students can interact with each other and with faculty. This is just one example.

Q. How do you plan to build a weekend culture on campus?
A. Introducing special interest housing also works toward our goal of developing a campus culture where students stay here on the weekends. In addition, several departments within the Division of Student Development and Campus Life have been given initiatives to ensure that we program and work together collaboratively to provide activities for students to stay here on the weekends.

Q. Tell us about some weekend activities you sponsor.
A. We're just coming off Homecoming weekend, which this year drew a lot of student participation. We also sponsored Family Weekend, with activities facilitated by Residence Life and the New Student Experience. In addition to that, a busload of students traveled to New York to see "Into the Woods" on Broadway, and on Nov. 10 we're taking students to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center to see "Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk." We're utilizing local resources, as well as what's on campus, to make sure students see there is a vast wealth of activities here. There already are a lot of things to do both on and off campus on the weekends, and I think we need to focus on promoting them better.

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