Oh, to be in college again

After touring the new residence hall at Buena Vista University last Friday afternoon, the consensus among us Baby Boomers was we’d all like to go back to college.

The new building, as yet unnamed, features two and four-person apartments, with individual bathrooms including showers. No more walking down the hallway in your bathrobe and slippers to clean up.

The apartments also include kitchenettes with appliances. Students can fix meals in their rooms or eat in the cafeteria in Siebens Forum. By the way, there’s no reason to go hungry as a student at BV. Their Sodexo meal service, under the direction of Ken Allen, is top notch. We eat there a few times a year on holidays when the cafeteria is open for public dining and always come away full — and impressed.

The new four-story building, Storm Lake’s tallest, will hold about 220 students and is already booked solid for the fall semester. The interior is pretty well complete, with finishing touches like landscaping all that are left before the influx of students in August for the fall semester.

It’s a beautiful addition to Buena Vista’s beautiful lakeside campus. Check out Madeline Combs’s report about this impressive new addition to The City Beautiful in this issue of the Times Pilot. Meanwhile, across campus, work is full steam ahead on the expansion of Siebens Fieldhouse to accommodate growing interest among students in recreation and fitness.

Unlike the old days, when high school graduates were coming out of the woodwork, colleges have to fight for prospective students today. To be competitive, they have to offer amenities like roomy dorms to attract students today. Small liberal arts schools like Buena Vista, especially in areas of declining population like rural Iowa, are also changing their curricula to meet the new demands of learning.

For those of us who went to college in the 1960s, it’s a dramatic change from dorm life then. In the late 1960s colleges were flooded with students who were crammed into every nook and cranny in dormitories. When I went off to school, I and my roommate shared a room that was designed as a single, for one person. There was barely enough room to turn around so we had to sleep in bunk beds.

I remember that at Iowa’s state universities, freshmen were forced to live in study lounges, lobbies and storerooms because of the shortage of space. Buena Vista had the same problem, squeezing students into every corner of Pierce-White Hall as enrollment hit as high as 1,200 students on the Storm Lake campus. While enrollment today is about 25% less, it is growing again under the leadership of President Brian Lenzmeier.

Dr. Lenzmeier spoke to the Storm Lake and St. Mary’s middle and high school honor students Monday noon at the annual Hy-Noon Kiwanis lunch. He encouraged them to become leaders through service and good example. He is the personification of Buena Vista’s motto, “Education for service.”

The Times Pilot is proud to have partnered with Buena Vista for decades. We sponsor the Tina Donath Scholarship for journalism students at BVU in memory of our late, beloved reporter.