By Lesly Villegas
Going into final exams, students have found themselves circling Dominican University searching for a study space. Competing with more students for a brief time slot in less and less space.
This hits home for Britney Vazquez.
“As a senior in the nursing program with two hours of study time, you are barely starting to get the hang of things, and your study time is already up,” she said. “This time should most certainly be extended due to the fact it does take some students longer to study.”
Undergraduate enrollment has been climbing steadily at Dominican for the past five years. Since fall 2021 Dominican has added nearly 600 undergraduates for a total of 2,642; over the same time, more than 150 additional graduate students have enrolled.
But recently the need for office space has been winning out over the need for student study space. Dominican has been getting more federal money for student support, according to Samina Hadi-Tabassum, senior director for student academic support, “One of the things that happened was we won huge federal grants, and we had to hire people to work on those federal grants,” she said. “That meant they needed office spaces…this meant less space for study space.”
The conversion of two study rooms into offices last year angered students who started a petition to reclaim those spaces. These spaces are now available as study rooms for students.
Hadi-Tabassum mentioned another factor that has caused the limited study space.
“There are more students who need accommodation. On an average day we get anywhere between 5 to 10 students who need test accommodation,” she said. “That means we need space for them to be able to take the test by themselves in a secure space. So, some of those study spaces are used for testing accommodations.”
This results in students having a difficult time finding a study space on campus during the day. Most study spaces are only available in the early morning or after 4 p.m. Study rooms also typically need to be booked a day or two before. Students can only reserve these study rooms once a day for up to two hours. Many question if this is enough time.
Saniya Witherspoon also suggests that the two-hour reservation is not enough. “I think two hours is not enough time, there should be an option to extend the time. Maybe two and a half hours or three hours,” said Witherspoon.
Some students say that to resolve this space crunch there should be more rooms, longer library hours, and maybe professors offering their offices.
Hadi-Tabassum suggests that students should work in groups since students are more successful when they have a study group. She also suggests that the Student Success and Engagement (SSE) should create a map for all students that says all the possible places that you can study, socialize, or be by yourself. This map can be given to incoming students at SOAR orientations and placed on campus as well.
