Growing Student Population Needs Classrooms
By Julian Castillo
With the incoming freshman representing a 4 percent growth in undergraduate quota, it is clear our small community is growing.
Recent additions to student housing such as Graham Hall and the University Villas show the university has understood the demand for more housing space not only for the underclassmen but for upperclassmen as well.
Unfortunately, what has not changed recently is the number of classrooms available for classes. Santa Clara's most recent academic building, Lucas Hall, was built in 2008 for business classes. As the student population and amount of classes offered yearly increases, students and teachers are going to have to change their once-comfortable accommodations.
Even the administration will have to make adjustments to the overpopulation on campus since one of our school's major selling points is our low student-to-teacher ratio, making for a more intimate classroom experience.
The current average student-to-faculty ratio is a relatively low 13:1, a privilege that has become increasingly rare as more and more high school students attend college. To keep the ratio standing in the future, the school will have to accommodate by hiring more teachers.
Consequently, this means that more classrooms would have to be available to make room for an expanding staff, especially to hold multiple classes of the same subject. This is already a common practice among introductory courses in various subjects to meet the demand for core or required classes.
Another option - one that might be more economically feasible than hiring new staff members - is to hold more classes at night. From personal experience, many of my own friends and I have already had to adjust to this change.
To have classes that go well into the evening spreads out classroom usage throughout the day so that students and teachers can meet more regularly. It also allows for teachers to choose more flexible office hours to meet with students. Students, on the other hand, may not enjoy this option due to its invasiveness into their non-academic activities.
Finally, the last option I can foresee is probably the most impractical: building more classrooms for students and teachers to keep their class sizes small enough for intimate interaction. The school is obviously limited to the space in our community, which is it is constructing new buildings on new lots, like the fine arts building. What is possible is adding more classrooms to current buildings, building new floors or converting certain rooms in non-academic buildings into classroom space. In fact, this method is already being used; we hold several classes in Sobrato Hall, Casa Italiana and Graham Hall.
However, creating classrooms in dorm halls may just be a temporary solution to the problem of a growing population. The rising population combined with stagnant classroom capacity will eventually and inevitably become an issue that will have to be dealt with in a major way.
Julian Castillo is a sophomore philosophy and English double major.