Jon Vestal, vice president for institutional advancement at Lyon College in Batesville, said the school’s recent improvements make the campus feel like a home away from home for students. Edwards Commons — which houses a dining room and bistro — serves as the kitchen, and classrooms serve as living rooms where students spend a lot of their time, but the student body has outgrown the bedroom — residence halls — of their collegiate home.
On the east side of campus, work is being done to expand the college’s residence options, and Lyon recently received a $400,000 grant to help in this effort.
Lyon College currently has room for 437 students to live on campus. There are just less than 700 residential students, which means the school has had to provide living accommodations in college-owned houses surrounding the campus. Two new residence halls are being constructed, which will bring the campus’s capacity up to 648.
The new residence halls will be located on either side of Young House, one of the current residence buildings on the far east side of campus. The new buildings, which are expected to be completed by the fall 2015 semester, are being built in a “house model,” which means bedrooms will be placed around the perimeter of the building, and several individual bathrooms — each with a toilet, vanity and shower — will be located on the interior.
“It’s just like living at home when you live with your brother or sister, and you share this bathroom,” Vestal said. “It’s not like the Jack-and-Jill bathrooms in suite-style dorms and not the ‘gang’ bathroom at the end of the hall.”
The building design, which was introduced to the college by architects at Witsell Evans Rasco Architects/Planners of Little Rock, also allows for more beds than other dorm designs.
“It was sort of a happy accident,” Vestal said. “In the same square footage and the same footprint, in this setup, we pick up one or two rooms per floor. For the same money, the same square footage, we can house more students. It wasn’t the reason we did it, but we’re certainly happy we could take advantage of that opportunity.”
Gina Block Garrett, executive director of advancement at Lyon College, said students are excited about the design, partially because maintenance of the bathrooms will fall on the college’s staff, not the students themselves.
“In the Jack-and-Jill format, they were responsible for cleaning their own bathrooms,” she said. “In this setup, our maintenance staff can get in and clean the restrooms without literally going through the students’ personal space.”
The new buildings are estimated to cost $10 million. The funding for the project is coming from private support, mainly private donations and grants, and not from students’ tuition.
“We have a strong commitment here at Lyon that tuition dollars go for education,” Vestal said. “We will maintain that approach.”
The recent $400,000 grant was awarded through the Roy and Christine Sturgis Charitable Trust. Most grants from the trust are for one year, but this grant will be awarded in four $100,000 installments. The trust was established in 1981 with the goal of promoting quality educational, cultural and human services, along with health care programming.
“We are truly grateful to the Sturgis Charitable Trust for their ongoing support of Lyon College,” Lyon President Donald Weatherman said in a press release. “It is especially helpful as we work to grow our student population to better serve this community.”
Another grant for $500,000 has been awarded through the J.E. and L.E. Mabee Foundation of Tulsa. Garrett said it is a challenge grant, meaning the college has to raise money in order to claim the grant.
The new buildings will increase the residential accommodations by 50 percent, and Vestal said the ability to bring in more students helps spread out some other costs on campus.
“We don’t want to continue to raise tuition,” he said. “We would rather raise — slightly — the number of students we have to be able to spread out some of those fixed costs, whether it’s personnel, health care, maintenance, things like that. We don’t need any more groundskeepers if we have 600 students or if we have 850 students. We’re able to spread those out by growing slightly while maintaining our identity as a small, private, liberal arts college.”
Also at Lyon College, several athletics facilities are in the works to accommodate new programs. There is a recently constructed football practice field, and Vestal said an indoor wrestling facility and a football field house are in the works and are expected to be completed by October, weather permitting.
Staff writer Angela Spencer can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or aspencer@arkansasonline.com.