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Nevada State College to break ground on first dorm in fall

Updated September 18, 2019 - 4:38 pm

Nevada State College will break ground on its first on-campus housing building this fall to accommodate the school’s growing student population, President Bart Patterson said in his State of the College address Tuesday.

The 342-bed dorm will be next to the new 65,000-square-foot School of Education building, which is in the earliest stages of construction, with groundbreaking expected in November.

No construction date is set for the dorm yet, but it should be complete by May 2020, allowing students to move in for fall classes, according to Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Operations Kevin Butler.

“Once this starts going up, it’ll go up fast,” Butler said.

Nevada State College is working with American Public Development in a public-private partnership to build the dorm for an estimated cost of about $20 million. American Campus Communities will operate the housing.

A first phase of student housing was expected to be open by fall 2019, but Butler said the project ran into delays because, in part, of funding.

NSC is the second-fastest growing college in the U.S., but the population surge has put pressure on the school’s facilities: With 84 faculty members hired for the beginning of this school year, some are sharing office space in a newly renovated building. Meanwhile, former classrooms have been converted into study spaces as the school tries to eke out as much space as possible for students.

NSC nursing students eventually will share space with CSN Henderson students in a new health sciences building at CSN that is under construction.

With no on-campus housing available, getting to the NSC campus, in the foothills of Henderson, presents another challenge for students, as city buses serve the campus only once an hour. Parking is free, but some spaces are located in satellite lots, meaning students must take a campus shuttle to get to classes.

On-campus housing, particularly for first-year students, has been shown to improve retention and graduation rates.

This article was updated to correct the name of the private entity that will partner with NSC on the dorm.

Contact Aleksandra Appleton at aappleton@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0218. Follow @aleksappleton on Twitter.

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