The construction of the Anderson Arena and Schoenecker Center — in addition to the planned construction of new STEM centers and a new baseball and softball stadium — has meant the expansion of new facilities and opportunities across St. Thomas’ campus.
At the same time, housing options have only seemed to become more scarce; most recently, 130 rising juniors and seniors received housing out of the 400 that applied, according to Director of Student Affairs Karen Lange in a Feb. 27 USG meeting.
“It’s definitely strained in that margins have gotten a lot tighter and numbers have been growing,” Residence Life Director Aaron Macke said.
Macke describes the ratio of available housing to the on-campus population as an ebb and flow, in which uncontrollable events like the pandemic or bad publicity can create dips in enrollment that mean beds go unused.
“Just as I know there’s some strain right now, I also know that in two years we could be like, ‘Hey, we’ve got 2,900 beds and we only have 2,800 students, and this is not a good use of our beds, good use of our revenue,’” Macke said.
Still, the university lost 90 beds when it demolished Cretin Residence Hall in 2024 to make space for the Anderson Arena — and Macke said that the university is in ongoing conversations to develop more housing due to a “genuine desire” to provide options to students who seek to live on-campus beyond their two-year on-campus living requirement.
On the other side of the issue is the university’s 2021 move to Division I, which Vice President for Business Affairs and CFO Mark Vangsgard said will bring more eyes to the university, especially since the NCAA has cleared St. Thomas for playoff competition in 2025-26.
Those eyes won’t necessarily translate into more students, though; Vangsgard said that the university will still aim to maintain an undergraduate population of 6,000 to 6,500 students.
“Once we get 64, 65, 6,600 (students), now somewhere out there, then we need more classrooms, then we need more faculty to make sure our class sizes are small,” Vangsgard said. “Then we need more offices for faculty, … so there gets to be a point where the next step creates a lot of investment in terms of facilities with a real, if you will, marginal kind of payback.”
Vangsgard said that the university is aiming for D-I buzz to build interest in St. Thomas so much so that it develops a waiting list for undergraduate admissions — something it has not had in years.
“If we’ve got a waiting list, we don’t have to provide as much unfunded discount to students when they come because if you don’t want to come, that’s fine; there’s somebody right next to you that’s in the waiting list that’s going to come,” Vangsgard said.
He said that each individual student’s aid package will still be worked through on an individual basis and that he hoped the shift would not mean that St. Thomas would become more exclusive.
“I would like to believe it’s not ‘exclusive,’” Vangsgard said. “I would like to believe it’s ‘different’ and ‘in demand.’”
Vangsgard said that the university is in the process of creating a new strategic plan after the expiration of its 2025 plan, though he said it will not contain any plans that are “that monumental” after the latter’s account for the additions of the Schoenecker Center and law and nursing schools, among others.
“A lot of the things that were in the last one, we’ve started and we’re at various stages through the processes for those different activities, but we need to really digest what we’ve started, what we’re doing, and finish those things off,” Vangsgard said.
Kevin Lynch can be reached at lync1832@stthomas.edu.
