Groundbreaking Set For Friday On North Village Residential Community

May 15, 2003

by Lori Scott Fogleman

Baylor University will hold a ceremonial groundbreaking for the North Village Residential Community at 2 p.m. Friday, May 16. The ceremony will take place under a tent at the construction site adjacent to the Dutton Avenue Office and Parking Facility and the Rogers Engineering and Computer Science Building. A reception will follow the ceremony.
The $33 million, 212,000-square-foot North Village complex is the university's first residential facility to be built in 40 years and addresses the second imperative of Baylor 2012, the university's 10-year vision - "to create a truly residential campus." Baylor's goal is to have at least 50 percent of undergraduates living on campus by 2012.
Scheduled to open in fall 2004, the North Village also represents Baylor's first Campus Living and Learning partnership with an academic unit, with 180 of the facility's 600 beds reserved for engineering and computer science students. The other beds will be available for sophomores and up from other academic disciplines. Although the new approach is modeled after similar programs at the University of Maryland, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Ohio State, Baylor's will be the first in Texas. The closest comparison is at Rice, where students are housed in academic colleges.
Participants in the groundbreaking ceremony will include Baylor Regents, President Robert B. Sloan Jr., Engineering and Computer Science Dean Benjamin Kelley, division of student life staff members, the Engineering and Computer Science/Living Learning Center steering committee, and engineering and computer science students.
For more information about the groundbreaking, call 710-8857 or Lori Scott Fogleman, director of media relations, at (254) 710-6275 or mobile (254) 744-4426.