UVU offers freshman housing option for the first time
Mar 13, 2024, 7:00 AM
A sign on the campus of Utah Valley University, where entrepreneur Jamie Kern Lima was a featured speaker for graduation. (Gabriel Mayberry/UVU Marketing)
(Gabriel Mayberry/UVU Marketing)
OREM, Utah — Utah Valley University will now offer on-campus housing to freshmen.
The college partnered with The Green on Campus Drive, a private housing facility, to provide 500 beds to incoming freshmen, from ages 18-24. The facility is adjacent to the campus.
“They [the company] are directly across from our Noorda Center so we approached them about this idea of providing freshman housing and they were 110% on board,” said UVU Dean of Students Alexis Palmer.
Palmer said this came about because UVU saw a need to help freshmen feel more connected to the community.
“We have seen since COVID, a significant decline in student connectedness,” Palmer said. “In a lot of the surveys that we’ve done, we’ve noticed that students were just really struggling with feeling isolated. We wanted to be able to address that piece of it, as well as addressing the housing piece of students feeling more connected to UVU.”
UVU will also be training people to help freshmen connect to academic and social resources on campus.
“We are also going to provide residential community leaders who will be in those buildings and living with the freshman students and creating these community building opportunities, as well as focus on key freshman topics,” Palmer said.
UVU housing applications are open now for the fall semester.
