Brittani Lusk

There are ballroom dancers in the hall and balls flying in the P.E. building. Science students study in another hall, and bathrooms are being converted to offices. Everybody just needs a little space, but it's hard to come by at UVSC.

"We have a real space crisis on campus," Sederburg said earlier this month. "We're out of faculty office space. Our classrooms are totally booked between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m."

Kim Strunk, head of the Dance department, agreed with him that there's a serious problem. She's looking for a spare classroom to hold hip-hop class in because it won't need to be in a studio.

Growth of the open-enrollment school and the increasing number of bachelor's degrees is fueling the problem. UVSC now has 57 bachelor's degrees. It has added 23 since 2005.

Val Peterson, UVSC's vice president of administration and legal affairs, said space is the school's number one concern on campus right now.

"[If] you add four-year degrees you have a need for other types of space. You need labs. You need more dance space," Peterson said.

The school is not only getting bigger, but students in four-year programs tend to stay on campus longer and want to interact more with their professors, so the school needs space that is conducive to that.

Peterson said the school needs 60 new faculty offices by fall. He hopes the school will find the space in the new library set to open July 1, just after the school's UVU debut party. The school also needs more space for science, dance, music and athletics.

Until there is more space, the school will have to figure out how to use the space it has more efficiently.

Strunk is getting used to finding solutions. She created fall's schedule using a mystery space, something that hasn't materialized yet, but she hopes she'll find something.

"Fortunately we're all used to problem solving with complexity," Strunk said.

Without more space, it will take longer for students to finish their majors because they won't be able to fit into the classes they need, because there won't be enough space to offer sections of each class. In the case of dance, the school may have to limit the number of majors allowed in the program or stop offering classes to non-major students. Strunk doesn't like either solution because UVSC's open-access program makes it unique and gives students a chance to study dance that they may not get at other more exclusive programs.

The school of science and health is short lab space for all of the core sciences, such as biology, physics, chemistry and earth science. David Jordan, the assistant dean for the school of science and health, said the Pope Science Building was built when the school only had 5,000 students. Now it is approaching 24,000 students.

Having enough lab space is critical because learning science is hands-on.

"A big thing in science is getting in and actually doing the stuff, doing the science," Jordan said.

The school of science and health may see relief, though. The school is hoping the Legislature will approve a $52 million science building in the future that would double the amount of available square footage.

• Brittani Lusk can be reached at 344-2549 or at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it