Mauck Residence Hall is scheduled to be renovated beginning this summer.
Vivigan Hughbanks | Collegian
Renovations to Mauck Residence Hall are set to begin after commencement this year and continue until second semester in the 2016-2017 school year.
“We are excited and thankful to get the renovations,” Mauck Head Resident Assistant Katie Scheu said. “They are much-needed and mean a lot to all the people living here.”
Plans for renovations throughout the dorm include new plumbing, electrical wiring, and heating systems, and the rooms themselves will receive new carpeting, sinks, ceilings, walls, and floors. Changes include moving bathrooms to a central location on each floor and stacking them so that the plumbing lines up more neatly than it currently does.
“Most of the dorm has not been well-maintained,” Chief Administration Officer Rich Péwé said. “Because of its age, it needs a gutting and modernization, making it costly to renovate per room.”
The college built Mauck in the 1940s, and Péwé said the cost of renovation is about $3 million. The high cost is necessary, though, since many of Mauck’s facilities have nearly degraded to a point of intolerance by residents, Scheu said.
“The old system of heating is loud and always keeps people up in the dorms,” Scheu said. “We’ve been trying to revamp Mauck’s reputation, since fewer people have wanted to live here than in past years because of the issues.”
Assistant Dean of Women Rebeckah Dell said the Mauck RA staff has done a good job of keeping residents patriotic about their dormitory, since she said she agrees the outdated facility is the cause of the lower demand.
“It used to be one of the places everyone wanted,” Dell said. “It used to draw the studious woman, who was very involved up the hill, but we’ve seen fewer requests for rooms there recently.”
She and Péwé said they hope the renovations will return the dorm to the esteemed place on campus it used to have, something she said she has already seen. Even though renovations have not even begun, Dell said there is high demand for living in Mauck next year.
She said Mauck’s RA staff have also helped make the many challenges that accompany the renovations run smoothly. Chief among these challenges is arranging living accommodations for the women who are assigned to live in Mauck during the 2016-2017 school year.
The renovations are comprehensive throughout the dorm, meaning the women set to live in Mauck during next year’s fall semester will have to move into off-campus housing.
So far, the college has reserved the Park Place and Boardwalk residences for these women, and the RA staff at Mauck reported a confident attitude toward the move among Mauck residents.
“People are looking at it as an adventure,” Scheu said. “I haven’t heard any negative attitudes. It’s a good opportunity for people to live off-campus and on-campus. They get to live in an apartment with their friends, but then get to return to the dorms afterward.”
“There are a lot of big challenges, but Mauck’s staff has made them run smoothly,” Scheu added.
