One of the region's colleges is facing some unexpected challenges, thanks to a problem other colleges would do anything to have.
Culver-Stockton College said its incoming class is much larger than anticipated at nearly 350 students.
Admissions Director Misty McBee said this is the third consecutive year where the incoming class topped 300.
"C-SC's growing enrollment has been a community effort," said McBee.
She said the high enrollment numbers come at a time when retention rates are at record levels and nearly 95% of the student body lives on campus in Canton, Mo.
"There are so many great things happening on campus, and people want to share in that," said McBee.
She said the result is that there are not enough dorm rooms to handle the new students, so some extra office space and under-utilized areas in the three existing residence halls are being renovated.
"So it will be nice, comfortable living," said McBee. "I don’t want to worry anybody that we are going to move beds into offices. We are completely gutting that end of the building and building it into a nice residential space.”
McBee said the work should be done by the end of July.
She said the college's Office of Student Life will have to be relocated because it was housed in one of the residence halls.
This could speed up talk of building another residence hall on campus, especially as the college nears its goal of an enrollment exceeding one-thousand students.
