Enrollment Growth + Space Assessment

• The goal of the Campus Master Plan is to provide direction and clarity for future campus development.
• The enrollment utilized in this analysis is converted from the total headcount to full-time equivalent (FTE) then further modified to represent FTE of students who come to campus.
• Ratios from existing enrollment accessed from the UNCW Fall Enrollment: 5 Year Trend dashboard from the Office of Institutional Research & Planning were used to determine FTE On Campus enrollment for both the baseline and future projection. The same ratios were used for the future projections as well. The number used as the baseline enrollment for FTE On Campus was 12,960. The projected future headcount of 22,000 translates to 15,814 FTE On Campus, which equates to 22% growth.
• This analysis has been performed at a master plan level and has not been performed at a program level to provide numbers and types of rooms to meet the requirements of the projections.
• The Space Needs Analysis findings should be viewed as tools and information for decision making and planning, and not as entitlements to space for individual schools or as a defined plan to correct unmet present and future space needs.
• All space in the analysis was projected in assignable square feet (ASF), defined as the area measured within interior walls that can be used by people or programs for a specific use. It did not include circulation and building service space, such as corridors and restrooms, nor did it include the thickness of walls or columns.

Course data was analyzed to understand current utilization of classrooms and class labs, which informs the future space needs for those two space types.

• An average of 62% of available classrooms are in use for face-to-face classes Monday – Thursday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., with the highest usage on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
• 1 building currently exceeds the system guidelines for weekly room hours in classrooms and 9 of the remaining 25 buildings are within 5 hours of the target.
• While the target for classroom usage is 35 weekly room hours, the average among peers is 21.8. 77% of UNCW’s buildings surpass the average weekly room hours among peers within the UNC system.
• The average percentage of student station occupancy in classrooms is below the target of 65% at 61%, but within the range of 60% 75% identified by the system guidelines.
• The classrooms in highest demand seat 40-50 students.

• 7 of the 31 departments exceed the system target for weekly room hours in a class lab, 2 of which are almost double the target.
• About half of the buildings with class labs exceed the system target for weekly room hours and student station occupancy.
• All the metrics are averages summarized by building and department. When considering usage of individual rooms, some of the Biology and Chemistry labs are at almost triple the UNC system target for WRH and at almost full capacity.
• Below lists recommendations to address and respond to the aforementioned utilization findings:
• While outperforming UNCW’s peers, there is still opportunity to better utilize classrooms on campus by scheduling more classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, aligning class sizes with room capacity, and utilizing classrooms as a shared resource across all colleges.
• Since most classrooms are not at 100% occupancy, some seats can be removed to accommodate more active learning environments without impacting the quantity of students scheduled in the room. This will increase student station occupancy, weekly seat hours, and ASF per student station.
• To meet the immediate need for Class Lab space, some Classrooms with lower utilization could potentially be converted into Class Lab space. This will also improve the percentage of rooms used at any given time of day, as displayed in the Time-of-Day chart.
• Additional recommendations are discussed in the full SNA document under section 7.4 Recommendations.

• Campus currently has sufficient classroom space to accommodate near-term growth.
• Class labs are heavily utilized and could benefit from additional space on campus to meet not only future needs, but also address current space needs.
• The spaces with the greatest future delta:
  • Residential, Research, Athletics
• The following space types could also benefit from additional space on campus to support future goals
  • Class Labs, General Use, Recreation, Student Center
• Some space types are experiencing constraints in the existing space on campus, with a noticeable existing delta before factoring in growth:
  • Athletics, Class Labs, Student Center