News & Communications
UK Committee Recommends Moving Forward with RFPs on Dining Services Operation
"Last year, the Board of Trustees - responding to the voices of faculty, students and staff throughout our campus - articulated an ambitious and farsighted agenda to transform our campus infrastructure -- a critical path to take in enhancing undergraduate education and helping ensure that we have the capacity to improve learning and research space," said UK President Eli Capilouto.
UK has 22 undergraduate residence halls that house nearly 5,200 students. The average age of the residence halls is 45 years. Over 80 percent of the rooms are "traditional" configuration, which is a small double occupied room on each side of the hallway with common bath/showers down the hall. The focus on providing modern housing is intentional. Expanded living and learning communities will contribute to student success. Students do much better academically and graduate sooner when they live on campus, where they can engage more readily with faculty and in university life.
As we rebuild and expand the residence hall system, dining facilities will be impacted: they will be moved, renovated and/or rebuilt. We will need expanded capacity. This growth of the campus and residence hall transformation underscores the importance of examining where future dining facilities are located. That process already is well underway with demolition of K-Lair in May 2013. Dining will be impacted by the phased demolition of current residence halls and expansion for new on-campus residence halls and the student center.
The plan is to construct between 7,000 to 9,000 new residence hall beds and to phase demolition of timeworn student housing over the next 5-7 years. A new 601-bed residence hall, focusing on Honors students, opened in August 2013. Another 2,381 beds in five residence halls on four sites spread across campus are under construction now and will be open in August 2014. Additionally, 1,610 beds in three residence halls on one site under construction now and will be open in August 2015.
Also, in a time of continued economic challenges and change we must ask the question about how to best deliver critically important dining services to our students, faculty and staff in the highest quality and in the most cost-effective manner. A request for proposals (RFP) will be released in mid-September to solicit responses from potential business partners.