Update 10/18/24: The original story stated that both sections of FIN 3310 would be held in the Draper Academic Building’s Bennett Auditorium. According to Melissa Landrum, office manager for the department of finance, both sections of FIN 3310 have successfully been scheduled for classroom space in Foster this spring.
By Josh Siatkowski | Staff Writer
When The Paul L. Foster Campus for Business and Innovation opened in fall 2015, it provided a 40% increase in square footage compared to the Hankamer building. In the nine years since then, Baylor’s school of business quickly grew into the space and might just as quickly be growing out of it.
The crunch for space comes for a couple of reasons. First, the business school has grown in enrollment since Foster’s opening. Data from the office of institutional research shows that in fall of 2015, enrollment in the business school was 3,704, and there were 4,284 total majors being pursued — the difference between these numbers is the result of double majors. Those numbers stand in stark contrast to 2024, which shows a moderate increase in enrollment to 3,866. More notably, there are now 5,272 total majors.
With more students and more majors comes more classes. Lapes said that this has impacted the stress on Foster’s classrooms.
“We certainly have more sections now that we’re trying to schedule for the business school overall, given the enrollment,” Lapes said. “My experience has been that the schedule has gotten fuller, and in that sense, less flexible.”
The business school’s master schedule, which Lapes designs, shows that too. The master schedule is an allocation system that gives each department a specific number of classrooms of a specific size during each period.
Assuming each department uses their entire allotment — which Lapes said happens often — the following is true.
Of the 35 classroom spaces typically available, every single one is full on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the 8, 9:30 and 11 a.m. sections. The afternoon sections are right behind, with 33 classrooms occupied during the 12:30 and 2 p.m. class periods, and just one being empty in the 3:30 p.m. window.
While Lapes said that the 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. window for Tuesday and Thursday is the “prime time” for enrollment in the business school, Monday, Wednesday and Friday classes are just as busy. There is not an empty classroom until the 12:20 p.m. period, where the lunch break sees only 8 of the 35 classrooms being used. The 1:25 p.m. window has four empty classrooms, and full capacity is reached again by 2:30 p.m..
But aside from the increased enrollment and majors, there is another factor putting stress on classroom space.
“The other place where we’ve had more pressure is the classrooms of larger sizes,” Lapes said.
In recent years, introductory classes like finance and accounting have switched from having numerous small and mid-sized sections to being consolidated into one or two larger sections. The problem, however, is that of the business school’s 35 classrooms, only nine of these are considered large. The largest of these rooms by far is the McClinton Auditorium, which holds 350 people.
“The dean really wants all business school classes taught in Foster, which I certainly agree with,” Lapes said.
But the reality is that this cannot happen with the current enrollment and class section structure. Allocation is already a challenge, and increasing enrollment would further this challenge.
However, increasing enrollment is also hard to avoid, said economics professor and Chair Dr. Jim Henderson. Henderson said that as a tuition-driven school, the university’s budget can only really increase with higher enrollment. This incentivizes continued expansion of the business school — expansion that cannot necessarily be housed with the facilities Foster has today.
According to Baylor’s 2023-2024 financial report, tuition accounted for nearly 62% of operating revenues last year.
There is another thing that has to be remembered when enrollment grows: faculty has to grow along with it. Judging by space in the economics department, that could also be a challenge.
According to Henderson, the economics department had multiple vacant offices when Foster opened and they moved into the economics suite. Now, however, the economics suite is completely full — and then some. Three members of the economics faculty are housed in the Baylor Business Fellows Suite, and four more are in the Robbins Institute for Health Policy and Leadership. Of those four, two economics faculty are completely unaffiliated with the Robbins Institute.
While the economics department is hard-pressed for office space, Henderson said some things could be done.
“We could deal with [bringing on more faculty] given the current space. We just have to be a little more creative in how we use our office space,” Henderson said. “A lot of our faculty is on what you might call non-traditional teaching loads. They teach four courses in one semester, and then they do research the next semester. If you have two faculty that are doing that, you can … share an office.”
Because of these potential changes, Henderson said he’s more concerned with how the growth will affect class space. While he said that “the next five years is probably going to be relying on piecemeal changes in the floor plan,” a long term solution remains to be found.
