In a building designed for 700 students, Seaton Hall hosts 1,000. That number isn’t getting any smaller with the integration of interior design into the College of Architecture Planning and Design.

Michael McClure, dean of the College of Architecture, said while he was very proud of their new building, it is currently “much too small” for current enrollment.

“We’ve already filled it up,” McClure said. “We are a selective college. We have to turn students away, qualified students away, which in some ways is good. But that shows the power and how successful our college is, that we get great student success when students come here, that they’re learning at the highest level, and then they’re going off to the profession.”

To make room for the large number of students, construction is being done in old Seaton and Seaton Central with the hopes of moving some interior design majors over.

“We’re working on a plan that involves three or four colleges, the university, and lots of different dominoes and people moving basically to get more space so that we can bring over the faculty offices, the classrooms and all the students from Justin Hall,” McClure said. 

The addition of 150 interior design students increases the total number of Seaton students by around 10%. However, because of the space issue, those students have yet to move.

“Of course, Justin Hall wants — Health and Human Sciences wants — their space that interior design used to be in so they can grow,” McClure said. “We want those students over here so they’re part of our building, and they can be closer to our fabrication labs and our printers and all the computer labs and all those things that we’ve set up for design students. It’s just going to take time to renovate the spaces, to move certain people, [and] to clear up the spaces in Seaton so that we can move into them.”

McClure said the renovations around Old Seaton are part of a campus master plan.

“There is a campus master plan going on right now, which is identifying across campus where new buildings should go, what buildings maybe should be demolished because they’re not worth renovating, what type of outdoor spaces do we want,” McClure said. “There’s an outside firm that’s been working on that for almost a year, and it’s going to give the university a better idea about best practices on how to use our space effectively and what we need to plan to build.”

Sophomore interior architecture majors Riley Wehrman and Bridget Lessard said they haven’t been notified about the integration of interior design students.

“I think we take priority when it comes to space on the architecture side of it,” Wehrman said. “Without the construction, they’ll probably be shoved into other spaces.”

Lessard said while she doesn’t see a lot of construction, she wishes it were done during different hours of the day.

“We did have one class next to the renovation upstairs, and it was so distracting we couldn’t go on with class anymore,” Lessard said. “I do like how they are doing construction on our spaces and making them nicer, but they are very distracting and very loud.”