Enrollment is up, and New Hall 4 is open again as a residence hall. Housing 50 residents, two floors are dedicated to EDGE students, forming a community where primarily first-generation students can live close to their EDGE mentors and make the most out of their college experience.

“We’ve partnered with the Center for Academic and Professional Performance to do two cohorts for EDGE,” Paul Lidy, director of the Office of Residence Life, said. “So, they’re not only living together in New Hall 4, but they’re in class together. It’s similar to a Living Learning Community where they’re getting a full experience. It’s kind of a cool idea and this is the first year that we’re piloting that program.”

EDGE, The Center for Academic and Professional Performance or “CAPP” college-prep program, includes roughly one hundred freshmen. CAPP oversees EDGE, while ResLife is partnering with them to bring them spaces like New Hall and a floor in Aston that function similar to Living Learning Communities.

EDGE mentors include Joey Vargas and Eva Anthony in New Hall 4 and also Kei’Von Evans in Aston. Nicole Deliberis, the Residential Communities Coordinator, oversees New Hall 4.

“Any way that students can get more resources so they can be better prepared to be at the university—I don’t think can hurt at all,” Lidy said. He goes on to say, “for us, it’s also exciting to help our students be prepared.”

Many colleges have programs similar to Millikin’s EDGE. Without these programs, the transition from high school to college would be too dramatic to do alone.

“They’re close-knit communities. What’s nice about when we have the EDGE cohorts in there, we have that common space so they can have their study tables, spaces to have the events they’re doing. Again, EDGE is more than a week-long program. It continues through the year.”

Since the EDGE program is so large and long in duration, CAPP and ResLife agreed that would help the program stay solid.

“It’s really this wrap-around service as opposed to ‘silos’.  Lidy says. “That’s the goal and a lot of the momentum moving forward for a lot of the services we provide, not only in student development and residence life but as a university. Let’s break down the barriers so students can be successful as opposed to putting up the barriers. This is one of the easiest ways to do that.”

“If you think of a freshman class of 500 where you have a fifth or a quarter doing the program, it’s really important to continue to invest in that in a variety of different ways. I think students also like to learn together,” Lidy said. “This has the ability to be much more supportive. There’s more intentionality behind it. That’s why we chose to do this pilot this year and I think we’re going to see some good outcomes out of it.”

New Hall 4 has not served as a residence hall in over three years, but the building has history and a brighter future. New Hall 4 was built in the 1980’s along with Weck, the Athletics building, and New Hall 3. The buildings were made to serve as ‘swing’ spaces, or spaces used for various activities and storage.

In the last three years it has been used as temporary housing for if an individual needed to move out of their previous residence hall for any reason. This is the most activity the building has seen in a while.

“We just invested quite a bit of money, especially with the carpet and the updates,” Lidy said. Over the summer, the building got new flooring and “most of the furnishings have been updated.” Some of the storage spaces were converted into learning spaces such as the think tank in the UC. New Hall 4 even has white board wall.