New residence hall breaks ground

On a windy Friday afternoon, Purdue President Mung Chiang put on a plastic Purdue hard hat outside Harrison Residence Hall and grabbed a shovel coated in all gold. He looks at Purdue’s chief public safety officer and with a toothy smile, tells him, “Safety first, Jay.”
Lined in a row, Chiang and four others dug their shiny shovels into a box of dirt and broke ground on the new residence hall.
The residence hall will be built on the corner of First Street and Macarthur Drive, in between Hillenbrand Hall and Harrison Hall and is expected to be open in 2026, according to Vice Provost for Student Life, Dr. Beth McCuskey.
McCuskey said that this will be the biggest residence hall on Purdue campus, which will hold approximately 900 beds. The new residence hall, which McCuskey said is temporarily called the Residence Hall South of Hillenbrand Hall, may rival Shreve Hall, which has 890 beds according to the University Residences’ website.
Chiang attributed the creation of the residence hall to the Action Council on Student Housing and Wellbeing and the university’s board of trustees.
“If you think about the 14-year period between 2013 and 2027, when this will be available for students to move in, we will have increased the university's bed capacities at a rate higher than the undergraduate enrollment increase,” Chiang said.
The Data Mine is a “large-scale learning community for undergraduate and graduate students from all majors,” that is currently based out of Hillenbrand Hall, according to their website. With the creation of this new residence hall, the Data Mine will be expanding into the new building.
“(The Data Mine) is a phenomenal experience for students to really dig into how data works and how to apply it to their field,” McCuskey said.
Jay Wasson, the university’s Chief Public Safety Officer, said the new building allows for an expansion of space to include more students in the learning community.
Though the building will expand the Data Mine, Wasson said that being a part of the Data Mine will not be a prerequisite for being in the building and that it is marketed to freshmen and sophomores.
But since the 2022-2023 academic school year, freshmen don’t have the ability to make a decision as to where they live, only their desired room style.
Wasson confirmed that this was still the case, saying Student Life is in charge of the room assignment process and students still have the option to choose what type of dorm they intend to live in.
“I do think that if you sign up for a learning community, that influences where your room assignment takes place,” he said.
This news follows the announcement the Purdue Research Foundation is in the process of building the Third and West Apartment Complex, estimated to cost $21 million and open in 2027, according to previous Exponent reporting.
However, in an interview with McCuskey at Friday’s event, she said that the apartment will be ready to move in Fall of 2025.
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