Olivia Guerrero, Campus Carrier deputy news editor

This year’s incoming freshman class is larger than many previous years’, bringing both excitement and adjustments to campus life. With more students beginning their college journey together, the increase is shaping everything from classroom dynamics to housing availability. Faculty and staff note that while the shift comes with challenges, it also signals a strong, healthy enrollment at a time when many colleges nationwide are seeing declines.

Stephen Swieton, director of Residence Life, said that careful planning has allowed the college to accommodate the larger freshman class without major disruptions. Residence Life staff anticipated the uptick in numbers before move-in day, working to make sure housing and resources would be ready.

“We have been able to house everybody,” Swieton said. “I think when we are making decisions about how many students to admit, part of what is in that calculation
is housing.”

Residence Life prepared in advance by reviewing available residence hall space and balancing housing assignments across campus. They look at available spaces, what students will need to feel comfortable and how Berry can balance numbers across campus without sacrificing quality of life. Additionally, to make room for the larger class, the college adjusted how certain residence hall spaces are used.

“There are some rooms up at Ford that are actually quads,” Swieton said. “And they were intended to be quads [when the building was built]. And this year, in some of those rooms, four people have been assigned.”

While the shift means a few students are sharing the room with an additional roommate, Residence Life stresses that these rooms were designed for four and remain fully furnished to accommodate everyone. The change, as noted by Swieton, has helped the college balance the needs of the freshman class without resorting to other housing measures, such as overflow housing or forced triples in standard doubles. 

The increase in enrollment not only affects residence hall accommodations but also classrooms sizes. Some professors have noticed subtle shifts in how courses run when class sizes grow.

“We set the size at 40 [students] each semester,” Gary Breton, professor of chemistry, said. “We don’t normally have 40 in there, so I think I have like 35 or 36 in there this semester. But that’s pretty much been the way it’s been since we’ve been offering this course.”

Still, he noted that larger class sizes can make it harder to provide the same level of individual attention. It takes extra effort to draw those quieter students into the conversation.

“Once you get above, probably about 25 students, it does become more difficult to do that,” Breton said. “And some students [who] sit all the way in the back [of the classroom] have a way of kind of being hidden a little bit.”

Beyond classroom dynamics, a few professors also feel an slight impact when it comes to grading and course management. The workload outside the classroom also increases as class sizes creep upward at Berry. It is a goal of Berry professors to make students feel seen, but when numbers grow, the dynamic changes. 

“When it gets above 30, grading becomes a little more [work],” Breton said. “If you have four or five more paper exams, that’s a larger chunk of time you need to put into it.”

Despite these challenges, Breton made clear that the class size remains manageable and that students are still receiving the instruction they need. 

“I try when I teach to make sure I make eye contact with all the students,” Breton said. “I don’t just teach to a certain subgroup or a row or whatever. I tried to be as inclusive as I can of everybody there.”

While some professors are adjusting to slightly larger groups of students, others mention the impact has been less noticeable. 

“[The] cap [for students] stayed at 32,” Kelsey Rice, assistant professor of history, said. “My class is full, but I’m used to having a full class. There might be faculty who experience this differently, but talking to faculty across disciplines, I didn’t see the same pressures on Foundations classes that were four years ago when the biggest class in Berry history came.”

Class size influences the way Rice organizes discussions. With larger groups, it can be a challenge to balance discussion, presentations and wrap-up within a single
class period.

“An ideal group discussion size is four, but in my Foundations classes, I always put people in groups of five or sometimes six,” Rice said. “So certainly a smaller class size facilitates more participation and a better seminar approach to a class where we have more discussion and I lecture less; whereas the bigger the class, the more it’s on me to kind of communicate information to the class in an efficient manner because of the size.”

The larger class size can create time constraints in some classes when group discussions are vital to the lesson being taught. That shift sometimes creates time constraints, especially when multiple groups need to share their work. Even so, Rice views the positives as outweighing the drawbacks.

“There’s a pressure on that time if you’re trying to make sure everyone has a good, healthy group discussion time and then is able to present to the class so that everybody gets the right amount of time and can absorb what their classmates are saying,” Rice said.

Still, Rice views the challenges as part of a positive overall trend.

“It’s a good problem to have compared to other schools who are desperate to fill their freshman classes,” Rice said. “And so, I think most of us are feeling like the extra headaches are worth it to keep up the healthy enrollment.”