Graduate and Professional Student Housing

The Broadview at Vanderbilt

Opening for the 2023-24 academic year, the project has been officially named the Broadview at Vanderbilt. These graduate and professional student apartments are located in midtown Nashville within walking distance to Vanderbilt University. The community offers studio, one- and two-bedroom apartment homes such as a fully-equipped kitchen with granite countertops, upgraded appliances, hardwood-inspired floors, and washer/dryer. The Broadview at Vanderbilt also has the best in on-site amenities, from a 24-hour fitness and wellness center, an on-site coffee shop and grocery store, multiple collaboration and study spaces, to an outdoor BBQ area and media room. 

The Planning Process

A Graduate and Professional Student Housing Working Group were appointed in the summer of 2016 as an initial step to develop housing options for graduate and professional students that extend learning and collaboration beyond the classroom and laboratory.  With the assistance of the external consultant, Demographic Perspectives, LLC, the group visited peer university and college campuses in urban settings, held multiple working sessions, led student focus group meetings, and conducted a comprehensive survey of graduate and professional students.  The working group and external consultants held over 40 stakeholder interviews and focus groups that included students, faculty and staff.  In addition, 2,345 (approx. 50%) of all graduate and professional students completed a housing survey issued by the group.

Summary of Findings

Throughout this study, Vanderbilt gathered information on several key points, including:

• Stakeholder and student vision for housing: Vanderbilt stakeholders, including graduate and professional students, agree that housing should be available to a wide variety of students in order to foster cross-discipline collaboration and allow for connections across programs. All stakeholders acknowledged that nearby, affordable housing is becoming very difficult to find.
• Types of housing and amenities peer institutions offer through a benchmark analysis and campus visits: Institutions in similar, urban settings offer a variety of housing types from traditional apartments to dorm-style housing, to cover a variety of student needs and preferences. All acknowledge that providing housing helps with recruitment, particularly in high-cost or competitive housing markets.  They also acknowledge that housing builds a better community for students and creates a stronger connection to their schools. Institutions visited included Brooklyn Law, NYU, Cornell Weill Medical, Columbia Law, Harvard Business School, Harvard University, MIT.  Peer institutions benchmarked included Boston University, Babson, Brown, California Institute of Technology, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Northwestern, Princeton, Stanford, Tufts, University of Iowa, University of California Berkeley, University of California Irvine, University of Chicago, Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, University of Rochester, Washington University in St. Louis, and Yale.
• Current conditions of housing for graduate and professional students: Students are currently spread throughout Nashville and many factors are at play including affordability, preferred unit/building types, amenities and services in the area, safety, and proximity to Vanderbilt.  About 30% of graduate and professional students live 1.5 miles or less to campus.  Out of survey participants, their proximity from campus was as follows:

• Amenity, location and unit preferences: When surveyed, students expressed a preference to be walking distance to campus.  Preferred amenities included healthy/green buildings, fitness rooms, and common work/play spaces.  Students were also interested in wellness programming and social activities.  A sampling of survey responses are reflected below:

Phase 2

With the knowledge from the efforts outlined above, Vanderbilt has engaged the firm Brailsford & Dunlavy (B&D)  to assist with identifying the best implementation strategy for building graduate and professional student housing.  This firm will assist Vanderbilt with evaluating options for development that align with the university’s goals and vision.  Expected outcomes of these efforts include:

• A project vision regarding specifics for what Vanderbilt wants to build (location, number of units, unit types, etc.)
• Development alternatives and the pro’s and con’s of each scenario
• Financial analysis, expected costs, target rental rates and feasibility of each development option

This engagement includes a 12 to 18-month process, at the end of which, the university will start detailed design, planning and construction of a graduate and professional student village.  In the coming month, we will share an outline of the timeline for this process.  Additional engagement with stakeholders, including graduate and professional students, will be key to this process.

Vanderbilt will engage with B&D through a dual-committee structure. The executive committee is comprised of representatives critical to the initiative and associated with key university leadership, with a high degree of participation in the process. The executive committee will engage the advisory committee to offer input associated with elements of the project as required. The advisory committee is comprised of functional and operational stakeholders and will provide a variety of perspectives necessary to develop a project that meets Vanderbilt’s objectives for graduate and professional student housing. The advisory committee will provide input on decisions and form sub-committees and additional working groups as needed.

Executive Committee Membership:

• Eric Kopstain, vice chancellor, administration;
• Brett Sweet, vice chancellor, finance;
• Mark Wallace, dean of the graduate school;
• Chris Guthrie, dean, Law School;
• Eric Johnson, dean, Owen Graduate School of Management;
• Michael Perez, associate vice chancellor, facilities;
• Margaret Emley, interim director, real estate (project manager).

Advisory Committee Membership:

• Vicki Greene, professor of physics, faculty senate representative;
• William H. Robinson, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, associate dean, faculty senate representative;
• Eric Bymaster, associate vice chancellor, finance;
• Christopher Serkin, professor of law, associate dean, Law School;
• Angela Vogeli, associate general counsel;
• Melissa Thomas Hunt, vice provost of inclusive excellence, and professor of management, Owen Graduate School of Management;

GRADUATE & PROFESSIONAL STUDENT REPRESENTATIVES

• Stephen Bailey, Education Neuroscience, Peabody;
• Vibhaas (Vee) Basukala, Law School;
• April Hughes, Owen Graduate School of Management;
• Alison Lutz, Religion;
• Christian Meyer, Chemical and Physical Biology;
• Sarah Miele, Civil Engineering.

News

Oct 24, 2016: Future of graduate and professional student housing focus of chancellor’s working group

Feb 22, 2018: Graduate and professional student housing project moves to next step

Apr 4, 2018: Vanderbilt appoints committees, advisory firm for graduate and professional student village

May 17, 2019: Vanderbilt announces plan to build graduate housing development in Midtown

April 28, 2021: Construction to begin on Vanderbilt graduate and professional student housing development

May 2, 2022: Graduate and professional student housing project celebrates milestones with topping out ceremony, announces first retail business