Foster Hall is taking Colby Hall’s place as the all-female residence hall for the 2014-2015 academic year.

For as long as women have attended TCU, the university has had at least one all-female residence hall.

Colby Hall has served as TCU’s female residence hall since 1957. When renovations closed the dorm this summer, Housing & Residence Life administration hadn’t decided which residence hall would replace Colby as the all-female living option for the 2014-2015 academic year.

“We knew there were about four halls that were viable options [for an all female hall].” said Craig Allen, director of Housing & Residence Life. “What we did not know is how many students were going to request an all-female hall.”

Allen said Foster was chosen as the female hall after the Office of Housing & Residence Life received housing applications for the incoming students.

The process for placing incoming students in residence halls was different than it had been in the past, Allen said. The housing application that was sent out in May only gave students the option to select whether or not they wanted to be placed in a female hall or a co-ed hall, then it gave students an opportunity to make roommate preferences. In the past, students have had the option to preference particular buildings.

This new housing application gave Housing & Residence Life an estimate of how many women wanted to be assigned to an all-female residence hall.

“We didn’t want to pick a building that was too big, and we didn’t want to pick one that was too small, either.” Allen said. “So we kind of wanted to wait and see how many girls wanted that experience before we picked the building.”

Foster is currently housing 207 first-year female students, wrote Foster Hall director Jennifer Sepulveda in an email. This is number is significantly fewer than the 350 beds that were once in Colby Hall.

“What’s neat about [Foster Hall] is that it is a smaller community.” Allen said. “In recent years, the number of incoming students that have wanted an all-female hall has dropped.”

Accommodating the decreasing number of females that prefer an all-female hall has not been an easy task for Housing & Residence Life.

“In past years, there have been a lot of students living in Colby Hall that did not want to be,” Allen said. “Since Foster is smaller than Colby, most of the women placed there had requested to live in an all-female hall.”

Colby Hall closed in May 2014 and is currently in the demolition process. It is scheduled to re-open in August 2015.

Allen said the renovated hall will include more lounge space, better lighting, more kitchen space, a home theater and other new additions comparable to what has been done to update other residence halls in the past.

He said that when the renovations to Colby Hall are completed, Foster will go back to being a co-ed residence hall and Colby will once again house over 300 first-year women.