Andy Tullis / The Bulletin file photoOSU-Cascades Vice President Becky Johnson, center in blue shirt, raises a glass of sparkling lemonade to toast the class of 2020 in September.

Only a small percentage of students enrolled at OSU-Cascades this fall are freshmen, but all of them are Oregonians.

Of the 1,122 students enrolled at the new campus in west Bend and at the nearby Graduate & Research Center, just 60 are first-year students, according to data released by the university this week.

There are likely two main factors in the low number of first-year students, Jane Reynolds, OSU-Cascades director of enrollment services, said Thursday. Potential OSU-Cascades students may have taken advantage of Oregon Promise, a new state grant that helps pay tuition at the state’s community colleges. Or they may have chosen another university since OSU-Cascades’ residence hall still isn’t finished.

If the residence hall had been completed the same time as Tykeson Hall, where classes are taking place on the new campus, the university estimates it would have attracted more first-year students, Christine Coffin, an OSU-Cascades spokeswoman, said Thursday.

The residence hall and a building with the dining hall and four more classrooms aren’t expected to be done until the new year.

“In the grand scheme of things, for a university that will hopefully be around for hundreds and hundreds of years, a few months is just a blip,” Coffin said of the construction running behind schedule.

OSU-Cascades is planning a Jan. 8 move-in date for the residence hall.

Reynolds said the school hoped to have more freshmen students this year, but generally she and others are pleased with enrollment. The new 10-acre campus is estimated to support up to 1,860 students, she said, adding OSU-Cascades hopes to reach that number around fall 2019 or fall 2020.

Before the new campus opened on SW Chandler in Bend, the university held its classes at Central Oregon Community College. This year’s numbers show a 10 percent overall increase in OSU-Cascades students and a 6 percent increase in undergraduate students, according to the university.

OSU-Cascades is breaking into its own as a four-year university, so that it no longer has to rely on the two-plus-two model with COCC.

But Reynolds said the university is well-aware some students will still choose that route, especially given the Oregon Promise grant.

There are 93 dually admitted students taking all of their courses at COCC who are preparing to transfer to OSU-Cascades, according to the university. About 73 percent of students are enrolled full time, including those students who are dually enrolled.

The majority of OSU-Cascades students are local: 70 percent come from Central Oregon, while more than 90 percent are from Oregon. All of the 60 first-year students are Oregonians.

Other data the university gathered on its student population show that of the 18 percent of students who do not identify as white, nearly half identify as Hispanic and more than a third identify as two or more U.S. minorities. Close to 8 percent came from out of the state, including 20 states and four countries.

Reynolds said she is interested to see whether enrollment changes at all in the winter term with students coming from Corvallis who want to live and “play” in the snow. It’s fairly simple for students to transfer campuses — basically just filling out a form is involved — but she knows finding a place to live in Bend can be tough.

— Reporter: 541-383-0325, kfisicaro@bendbulletin.com