With students gone, campus can feel sleepy and quiet during the summer months — but OSU’s residence halls are anything but.
In summer 2025, University Housing & Dining Services hosted nearly 10,000 guests with 81 groups that came to the Corvallis campus for athletic camps, faith-based camps, academic pursuits and more. With groups staying varying amounts of time, UHDS logged more than 30,000 total guest nights this summer.
“We have facilities on campus that otherwise go unused for three months, so this gives us a chance to use our resources and generate some revenue for the department, as well as bringing folks to campus and exposing them to OSU,” said Patrick Moser, associate director of operations for UHDS.
Guests come via two programs: Residential Conferences and Visiting Scholars. The vast majority of guests — about 9,600 — participate in residential conferences, staying in the residence halls a few days at a time for various camps.
The remaining 400 or so are visiting scholars: interns, researchers and international students that come to OSU from other campuses to work alongside OSU faculty for the summer. The residence halls provide an affordable option compared to off-campus housing, Moser said.
Many of the groups that base their summer camps at OSU are repeat customers. UHDS typically sees a 96% retention rate for groups coming back from summer to summer, Moser said, and some groups that have been coming to OSU for more than 20 years.
UHDS has a capacity of approximately 5,000 beds in residence halls, but only fills up about half of them at any given time with summer visitors, he said. Staff also need the summer months for deep-cleaning and facility maintenance, so groups rotate through different halls on campus. The busiest week, with about 2,000 people staying on campus, happens a couple weeks after Commencement in June.
One of the biggest guest groups is the Special Olympics Oregon, which holds its summer games at OSU most years and brings about 1,500 people to campus for three days.
The Launch program, through the Office of New Student Onboarding, holds nine sessions during the summer for new students. Each session, about 250 of the incoming students and their families choose to stay overnight in the residence halls as a chance to better familiarize themselves with campus.
As anyone working on campus during the summer knows, OSU also plays host to a horde of cheerleaders. The national organization Varsity Spirit holds three different summer camps on OSU’s campus, totaling about 900 cheering youths.
Another 750 high schoolers attend the OSU women’s basketball team camp, and roughly 1,000 guests come to campus for the Christ in Youth faith-based camp.
“We are able to bring so many thousands of youth to our campus, and this is often the first time they’ve been to a college campus, and maybe the first and only time they see OSU,” Moser said. “I think we’re providing an opportunity for OSU to be promoted to youth who might see us as an opportunity for them when they make a college decision."
UHDS also partners closely with many organizations on campus, especially Athletics, to coordinate the many sports camps that use OSU facilities and fields.
The one common complaint Moser hears from guests is something most universities in the region are familiar with: People want air conditioning. But unfortunately, most residence halls in the Northwest were built decades ago when temperatures were more moderate and AC wasn’t an issue.
“If we could turn back time, having air conditioning in our spaces, especially for summer operations, would be great,” Moser said.
One of UHDS’ strengths is its track record of accommodating various needs during the school year, which makes it easy to adapt to other groups’ needs in the summer, he said.
The dining centers go completely tree nut-free in the summer to avoid triggering allergies, which tend to be more acute in young people. UHDS also works to accommodate housing requests from wheelchair users and guests with other mobility issues.
Summer is extremely busy for UHDS staff with all the visitors, but it’s worth it, Moser said.
“The time and effort that goes into the logistics of operating the Residential Conferences season is extremely rewarding when witnessing the impact the camps and conferences have for the participants visiting OSU,” he said.
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