With fewer classes being offered this academic year at Eden Hall and a drop in enrollment in the Falk School of Sustainability & Environment over the last two years, the future of the Eden Hall campus is being reconsidered. 

Chatham University’s Board of Trustees Chair Kent McElhattan sent out an email on March 10 to the Chatham community providing updates from the most recent Board of Trustees meeting. Included in that email was an update on the Board’s position for the future of Chatham’s 388-acre Eden Hall campus in Gibsonia.

“[T]he Board reinforced that we view the Falk School and Eden Hall Campus as complementary but not synonymous assets for the university,” according to McElhattan’s email, which outlined several University updates from the Board of Trustees meeting in February.

The Board is considering a range of ideas for the future of the farm campus and is invested in finding ways to convert the property into something valuable – not only for the Chatham community but also to a wider group of people. The only thing off the table, according to McElhattan, is the sale of the property. 

“We are not thinking of selling Eden Hall,” he said. “Nobody wants to abandon Eden Hall.”

A search for new leadership

The Falk School, comprised of three different majors that study at Eden Hall, has seen a 30% decrease in enrollment over the last two years, according to McElhattan’s email, and is still in the search process of finding a new permanent dean after the previous dean Lou Leonard left the institution at the end of the fall 2024 semester. 

“The next dean is going to be an academic dean, so that we can have someone responsible for operations, just focusing on operations,” said Dr. Matt Redinger, vice president of Academic Affairs and acting dean of the Falk School. “The former dean spent too much time worrying about leaky pipes, and not enough time worrying about leaky classrooms.”

By having the next dean be solely focused on academics, this role will be able to center its attention on improving the classroom experience for sustainability students, as opposed to splitting attention between operations and academics.

Another problem facing Eden Hall is funding. With the University already operating at a $5-6 million deficit, according to McElhattan, the farm campus continues to lose Chatham money. 

“It doesn’t have a strong vision. That’s part of the problem. Eden Hall is losing money. It’s like a boat that’s leaking,” McElhattan said. “We’re exploring a number of different things that could lead to that. We don’t have anything to announce or any real projects that we’re willing to go public with.”

McElhattan said an important part of this reutilization of Eden Hall will be imagining ways it can be used beyond the classroom 

“A lot of people think Eden Hall, the School of Sustainability, is sort of all one thing, but it’s not. We have to de-link them,” McElhattan said. “I think, in fact, the majority of the [sustainability] classes are taught at the Shadyside campus, not at Eden Hall.”

A lack of belonging

The Board’s email, however, frustrated some Falk School students. Connor McAninch ‘27 noticed several other issues since the closure of Orchard Hall, Eden Hall’s only residential building over last summer, citing a distinct lack of community among Falk School students since the residence building ceased operations. 

This has been exacerbated by the roughly hour-long shuttle ride it takes for Falk School students to get between the Eden Hall and the Shadyside campuses. Splitting time between the two campuses leaves a lot of students feeling lost in the shuffle. 

“I think it’s kind of created this sort of feeling of isolation for the Falk School students because they’re not entirely here [at Shadyside] the whole time,” McAninch said. “But at the same time there’s really no community at Eden Hall anymore, so you’re just kind of the third – to use the [Board’s] emails words against them – you’re adjacent to, like a Chatham student, you’re not synonymous with a Chatham student.”

Follow @Communique_CU on Instagram for continued updates on Eden Hall.