Student Housing, Without the Scramble

Kaitlin Gallup is studying public relations at Syracuse University. This semester, she is working as an intern in the District and taking classes at the school's building on Calvert Street NW. (By Kevin Clark -- The Washington Post)

From her Woodley Park apartment, it takes Kaitlin Gallup five minutes to walk to class. Metro is even closer, and she has a short ride to her internship downtown.

The National Zoo is 10 minutes away, and so is Adams Morgan, a favorite hangout of Washington's students and young workers.

Gallup is a junior at Syracuse University. But instead of spending this fall on that school's spread-out and often snow-covered campus, the public relations major is enrolled in Syracuse's semester in Washington program. She takes classes at the university's building on Calvert Street NW and works as an intern at Fleishman-Hillard, a public relations firm.

It is one of many such programs that universities have established in Washington. Just as chemists need their laboratories to practice what they are learning, university officials say, political scientists need theirs.

But those students also need places to stay when they get here. That's why schools, including Syracuse, the University of California, and Stanford and Cornell universities have devoted resources to buying, renovating and refurbishing properties where their students can eat, sleep and learn.

And easily get around. To the students, location is everything.

University officials recognize this and have established their programs just steps from Metro stations, often in upscale, residential neighborhoods.

"It's so convenient," Gallup said of Syracuse's Paul Greenberg House, named for an alum who donated the money for the building. "I love the city. There's always something going on, all the different cultures." She enjoys the variety of restaurants in Woodley Park. "You have Lebanese across the street, Italian right down the block."

Each semester, about 30 undergraduates attend the program, which has been in Washington since 1990, said Ann Donahue, its executive director. Classes are held in the four-story building, while students live in Calvert House, an apartment building nearby.

Michael Schneider has taught in the program for nine years. The professor of international relations has an enviable commute. From his house he rides Metro two stops: Van Ness to Woodley Park.

He says he couldn't work in a lovelier building. A brick townhouse with white columns and a balcony, the Paul Greenberg House was built by a New York state senator at the turn of the 19th century. It has been a club and bar, then a rooming house. A local antiques dealer owned it before the university bought it and renovated it in 1989.

The building features three large seminar rooms that face south. "Light just streams in the windows in the wintertime," Schneider said. It's "beautifully situated."