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Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Winter Welcome student program will be the pilot event for the University’s Cougars Care Initiative.

Held in January, Winter Welcome’s purpose is to introduce new students to the SIUE community by holding informational sessions and socializing events, among other activities. Winter Welcome 2020 will be the first event on SIUE’s campus that will be a part of the new Cougars Care initiative.

Cougars Care is a low-waste initiative created by New Student Transitions Coordinator Kelly Moroney. The initiative consists of approximately 13 goals that Moroney and her graduate assistant, Josie Clark, developed after researching sustainable practices and event planning tips.

Clark, a Pawnee native and a graduate student in the College Student Personnel Administration program, has been working alongside Moroney to plan the initiative and develop ways to communicate the message to new students.

“This project is important to me, because I believe it is important for us to do our part to be more sustainable,” Clark said. “This project has helped me learn more about what it means to live an eco-friendly lifestyle and given me the knowledge and resources to incorporate more sustainable living practices in my everyday life. I hope that by implementing this initiative during Winter Welcome, we can help teach other students about sustainability, as well.”

 The 13 goals, which can be found on the SIUE Experience website, include objectives such as avoid unnecessary resource usage, avoid single use plastic, buy local when possible and limit amount of printed materials for events.

“Our biggest focus is to reduce all forms of waste wherever possible and to help get our students meaningfully engaged in the different forms sustainability can take,” Moroney said.   

The SIUE Experience team has worked to apply these goals into every aspect of the program. The team met in the summer to discuss the initiative and how they could bring it to campus, and decided that one of the most important actions was to communicate “Cougars Care” with the new students early.

The team has created a list of the 13 goals on the school’s website and will also be using the SIUE app to keep the initiative and its goals alive with students. Aside from pre-event goals, the team has many sustainable activities planned for students attending Winter Welcome. Some of these activities include informational displays and discussions about leading a sustainable lifestyle and participating in a temporary compost.

Moroney was motivated to create the initiative after attending a sustainability workshop by Connie Frey Spurlock, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Sociology.

“This was an incredible session presented by Dr. Frey Spurlock, where I learned so much about not only how to make a low waste event, but also what an enormous impact we can have if we teach our students how to live sustainably,” said Moroney. “This session provided the tools I needed to put all that motivation to use. Since then, I have had a lot of support from the campus community, which has been a great motivator.”

Moroney plans to implement the sustainability initiatives at other events, as well. Using this year’s Winter Welcome pilot, Moroney and her team plan on taking feedback from students to learn how to improve the initiative in preparation for other events.

 “As I learn more from this experience, I would love to incorporate this knowledge into other events I either coordinate or assist with such as Ask Me and Student Affairs initiatives both here and on the Alton Campus,” Moroney said.

For more information on the Cougars Care goals and to learn more about sustainability at SIUE, visit the SIUE experience page.