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Misericordia’s Cougars For Change to promote an environmentally conscious campus.

Nine Misericordia students recently formed Cougars for Change, a committee that encourages students to become more environmentally conscious.

The committee was formed as a result of the students' attendance at the first ever Mercy student leadership conference, The Power of One, held in June at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, IL.

Sister Jean Messaros, RSM, vice president of student affairs, and Kit Foley, dean of students, escorted nine Misericordia students to the three-day event that brought students together from 10 of the 18 colleges that comprise the Conference for Mercy Higher Education.

“It was the hope of the collective group of chief student affairs officers that the students from Mercy colleges would come to a better understanding of the mission of the Sisters and the colleges they attend,” says Sister Jean. “What became so evident was that the concerns of the Sisters are the same for all of us, and that collective concern is the intrinsic value of coming to a Mercy college.” 

The student’s first lesson began with their accommodations. They were housed in a ‘green-friendly” residence hall, one of the first built in the Chicago area using Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) principals. There they saw the use of recycled construction materials and furnishings and energy conscious plumbing and heating systems.

Throughout the weekend, the students participated in workshops that introduced them to three primary areas of concern for the religious order: homelessness, hunger and poverty; gender equity and the empowerment of women; and environmental sustainability.

At the conclusion, the students were asked to come together by college and formulate a plan that they could take back to their respective schools based on what they had learned. The Misericordia students chose environmental sustainability as the area they hoped to impact upon their return to campus and developed a committee named Cougars for Change.

According to senior Nicholas DeStefano ’09, the group’s hope is to serve as a catalyst on campus and engage other student groups to become more environmentally conscious. “The nine of us who attended the conference are all involved with different MU organizations. Our plan is to work to bring all the different groups together to address and make change regarding one issue each year, and for the first year we have chosen environmental sustainability.”

According to DeStefano, the Cougars for Change mission is to ‘activate and educate' and currently meet every week to come up with ways to make the campus more environmentally conscious. “It may include bringing in guest speakers, or posting facts around campus on recycling. We have even seen where other schools have a trayless Tuesday, where they don’t use dining hall trays in an effort to save the water used to clean them. That is something we are considering.”

In all, students came away from the conference with a sense of purpose not only in the Mercy mission of Misericordia University, but in their own abilities that the "Power of One" can make a difference.

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