• We participate yearly in Recyclemania , a national recycling campaign to increase awareness of
  recycling needs.
• Lead the campus in recycling efforts.
• Changed old shower heads with low-flow shower heads.
• Composted over 360,000 pounds of waste material from our Dining Services operation.
• Going “trayless” in the dining centers saves over 500,000 gallons of water
• Sponsoring the Green Games each year.
• Publications printed to FSC standards

Follow this link for a tour with Jen Cox our Assistant Director of Facilities and Operations to get a glimspe of our sustainability efforts.

Missouri State Dining Services (MSDS) in conjunction with Chartwells is our new dining services provider.  They arrived on campus in May and they have been working long and hard to get everything ready for today’s first day.  You will see a new varied menu at the dining centers and some new faces mixed in with some familiar faces from last year. MSDS will be holding forums early this semester to see what kind of meal plans and food options we should be offering in the future.  Keep your eyes open, because we will want input from our current on-campus residents as well as commuters, faculty and staff to determine which way MSDS should head in the future.

The new year also brings new vendors over at the Union. Stop by the second floor of the Student Union and check out the new guys on the block! … Chic-fil-A Express, Smashers, Papa John’s and Subway.  We still have a taste or two from last year with Freshens and Wok and Roll still on the floor. Down on the first floor you can get your caffeine fix at Bear Beans, serving up hot Starbucks coffee. As it stand now, a real Starbucks store will be down there by the end of October.

Renovations … where to start?  Wow, were we busy over the summer, spending over $200,000 a day to upgrade and refresh a lot of buildings!  The list is too extensive to post here, so head over to http://reslife.missouristate.edu/fac/Renovations.htm and check things out!  We would encourage you to check out other buildings on-campus to see what’s new.  While you are looking around, start planning on where you want to live for the 2012-13 academic year. Current students get to select their rooms before the incoming students for Fall 2012….reapplication will be here before you know it!

Involvement:  It won’t be long until the call for people to join their building’s Hall Council and RHA will be the talk of the campus.  Make sure to get involved and lend a helping hand to some of the best organizations on-campus!

These are just some of the highlights for the first day of classes.  There will be lots of exciting opportunities and news to share as Fall 2011 keeps moving forward.  Keep checking back here from time to time or subscribe to our feed. You never know when something exciting will be happening in the residence halls!

Living on a floor focused on success
Enjoy interacting with Faculty Fellows outside of a typical classroom setting
Attending special events with University administrators and other faculty members

If you are looking for a good opportunity for the 2012-13 academic year, then you should check out living on an LLC floor.  You can find more information about LLCs at: http://reslife.missouristate.edu/LLCmain.htm

The Resident Assistants (RAs) on each floor is always thinking up bright and creative ways of helping their resident have fun. Each Hall Council has people that are sitting around each week in meetings coming up with the next educational or social event for the residents of their building. The Residence Hall Assocaition or RHA is comprised of leaders from each residence hall. One of it’s main goals each semester is to make sure all of the residents are enjoying their stay on-campus and providing award winning programs and events for everyone. Todd Euglow talked to us earlier about RHA. Go back and review what he said earlier in the year….

This is just the opportunities in the residence halls! There are many more opportunities across the campus! The Student Activities Council or SAC is always bringing movies, comedians, speakers and much much more to campus. The Student Government Association or SGA is the official voice of all students at Missouri State and they are always looking for people to help out! If you enjoyed planning the Prom and other social events in high school, then SAC is for you. On the other hand, if you enjoyed Student Council in high school, then SGA is the group for you!

There are over 250 different organizations on-campus….there has to be something for you! If not, you can create your own group with yourself and a handful of other people!

You will enjoy being on campus….just don’t let me hear you say there is nothing to do around here!

1). There are several terms during the summer. You can go for a 8-week session, a 4-week session or a 5-week session. This offers a great variety of schedules. In the 4- and 5-weeks sessions, you are in class for a longer period of time than you would a regular 16-week semester. This can be good and bad!

2). Less people. I haven’t heard the numbers for the summer session yet, but usually there will be only 5,000 or so students on-campus during the summer. This is much smaller than normal and it makes the “feel” of campus different.

3). Camps and Conferences are here! You may have stayed on-campus when you were younger attending a basketball or volleyball or computer camp here on campus. Well they are in full swing here already! We are expecting over 31,000 people staying with us this summer for a camp or conference! This makes things look different on-campus as we don’t usually have a lot of young kids on-campus.

There’s still plenty of time if you want to join us this summer! It’s a good time to get acclaimated to the campus!

Reapplication is about to come to a close and it’s all about getting ready to accommodate our incoming students for the 2009-10 academic year!  We hope you are as excited about becoming a Bear as we are excited about having you live with us!