Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Successful Communities Collaborative (SSCC) will host a kickoff celebration of its newest community partner – The City of Edwardsville. A press conference and introduction meeting will be held from 1-2:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 9 at SIUE’s Lovejoy Library Friend’s Corner.
Featured speakers include Randy Pembrook, SIUE chancellor; Denise Cobb, PhD, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs; Hal Patton, Edwardsville mayor; Mary Ettling, interim director of the SIUE Office of Educational Outreach; and Connie Frey Spurlock, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and SSCC faculty director.
Through SSCC, students and city officials will work together to make the dynamic City of Edwardsville an even better place to live, learn, work and play. SSCC’s partnership with Edwardsville will match projects with SIUE disciplines, engaging both faculty and students.
In collaboration with Edwardsville, SSCC will work on three core projects:
- Earth Edwardsville — To promote natural conservation strategies and pro-environmental behaviors in the community
- Sports Complex — To develop a conceptual design and management strategy for an ice rink and teen center to be located near Edwardsville High School
- Parking Downtown — To gather community input to generate solutions to downtown parking issues, and create innovative ideas to make downtown Edwardsville more inviting to residents, visitors and businesses
“We’re extremely excited for this partnership with Edwardsville, because we have more classes and students engaged in this partnership than ever before,” exclaimed Frey Spurlock. “We’re also thrilled because Edwardsville is our shared hometown. These projects hold great promise for the City and all of us who work, live and play in Edwardsville.”
SIUE Successful Communities Collaborative (SSCC) is a cross-disciplinary program that supports one-year partnerships between the University and communities in Illinois to advance local resilience and sustainability based on community-identified environmental, social, and economic issues and needs. Our mission is to connect Illinois communities with the dynamic resources of students and faculty of SIUE.