While traversing the campus during your first days at UH, you’ll probably find yourself wandering aimlessly about in the sweltering heat searching for Agnes Arnold Hall Auditorium 2 or Room 107 of the Roy G. Cullen building.
Luckily, Cougar First Impressions is willing to help during those potentially desperate first two days of fall classes.
Since 1997, the group has aimed to help new and incoming students by providing water, campus maps, Metro passes and other helpful items to smooth the transition for students during the first two days of the fall semester.
CFI initially started to help improve the image of the staff at UH as well as something to help students get around campus, said Dick Cigler, director of Student Publications and the 1997 president of Staff Council.
A couple of weeks before the 1997 UH fall semester began, Cigler and Bauer College of Business administrator and past Staff Council member Patricia Sayles, were manning a table for the Staff Council elections. After several students approached them with questions about how to get to certain places around campus, Cigler and Sayles brought it up with other Staff Council members.
"We discussed this situation with several other Staff Council members," Sayles said. "Another Staff Council member brought in a newspaper clipping about another university staffing outposts around campus to provide students information. Staff Council thought this would be a good outreach program for the staff on campus and that is how it began."
CFI has taken off since its inception.
"CFI is much bigger since it began in 1997. (It) started with 13 tables and about 150 volunteers; last year we had 18 tables and over 600 volunteers," CFI’s 2006 co-chair and Historian Judi Goodman said.
Now in its 10th year, CFI upgraded its options and plans to show the new batch of UH students why it is "Cool to be a Cougar," this year’s theme. Volunteers, private donors and contributors promise that this year’s CFI will outdo the past nine.
"We will have an air-conditioned tent between the (Philip Guthrie Hoffman Hall) and the (M.D. Anderson Memorial) Library which will have ice cream and frozen treats available, a snow machine and will be opened from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. to distribute to the students," this year’s co-chair Joe Papick said. "We will have posters with ‘Cool to be a Cougar’ facts about UH near and around the air-conditioned tent."
CFI will have volunteers at 18 tables around campus to help the new students with directions while offering a variety of drinks.
"This will allow us to have almost 40,000 individual drinks available for students as they navigate through the campus on their first two days of classes. All 18 tables will have volunteers available from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. to help students and to help create a strong sense of community among staff, students and faculty," Papick said.
Part of what makes CFI efficient for students is that students don’t have to pay for any of it. Group and individual donations keep CFI going.
"Cougar First Impressions is funded entirely by donations; we do not use any student fees," co-chair Rebecca Szwarc said.
Group and individual donations keep CFI going. Students can see a list of this year’s contributors on the T-shirts that volunteers will be wearing. With all the new additions this year, CFI promises a good start for the new semester.
