BY: NINA GOMEZ
Staff Writer
CORRECTION: Sean Cooney’s title has been changed to Campus Life Manager versus Campus Life Director. The Montage regrets the error in the initial post.
A beautiful mountain range just outside of Yellowstone park, a perfect sky paired with mountains in early June, the Grand Tetons is Sean Cooney’s favorite spot he has traveled to. But 2,000 ft above and dragging a friend whose never gone camping, the story changes. The elevation got high quickly. Then the perfect day in June turned into a 40 degree freezing rain and snow on the ground sleepless night where they drifted in and out of sleep trying to forget the cold. They still had another half of the trip ahead of them afterward. “They were like, ‘Oh we had a blizzard on memorial day,’ and I was like, ‘what?’ It was kind of crazy. That night in yellowstone will live in infamy within our friend group,” Cooney says as he laughs.
When Cooney is not on his adventures of exploring all 50 states (he’s “somewhere in the 40s” now), he is exploring his new horizon that is STLCC-Meramec. Cooney is the new Campus Life Manager on campus. “I was looking for that next step, for that manager level experience, but then I was looking at, well how do I broaden my horizons? I really wanted to go to somewhere where it was really different and community college is very different from a four year institution.”
For Cooney, giving back is a big part for him. “Getting back to community college, to that part of my educational journey ,assisting those students, that was a big draw for me,” he says.
Before STLCC, Cooney was Assistant Director of Engagement and Programming at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale (SIU). After being raised in Peoria, Illinois, it was in Carbondale he began his undergraduate in Sports Administration. He then began his graduate degree in higher education for student college personnel, got his first job as admissions and transfer recruitment, and then lastly as Assistant director up until 2024.
He has a lot of nostalgia when it comes to remembering his past job, but it is where he learned what he wanted to do, work with students. “It really goes back to the students at the end of the day, I’ll remember homecoming, sure, but I’ll remember the students that I worked with and the impact I had on them and the impact they had on me. They made me a better person. I learned from them. It’s always a growing experience, so it’s the students that really make the difference and that’s what I’ll remember.”
Cooney reflects on his time there and how after his hard work and building connections within the university became an opportunity for him to gain experience and afford his graduate degree, “There’s always doors that you don’t see,” Cooney says.
Now at his newest opportunity, STLCC, Cooney is excited. The 2-3 week interview process landed him the job as Campus Life Manager here at Meramec, his first day being in “mid-November”.
“I’m always a nervous interviewer, and this was the first time I was interviewing somewhere away from the institution that I had gone to and worked at. So there were some nerves there, the usual stuff.”
Cooney says he already had a connection to community college before beginning this position. “I had gone to community college for a year before I transferred, that’s part of the reason this job stuck out to me. I wanted to stay in the education world,” he said.
He remembers when he went to community college for a year before going to SIU. He feels he didn’t take advantage of the opportunities he could have. “And that’s another reason why I took this job. I really want to make sure students understand that there are opportunities to be involved and be on campus at community college, it doesn’t just have to be just going to class and going straight home, right?” Cooney says there are ways to build community here, “it doesn’t have to be just studying, it can be a big piece of your educational experience.
On a mission to make sure students enhance their experience while at STLCC, Cooney’s goals for his time at STLCC are to continue to grow engagement, provide clubs opportunities, new clubs to form, and to grow the community. He says that is important. “My big goal is to provide more opportunities for students to meet other students to engage in the campus, to make sure they know the resources that are here, and to have fun, to know there’s going to be activities and events.
For the end of the semester SGA and CAB planned a trivia night, an outdoor movie, and are the background of the Spring Fest event. Cooney is the advisor of SGA (Student Government Association) and of CAB (Campus activities Board). He “sits in the background” and is there for students if they need help with purchases or contracts. “It’s all about guiding a student and not holding their hand,” he continues, “It’s fun to see students process their ideas and come up with new ones, and to see them grow. It’s been a really good transition.”
What Cooney’s biggest hope for students is for them to push themselves. “Get involved, push yourself out of your comfort zone. And that starts with getting involved from day 1 in a club, or just asking questions in a classroom.” Doing the little things he says will push you further, “It’s about literally just going to the dining hall with some new people and grabbing a meal. Go to class, meet someone, and go grab lunch with them afterwards in the cafeteria. It’s the little stuff that pays off, and you’ll look back and it’ll feel a lot bigger in retrospect.”
