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Montana State’s off‑campus student office proposes Good Neighbor Day volunteer partnerships
Summary
Rebecca Eberlin, director of Off-Campus Student Life at Montana State University, outlined student services (housing education, CatCab safe‑ride) and proposed a Good Neighbor Day (Sept. 28) volunteer program pairing students with neighborhood associations for cleanup and small construction/beautification projects.
Rebecca Eberlin, director of Off‑Campus Student Life at Montana State University, presented her office’s outreach programs to the InterNeighborhood Council and proposed a Good Neighbor Day volunteer partnership to connect students with Bozeman neighborhoods.
Eberlin said students comprise about 20% of Bozeman’s off‑campus population and listed services her office provides, including renter education, an off‑campus housing marketplace, roommates matching, and case management. She described CatCab, a student safe‑ride program that provided 10 weekends of free Uber vouchers and is planned to expand to weekly service in the fall, and said her office is building a “good neighbor committee” for quarterly volunteer opportunities.
Nut graf: Eberlin asked neighborhood associations to identify small, localized projects — park cleanups, little‑free‑library construction, “leaf angels” or “snow angels,” and neighborhood notice boards — that student volunteers could adopt during Good Neighbor Day on Sept. 28 and through ongoing Service Saturdays. She emphasized the goal of teaching students neighborhood norms and encouraging civic engagement rather than serving as a hotline for individual neighbor complaints.
Neighborhood representatives suggested specific volunteer ideas (snow shoveling pilots, leaf/park cleanups, tree planting, dog‑waste pickup), asked about summer volunteer continuity, and requested outreach materials such as welcome packets neighborhood members could leave for new student neighbors. Eberlin said the office had used the CatServ student volunteer platform to recruit about 20 students for a snow‑shoveling pilot and distributed shovels, and that she would work with neighborhood groups on timing and logistics.
Ending: Eberlin invited neighborhood representatives to join a Good Neighbor Day planning committee; several volunteers agreed to help coordinate projects and to promote collaboration between the university and neighborhood associations.
