SOU to participate in exclusive wellbeing collaborative

Southern Oregon University will be one of just four campuses in the U.S. to participate over the next year in the 2026-27 NIRSA Wellbeing Collaborative, a high-impact initiative that helps campus recreation departments to move past siloed programs and embed proactive, systemic wellbeing into their culture and operations.

The NIRSA Wellbeing Collaborative was launched in October 2025 by NIRSA: Leaders in Collegiate Recreation in partnership with Wellfleet, (formerly Consolidated Health Plans) an accident and health insurance provider. NIRSA was founded in 1950 at Dillard University as the National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association as a professional organization for recreation, fitness and wellness in higher education. It is currently headquartered in Corvallis.

The Wellbeing Collaborative’s first cohort, for the 2025-26 academic year, consisted of the University of Utah, Towson University, Radford University and Western Michigan University. The three other universities that will join SOU Campus Recreation in this year’s cohort have not yet been announced.

Participating campuses in the collaborative use NIRSA’s Recreation for Wellbeing online course as a foundation, receiving individualized coaching from members of the NIRSA Health & Wellbeing Advisory Group. That guidance is intended to help teams navigate the complexities of translating theory into campus-specific action. Real-time progress and strategies are shared through the NIRSA Promising Practices model.

While NIRSA’s online course provides the foundation for understanding systems-level change, the collaborative also creates a structured environment for applied learning. Campus teams can become active practitioners by immediately put concepts into action test new ideas, and learn from one another in real time. Participants are equipped to design, implement and refine strategies to embed wellbeing practices throughout their operations.

One of the collaborative’s central elements is a learning community – a focused, four-campus cohort that learns together and promotes shared accountability and collective problem-solving. Participants will have opportunities to reflect, share insights, and adapt strategies as they test new approaches.

The NIRSA program is based on beliefs that exercise and recreation are powerful tools to improve health and wellbeing, and that affecting student outcomes requires campuses to go beyond programs or facilities to address the overall student experience. The program is intended to enable recreation leaders to act as catalysts for change, aligning recreation with student success, belonging and health.