To create an ideal environment for the next generation of students, University of Pennsylvania (Penn) Campus Recreation recently added both a new Recovery Room and Recreation Lounge at the Pottruck Health and Fitness Center.
Morgen Rosen, the assistant director of Fitness and Wellbeing, said after talking with students and participating in conversations at the 2024 NIRSA conference in Phoenix, Arizona, there was much discussion around providing more wellness spaces in Campus Recreation.
“Our mission is to create an inclusive environment on campus, where students can practice all forms of wellness in Campus Recreation,” said Rosen. “We want to promote social wellness where students can hop into our Recreation Lounge, lose their laptop and play a board game or work on a puzzle. We created the Recovery Room for students to rent out a bay for 30 minutes to close their eyes, take a break from studying and feel relaxed.”
New Offerings
The Recreation Lounge is a large open space that includes round tables and comfortable chairs, a bean bag chair and a couch and to help create an at-home feel for visitors. Also featured in this space are board games, puzzles and cards.
The Recovery Room includes four bays, and students can rent one bay at a time. The first three bays are focused on sports recovery and are outfitted with a relaxed recliner chair, massage gun, foam roller, mat and Normatec compression boots. The fourth bay is a full–body massage chair covering the calves up to the neck. Each rental is available for 30 minutes at the top of every hour. Recovery Room reservations are available on the Penn Campus Recreation website.
“Pottruck Health and Fitness Center is perceived as the main gym on campus,” said Rosen. “This can be intimidating for some students if they’re novice exercisers or are unfamiliar with exercise equipment. It’s no question Penn students are in a high-stress environment. We created the Recovery Room for students to close their eyes, take a break from studying and feel relaxed.”
Rosen said these spaces provide organic outlets to not only promote wellness on campus, but to champion the mental well-being of students, making Campus Recreation a place to get away from the hustle and bustle of college life.
“We find students clearly stressed, falling asleep in our atrium or on a mat in a studio,” said Rosen. “If we can’t get them to work out or commit to a 45-minute Group X class, can they meet a friend in the new Recreation Lounge for 20 minutes? Can they drop what they’re doing and work mindlessly on a puzzle? We want students to feel safe, calm and excited to walk into Pottruck.”
Tips and Future Hopes
Rosen said it was crucial in the process of adding the new rooms to find out what students on campus wanted at the center. Specifically, she suggested for other departments looking to add similar offerings to create surveys, talk to campus instructors and setup meetings with different student groups on campus before adding new features.
“When we show initiative to find out what they want and actually implement it in our space, they’ll come and enjoy it,” said Rosen. “We’ve switched our method from programs to having these spaces for them to enjoy. Always stay in touch with the trends and don’t forget to include all eight pillars of well-being into your Campus Recreation offerings.”
Rosen added over time, the department hopes to increase the number of bays in the recovery room to accommodate as many as eight students at a time. Also, she said they want to increase the timeslots from 30 minutes to a full hour. For the Recreation Lounge, all furniture will continue to be updated in the future and more mindfulness games will also be added.
While the new spaces will continue to evolve in the future, these new additions by Penn University Recreation showcase the Pottruck Health and Fitness Center is more than just a gym.
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