The Carolina Conscious cup. Courtesy photo
“Like Carolina students before us, we follow the Carolina Way,” the site reads. “It defines our traditions: drinking from the Old Well, setting fire to Franklin Street, holding a door open for a classmate, and hating everything that is Duke.”
One of these traditions, according to the site, is making the school a better place for the next group of incoming students. It continues: “We need to make strides to end sexual violence at UNC. Learn about the issue, become more than a bystander and make a conscious choice to improve our campus culture.”
GETTING SOME HELP FROM THE SCHOOL
They had the idea, and they had the ability to produce cups. But they still needed some help creating the business. That’s where UNC Kenan-Flagler lent a hand.
“The business school has been really supportive,” MacCormac says. “They’ve been wonderful advisers, they check in with us, and they always know who to send us to talk to next.”
Their main faculty adviser is Tracy Triggs-Matthews, associate director of the Center for Sustainable Enterprise. “They were meeting with different folks and trying to figure out what made sense and where they could find the right resources, and they came back and asked me if I could serve as their faculty adviser,” Triggs-Matthews says. “So we meet periodically to discuss challenges and new opportunities.”
She may be the faculty adviser for the Carolina Conscious club, but she also helped when they became a business.
“I’ve always been blown away and amazed by the ideas and the hard work that students will put into their ideas,” Triggs-Matthews says. “It’s very inspiring to see how they’re pulling together what a lot of people would consider completely separate ideas.”
MORE CUPS AND MORE SCHOOLS
Triggs-Matthews is also impressed by the impact she sees them having, both on the administration and the student body. “They’re able to bring home a lot of these ideas that many students probably haven’t even thought about. They have a different-looking cup, and that sparks interest and knowledge,” she says.
MacCormac is also hopeful about the impact she thinks Carolina Conscious can have. She says they’re working to make their model replicable right now, and in the future, she hopes they can open chapters on other university campuses as well.
In the meantime, they’re getting ready for their first full year operating at UNC. Lowery, Lipsitz, and Director have graduated, so MacCormac and Dunleavy are heading up a new team of Carolina Conscious leaders, while their co-founders take on an advisory role.
By next year, when it’s MacCormac and Dunleavy’s turn to graduate, MacCormac says they “absolutely” plan to stay involved, too — perhaps not directly with the UNC campus chapter, but certainly with the business.
“We think that any school could benefit from the same message,” she says. “Right now we’re focusing on Carolina Conscious, but we’d like to start partnering with other local universities, and going forward we might change the name if we expand beyond North Carolina. There’s no reason why we couldn’t. Our prices are comparative, and our cups hold drinks just as well.”
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