Wendy Jones's Archive

The ACU Undergraduate Research, Creativity, and Innovation Festival is scheduled for Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in the Hunter Welcome Center. Please mark your calendars and begin encouraging students to think about projects to present at the festival. To learn more about the Undergraduate Research, Creativity, and Innovation Festival, watch this video.

Join us for this year’s Homecoming Musical October 17-20, 2024, in Boone Family Theatre. The new musical, Freaky Friday, based on the beloved 1972 novel by Mary Rodgers and the hit Disney films (and developed by Disney Theatrical Productions expressly for licensing to theaters), features a book by Bridget Carpenter – the co-executive producer and writer on the beloved TV hits, Friday Night Lights and Parenthood – and music and lyrics by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey – the Pulitzer Prize-winning composers of Next to Normal and If/Then. For more information and to purchase tickets please visit this link.

Abilene Christian University is participating in the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) assessment of faculty and staff thriving this year. This instrument is designed to measure faculty and staff’s levels of thriving, defined as positive emotions and vital engagement in your role at ACU. It also assesses what it takes for university faculty and staff to thrive: aspects of the institutional environment that support or hinder your thriving. Our purpose is to discover the extent to which our faculty and staff are enjoying their work here, to uncover any gender or racial differences, and to address the aspects of the environment that may be hindering your ability to thrive. The survey will allow us to compare our results to other CCCU institutions.

Faculty Survey:
The survey will take you about 15 minutes to complete. All responses are confidential, and only grouped data will be reported to the institution. Please click here to begin.

Staff Survey:
The survey will take you about 15 minutes to complete. All responses are confidential, and only grouped data will be reported to the institution. Please click here to begin.

The survey will close on November 15.

ACU has earned a silver level designation through the state’s Mother-Friendly Workplace program. This program recognizes businesses that support employees who choose to breastfeed their infants and ensures that participating workplaces have facilities and policies in place. ACU now has three Mother’s Rooms located on campus in Brown Library, 156, Phillips Education, 118A and McGlothlin Campus Center, 43C. Soon we will open two more locations in Hunter Welcome Center, 253B and Sherrod Building, 134A. These rooms are open to faculty, staff and students who are breastfeeding. Thank you to members of the Staff Senate for leading this effort.

The Purple Wildcat Plan is available for purchase!

$100 for 20 meals plus $10 in Bean Bucks. Guests are welcome at a reduced door rate of $6.50. Kids ages 5 and under are free. Kids ages 6-12 are at a reduced rate of $5.45.

To purchase your meal plan, search “employee meal plans” on myACU!

One of the great things about working at ACU is the amount of paid time off employees are given. For full-time employees in 2024, ACU will pay for 19 holidays and two personal days. Full-time employees also earn eight hours of sick leave per month, which is 96 hours per year. Full-time employees earn between 80 and 160 vacation hours annually, depending on how long they’ve worked at ACU. Between holidays, personal days and vacation, this is a minimum of 31 paid days off!

As July is coming to an end, please take a moment to look ahead and ensure you have appropriately scheduled your vacation and personal days with your supervisor. For 2024, personal days should be used by Dec. 20 and vacation balances over 80 hours must be used before Dec. 28.

ACU provides faculty, staff, students and alumni unlimited access to RightNow Media—the world’s largest streaming library of video Bible study resources? This extensive library has more than 20,000 videos and the Bible study videos can be used as part of a group study or personal devotions. Many series include free discussion guides and handouts.

RightNow Media is a tool that can help you live out your faith in every area of your life—at home, at work, and in your community. In addition to series on books of the Bible, RightNow Media has videos for everyone in your family on various topics like marriage, parenting, personal finances, mental health, and more. There’s even a library for kids with over 2,000 safe, entertaining videos. RightNow Media has a free app available on all major streaming devices so you and your family can access content anywhere, anytime.

To sign up, just visit this personal invite link.

From Bob Goff, “Has anyone ever told you you have permission to eliminate distractions! You have permission to live a more fulfilling life! Distractions cause more harm than you might think. And they’re all around us, all the time. They can disrupt our focus on what really matters, interfere with our true priorities, and divert our attention from the God who created us for his good purpose.”

Bob Goff, bestselling author of Love Does, has created this video Bible study to give you guidance in and joyful permission to:

• Identify the distractions in your life

• Eliminate them so that you can recharge and refocus on your God-given purpose

• Start living a less-distracted and more joy-filled and love-oriented life

Distractions can get you stuck in the past, worried about the present, and frazzled by any future you could possibly fret over. It’s time to discover how to get undistracted in all aspects of your life.

As the search process for COBA’s next dean continues, Andy Little, associate dean of COBA since 2014, has agreed to serve as the interim dean beginning July 15, 2024. Recently Dr. Little led the self-study and visit which led to a six-year extension of ACU’s Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB) accreditation. COBA programs have been continuously accredited by the AACSB since 2004.
Dr. Little has served as business law faculty in COBA’s Department of Management Sciences since 2010. Prior to his academic appointment, he practiced law in Texas from 2000 to 2010. He holds a BA in Political Science from ACU and a JD from Texas Tech University School of Law, where he served as editor-in-chief of the law review. He also holds an MA in History. Please welcome Andy to this new role.

The Landon Saunders Center for Joy and Human Flourishing will officially launch on July 26, Landon’s birthday, with a campus-wide ice cream party featuring his beloved Ben and Jerry’s Vermont Ice Cream. The event will be held at 2 p.m. in the Hansen Reading Commons of the Brown Library. Come meet Dr. Claire Davidson Frederick, the center’s new director, celebrate Landon’s birthday, and hear more about the center’s plans in the coming year. RSVP here.