Dr. Kerri Hart, assistant professor of exercise science and health, has for a decade been the driving force behind the construction of a wellness center for the ACU campus. When the Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center opens, Hart will take on new duties as the center’s director of training and fitness programming. We sat down with Dr. Hart to talk about her new position and what it entails.
What will your new job entail?
I get to be in charge of the trainers that are on the weight or cardio floor. I get to be in charge of the group exercise classes and decide which ones we offer. Basically, it means I get to be in charge of the programming for the building.
Are these academic classes, or more activity-type extracurricular offerings?
I’ll decide what activities classes, what educational sessions we offer in the evenings.
The academic side is intertwined. I will keep a part of my position in the Exercise Science Department and act as a liaison. There would be some nonacademic classes and some academic classes. It’s a unique position; that’s what makes it exciting.
What are you doing to prepare?
It’s almost like going in and filling in an outline. We’ve got the outline; now we’re just going in and filling in the details of it.
We’ve got the equipment ordered, from as small as stretching mats to as large as treadmills. I’m working very closely with Joel Swedlund, [who currently manages the Campus Center but will move over to perform a similar role in the SRWC]. We’re working on a policies and procedures manual, we need to decide on the hours. We’ll begin to hire student workers and train them. A lot of that will happen this summer. We have a plan for that.
What has prepared me for that was my doctoral work, where we had to do projects like this all the time. One of our assessments was we had to design a policies and procedures manual. Our work was to plan a facility like this. That is a blessing and a benefit.
You, Joel and the facility’s executive director will have a dual responsibility to Student Life and to the Exercise Science and Health Department. How will that relationship work?
The idea is for it to be totally collaborative effort between the three of us. We’ll fall under Student Life. This semester, I’m transitioning into Student Life.
Joel and I are revisiting other university recreation centers. There are two that stand out in our mind, TCU and Texas State. Texas State was built by the same architects; When you go into the Texas State building, it’s set up the way ours will be. Even though theirs is larger because it’s a large university, it’s set up very similarly.
We’re going to visit there, we’re going to a similar wellness facility that’s using the technology from [SRWC vendor] TechnoGym.
After all this preparation, what will you do when the building opens?
The first year is going to just be learning. Any new building, from learning about the sound system to pool temperatures and atmosphere, there’s a lot you can’t know until that building is there and you’re living in it.