Archive for ‘Planning’

Get ready for RecFest.

The Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center will open Friday, Sept. 2, with a ceremony at the facility’s main entrance immediately after Abilene Christian University students are dismissed from Chapel at 11:30 a.m.

From then, the center will be open nearly continuously for 36 hours — with a couple of hours off to clean up Saturday morning, said Brian Devost, the facility’s executive director.

“It’s going to be a marathon,” he said. “It’s pretty much a free-for-all.”

And, yes, that’s free. For all faculty, staff and students who want to show up and participate in the all-night opening celebration.

The Money Center will be open all afternoon and evening Friday for tours and use, but the official RecFest won’t begin until 11 p.m., when a slew of co-ed tournaments — volleyball, basketball, soccer, inner-tube water polo, water relay, foul-shot competition, racquetball, shuffleboard (full-size variety) and badminton — will kick off. Meanwhile, workout equipment, the outdoor basketball court, jogging track and bouldering wall will be open for free play.

Dr. Kerri Hart, director of training and fitness programs, will provide demonstrations of the facility’s new exercise classes, and the new leisure pool will be open for use when tournaments are not taking place. Late-night food is likely, Devost said, as is a screening of the movie Jaws for those floating on inner tubes in the pool areas.

And if that wasn’t enough, students upon their arrival are entered into hourly drawings for door prizes.

“The whole night is going to be open to the students — and the faculty and staff if they want to come, as well,” Devost said. “It should be pretty exciting.”

The Money Center will likely close between 6-8 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 3, to allow for cleaning, Devost said, then reopen for normal use.

The view from the bank of windows along the south wall of what will soon be a pair of 5,000-square-foot group-exercise rooms.

Sporting such colorful names as Zumba, Circumference and Capoeira, the exercise-class offerings in the Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center have been unveiled.

“I think it’s going to be great,” said Dr. Kerri Hart, the facility’s director of exercise programing. “When I visit with students in my classes or I explain to people the programming in the facility, they get very excited when they hear Boot Camp, yoga, indoor cycling.”

The classes — 12 in all — include a mix of name-brand and generic-alternative programming, as well as a few currently offered for credit at Abilene Christian University. These classes, however, will be strictly extracurricular.

Several classes were developed by the university’s Department of Exercise Science and Health to replicate brand-name offerings that are too expensive for ACU to offer. These include Circumference, an indoor-cycling class similar to the popular Spin class offered at many health centers.

“You might have experienced other indoor cycling classes,” a written description of the class states, “but you have not truly experienced indoor cycling until you have experienced Circumference. Come full circle as you improve your cardiovascular endurance and tone your entire body. … [M]ake sure to bring a towel and water. You WILL need both!”

Likewise, Push — “a dual workout for both upper and lower body” for those seeking to “define your muscles while gaining strength” — is similar to the name-brand Body Pump class, Hart said.

Then there’s the hard-to-pronounce Capoeira (Cap-WHED-a), a Brazilian style of martial arts that “provides a fabulous blend of athleticism, martial arts and artistry.”

The classes will be offered in three groupings — early in the morning (6:15 and 7 a.m.), noon and early evening (4:30, 5:30 and 6:30 p.m.). In all, there will be 26 total class sessions per week, including two on Saturdays.

“This grouping of classes was based on the many visits we made and what other universities provide,” she said. “The times are based on what they said were the busiest times for their classes.”

Classes will be available as soon as the building opens, Hart said, and they initially will be free to allow students to sample them.

However, students seeking to participate in a class ultimately will have to pay for it by purchasing a punch card that will be good for any 10 class sessions in the facility. The price for the cards has yet to be determined, but is likely to be less than $50, Hart said. Paying for the classes helps ACU hire the certified instructors who will be teaching them — and keeps the university from charging every student for classes only a few will take.

“They’re still getting a very good deal on a holistic facility,” Hart said. “To me, it’s not fair to charge people who are not interested in group exercise to pay for the teachers who are certified to teach those classes.”

The full list of classes and their descriptions follow the jump.

“I’m excited to see the response of our community,” she said. “I think it’ll be good.”

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A cluster of fabric, carpet and paint samples in Mary Reyes' office gives a glimpse of the colors students, faculty and staff will see in the wellness center.

While construction crews install the floors and ceilings in the Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center, it’s up to Mary Reyes to determine how they’ll look when students first walk through the doors.

Reyes, the Abilene Christian University director of campus aesthetics, and her student worker, Alex Potess, for several weeks have been working full-time on what materials, colors and furnishings will decorate the wellness center within the allotted budget.

The decisions balance appearance, practicality and cost, Reyes says.

“The recreation center is vibrant and energetic and needs to convey that,” she said, whereas space for the Medical and Counseling Care Center needs to be “a comforting environment. That’s a place where students know it’s safe. You see more earth tones over there.”

Final decisions have been made on furniture choices, from lobby seating to classroom chairs to counseling couches and office furnishings, while plans are taking shape on such items as wall color and flooring surfaces.

“Everything from floor to ceiling,” Reyes said, “that conversation has happened.”

Alex Potess has more reason than most students to be excited about the opening this year of the Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center.

As the student worker in the Office of Campus Aesthetics, she has had a key role in selecting paint colors, furniture styles and even trash cans for Abilene Christian University’s new facility. It’s a job she’s used to by now; she did the same thing for the recently opened AT&T Learning Studio.

“Alex pushed us in the direction of things to consider” in the Learning Studio, said Mary Reyes, director of Campus Aesthetics, and as work heats up on the wellness center, “Alex will be heavily involved.”

Alex, senior interior design and pre-architecture major from Lubbock, picked out the bold, vibrant colors and trendy furnishings of the Learning Studio, and when it opened, she was able to see the results of her work on the walls and in front of the desks now used constantly by ACU students.

“It was really cool,” she said. “It’s the first time I’ve seen something I’ve worked on come to life. I can actually walk through and experience it for myself.”

Working on the wellness center has made her so excited, Alex said she pushed her last exercise science class into the fall semester so she could attend class in the new building. To read more about how Alex came to ACU and the vision she has for her life, visit her profile page on the ACU website.

Dr. Nicki Rippee

Dr. Nicki Rippee feels your pain.

If you’re gymphobic, if you feel intimidated by the sight of perfectly toned bodies working out on machines you barely understand, or if you simply don’t know where to begin, Rippee’s been there.

“This is what I do,” says the Abilene Christian University professor of exercise science and health, “and there are some fitness centers I’ve been in, and I feel intimidated.”

That’s why, as she both began and ended an interview about the overall wellness philosophy embodied in ACU’s new Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center, she emphasized five words:

“This is not a gym.

“This is not a fitness center,” Rippee said. “That’s not our goal. We have a much broader path. This will be a place where people could integrate all the parts of what we call wellness.”

So what is wellness?

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