ACUOPTIMIST.COM | Friday, May 7, 2021 | 1
A student publication of Abilene Christian University since 1912
MAY COMMENCEMENT TO HONOR ’21 GRADUATES BY RILEY FISHER | CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
Graduating seniors during commencement in August of 2020.
Graduating seniors finding job placements for post-graduation BY SYDNEY VARNER AND MCKENNA HOLMAN EDITOR IN CHIEF AND STAFF REPORTER
May commencement is taking place Friday, Saturday and Sunday as 2021 undergraduate and graduate students accept their diplomas. In total between both semesters, ACU saw 1,187 graduates and now seniors are in the process of finding job placements nearing graduation. ACU’s Career Center keeps stats on the graduating students and their placement status each year.
Jill Fortson, director of career center, has continued to see high percentages of graduates with set plans for after graduation. For 2020, roughly 90% of the May graduates had secured a job or an acceptance to graduate school. “We gather this data each year and report the aggregate data 6 months post-graduation,” said Fortson. “We then report this information to the Senior Leadership team annually for the previous May graduating class.” These stats are important to ACU because they strive for students to be em-
ployable and well-rounded post-graduation. ACU has various resources for students and faculty to use throughout their time here. Two of these resources are Handshake and LinkedIn, which students are also able to use with their ACU email even after graduating. Emilee Gant, graduating special education major from Allen, has accepted a job as a special education teacher at Rockhill High School and will also be a cheerleading coach. “ACU has given me a really good community and faith-based support sys-
tem,” said Gant. “We have instructional planning every summer we can come back to ask questions and receive tips, which is an excellent resource. Students graduating who have not yet found a job are able to still access their Handshake and LinkedIn accounts, as well as continue to use ACU and the career center as a resource. “Being an education major, it’s about the connections you make throughout your college years,” said Gant. For many graduating seniors, COVID-19 took a toll on the job hunt as many
places were not able to hire new employees or either were solely working virtually. Emily Parisi, graduating accounting major, was accepted at PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm is Austin last year after completing a summer internship. Though she was able to secure a job before the pandemic hit, she said that COVID-19 still had a major impact on her last year at ACU. “I didn’t return to ACU in the spring and had to engage in online classes that I had no prior experience with,” Parisi said. “ It went pretty smoothly but return-
Process begins to change general education requirements BY SYDNEY VARNER EDITOR IN CHIEF
Faculty committees have started the process of changing the general education requirements for students. The actual process of changing the curriculum is very involved and starts with research conducted by a faculty committee that will eventually draft a proposal to be exclaimed by faculty and academic advisors. Dr. Cole Bennett, professor of language and literature and director of the writing center, said that big changes in general education don’t happen very often, generally about once
a decade. “A faculty committee has spent many hours examining peer institutions, aspirational institutions, student comments, and faculty feedback toward our general education at ACU.” Bennett said. “We then crafted a draft of a proposal that is now being examined by faculty. We will hear their feedback, plus feedback from the academic advisors, who represent both their own and students’ views.” The research started about two years ago when faculty members proposed some updates and pointed out that general education hasn’t
been updated in ten years. Dr. Jessica Smith, assistant provost for curriculum and assessment, said that smaller revisions to the curriculum were made in 2015 but they decided it was a good time to look at bigger changes. “Changing our curriculum is a process that takes a lot of consideration and so we started a process about two years ago of looking at our undergraduate student learning outcomes and a faculty committee proposed some updates to those,” Smith said. “We made some changes to that and as we began looking then at the curricu-
lum and evaluating the fact that it had been more than a decade since we last made a significant update to our general education.” Since the proposed changes are still being evaluated, there still may be a few years before students see changes in their required courses. “They’ve been discussing with faculty for the last few weeks and we hope we’re coming close to the end of their work so that’s the process that’s been going up to this point and we expect that to stretch on a good bit longer,” Smith said. “The earliest we engage that process would be next academic year in the fall so
that’s the timeline and we wouldn’t be looking at implementing the following year right after that either simply because it just takes a while to get courses in place and approved and ready to go.” The current proposed curriculum changes still have to go through different review committees, the provost, a faculty vote and finally the changes will have to be approved by the university president before they are put into place. There is potential a completed final proposal of the changes will be available to faculty for review by the end of the spring semester.
ing to a more normal class environment in the fall was easier to navigate.” Parisi, like many other graduating students, took advantage of opportunities the university and her department gave her to improve her interview skills and resumé. “Having opportunities to practice interviewing through various classes was also incredibly helpful,” Parisi. “If you embrace ACU’s attempts to help you prepare for the process, you will be more than prepared and have the chance to excel.”
NEWS
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PAGE 2
GRADUATION
A year behind masks: COVID-19’s impact on the school year BY SYDNEY VARNER EDITOR IN CHIEF
This year has been anything but normal, filled with masks, cancelled events and separate attempts at social distancing to try to keep the pandemic at bay. Zoom calls and cancelled events seemed to be the theme of this school year but there’s hope that things may be returning to normal sooner rather than later. COVID-19 is a phrase students across the country are tired of hearing and students on ACU’s campus are no exception to the multiple different impacts they’ve seen throughout their school year. Online classes, masks and constantly changing plans mean students, faculty and staff have all started to feel the fatigue that came with this year.
Dr. Tamara Long, vice president for enrollment and student life, has been a key part in the university’s response to the coronavirus. A part of the COVID-19 emergency response team on campus, Long has been attending almost daily meetings with the goal of keeping students safe in mind. She, too, is feeling the fatigue that came with the school year. “I’m the most exhausted I’ve ever felt at this point in my job in the year and the end of the year is always exhausting, but there’s a different kind of tired right now,” Long said. “We’ve given up a lot to provide the best possible experience for our students and we’re tired. Everyone’s tired, students are tired.” As the year comes to end, there is some light at the end of the tunnel as
many are hoping for things to return to normal as we move into next school year. Long is hopeful but says that normal for ACU is going to be different than normal used to be. “I’m running as fast as I can into next year, I’m done with this year for sure and I think a lot of people feel that way,” Long said. “[It’s] not a return to normal, not that anything is normal. I think we don’t go backwards, we evolve and go forwards. I think everyone longs for a pace that is more sustainable and far less to constraints for doing our jobs.” Departments across campus are feeling the impact of this year as well, with many of them having to change the way they educate their students to keep up with their normal criteria. Departments of nursing, theater, biblical studies and so many more rely
heavily on community and in person instruction to best teach their students, but have had to come up with different ways to make that happen. Junior nursing major from Brownsville, Jamie Gonzalez, said that online classes were incredibly challenging and that she’s grateful to have been partly on campus and partly in-person during this school year. “Having the professors here with me is great because if we were online I wouldn’t know what to do,” Gonzalez said. “It’s so overwhelming to be online and having professors accessible and able to interact with in person is very helpful.” As a nursing student, Gonzalez has had to navigate through clinicals and labs in the time of COVID-19 and say’s they were able to continue their
direct patient care with heavy restrictions. “We still have to have masks and we have restrictions like we couldn’t go into COVID rooms,” Gonzalez said. You have to have your guard up.” Senior theater major from Abilene, Griffin Jones, is a well known face across campus, being a part of the theater department as well as being one of this year’s Sing Song hosts. Both the theater department and Sing Song were hit hard by COVID-19 but Jones says he’s encouraged to see people still taking on opportunities they can. “It’s also pretty encouraging to see people still taking these opportunities that they do get to have because so many opportunities were taken from us last year,” Jones said. SEE PAGE 3
2020-2021 Graduate names PAGE 4
SPORTS
Tanner named men’s basketball coach PAGE 16
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