Kait Christensen | News Co-Editor

CORRECTION: This article originally stated that the new ACES program would reduce required ACES from eight to seven. This is not accurate. Students will still be required to complete eight events each semester, only the distribution of the events has changed.

An Academic and Cultural Events Series (ACES) revisions proposal that originated in early March was approved by the Buena Vista University (BVU) Faculty Senate at its meeting last Thursday. The proposal’s passage means the program revisions will begin next fall. There are several important changes to the ACES program as a result, including a different required distribution of events for students.

Both Associate Dean of Faculty Peter Steinfeld and the Buena Vista University (BVU) Student Senate worked to amend the original proposal as it moved through governance.

Steinfeld noted that the revisions mean several changes that will start next fall for the ACES program.

“The first change is that we are no longer going to have signature events at all. The signature events become ‘cultural’ events, and so there will be one major cultural event that will look a lot like the signature events. So basically, the number of signature events from four to five per semester will be reduced to one,” Steinfeld said.

“Cultural” events will also include more BVU-sponsored events, along with the one larger event. Because it will be extremely difficult for all students to attend the one major cultural event, other options will be offered through the BVU internal events.

“Since it will change categories to cultural, there will be some number, depending on how many productions we can hold, that are going to be more internal cultural events,” Steinfeld said.

This would include BVU-produced plays, musical events, jazz productions, choir productions, and various other cultural productions on campus.

The new program also has changes to ACES distribution requirements for students. In the past, there have been two required signature events, four scholarly, one student life, and one elective per semester. But next year student requirements will include two cultural events, three scholarly events, one student life, and two electives.

“There was just a little bit of shifting in the scholarly events to give the students a little bit more of a choice in what else they go to,” Steinfeld said.

Also new to the program will be a banking system for students. This will help reward them for the extra work they may do in the ACES system. Students will have the ability to carry over two electives from fall semester to their spring semester requirement.

“Basically what that means is that from the fall to the spring semester only, students can bank up to two events that they would then move forward to the spring semester… For instance, if you did ten events in the fall, you could bank two events that would then be counted towards two electives in the spring. The ten that you’ve done, two of them would get moved forward so you would then only have to do six in the spring semester,” Steinfeld said.

Lindokken and the Student Senate were strong advocates for the new banking process.

“Getting the ‘banking system’ into the proposal was a process that took roughly a month to accomplish. We spent a couple of meetings discussing the specifics of how we wanted to see the system implemented, and then it took a couple weeks of working with the faculty and administration to finalize its inclusion into the proposal,” he said.

Steinfeld pointed out that banking will not take place from the spring back to the next fall semester, however, and the two additional events that are banked will only be carried over as electives.

Lindokken worked with a variety of campus constituencies to get the banking system figured out and into the new program.

“Student Senate spent a fair amount of time on the ACES proposal. We saw this as an opportunity to implement some changes to the ACES program that would give students a greater degree of flexibility in their schedules,” Lindokken said.

Another change in the program is in its administration. There will not be an ACES Director next year, and instead the five academic schools on campus will manage ACES scholarly events. Each school will be given the same amount of money to plan ACES events, and other options will be given if more money is needed.

“About half the money that we have available will be distributed to the five different schools. They will work on bringing the scholarly events from their own schools. The rest of the money will stay in this office. If the schools need more in additional funds, they can come to us and ask. We will also fund the major events, and we will also give an amount of money to Student Affairs so that they can fund [student] life events as well,” Steinfeld said.

An ACES committee will play another large administrative role, especially in deciding the major cultural event brought to BVU. Training will also be given to the school administrative assistants. This will help them with the management and hospitality for the ACES guests since this will be now be handled at the school level.

Steinfeld explained that freshman Tuesday sessions will still be taking place, but the committee will focus on working them in as ACES speakers. The committee will help make sure the scheduling of the events will be recorded quickly so other events will not be scheduled on top of each other.

Graphic by Grace Bodey