By Mallory Sherwood, Features Editor
The Centennial Campaign’s yearlong celebration will begin in February with production of a photographic book honoring ACU and its 100-year history.
Ron Hadfield, director of creative services and editor of ACU Today magazine, plans to begin compiling the 192-page, hardback book that will be for sale for $40 to $50 this August.
“The book will be one of the finest things alumni can buy to remember the Centennial,” Hadfield said. “We want it to be one of the best things we’ve ever done and to be worth the investment, something [people] buy for friends and family members who know and love ACU.”
The President’s Council on the Centennial believed ACU needed to produce a special coffee-table book to commemorate the centennial, said Michelle Morris, assistant vice president for the university and Alumni Relations and Centennial Celebration director, in an e-mail.
Hadfield and two graphic designers, Ken Stewart and Greg Golden, have been designing the untitled centennial book for more than a year. The book will contain hundreds of pictures gathered from ACU’s archive, the library’s archive, donations from ACU alumni and a dozen or more narrative essays about the university.
“Alumni have donated photos they may have had in their cedar chests, file cabinets or attic,” Hadfield said. “People have been taking pictures from the beginning of the school in 1906 and last year we had one donated from 1918.We want the book to have the best photography of the last 100 years.”
Hadfield is also hoping for the book’s production to remain in the ACU community.
“My goal is for it to be completely written, designed and put together by alumni of the university,” Hadfield said. “It will make it a more meaningful project in the end.”
Morris said 8,000 books will be ordered this summer, but people will have the chance this spring to pre-order the book.
Hadfield and Morris both look forward to when the book is complete.
“You don’t get to do a centennial very often; it is a privilege to work on a project like that,” Hadfield said. “It’ll be a lot of hard work, but it will be worth the effort.”
