No student will be placed on Chapel probation this semester following the failure of the Quest app.

During the spring semester, a number of technological setbacks arose, resulting in the inaccurate tracking of attendance in small group chapels and other spiritual formation opportunities.

“A disproportionate number of people show up with too few credits,” said director of student life, Scott McDowell. “This was a significant difference from the trends of the last several years.”

McDowell said student life was dissatisfied with the reliability of the Quest app to track attendance. In several instances, students would attend Spiritual Formation events to find that their presence had not been recorded.

“We made the decision to not put anyone on probation because we didn’t feel like we had reliable data and if we made a mistake, we wanted to err in favor of the students,” said McDowell.

For now, ACU has returned to sign-in sheets for Spiritual Formation opportunities taking place outside of the three facilities that have built-in card readers: Moody, Cullen, and Chapel on the Hill. Small group leaders are responsible for turning in sign-in sheets to the Chapel Office within 5 school days.

“I want the future to be as simple and reliable as possible to track chapel attendance,” said McDowell. “We can and will do better.”