The ACU Nursing Association is making custom masks for nursing majors.

Robert Smith, junior nursing major from Rockwall and vice president of the ACU nursing association, said he had come up with the idea and now would be good time for nursing majors to have their own custom masks.

“The idea started that we wanted to sell masks to the whole nursing department,” Smith said. “Lauren and I got to design them and since they say ‘ACU School of Nursing’ on them it would be a really good branding move for the department.”

Lauren Maloy, senior nursing major from McKinney and president of the ACU nursing association, said she told him now is the perfect time to make the masks.

“We already had a merch store, so we decided to go ahead and start making them,” Maloy said. “When he mentioned that we should get them from a local business I told him that was even better, especially since now is the time we should be supporting them.”

Smith said that, coming from a family whose business was affected by the pandemic, he believed it was important to source from a local.

“Normally, what’s happened in the past, we’ve used corporate and online businesses and they design merch for you,” Smith said. “But with COVID-19 happening, it was my idea to bring it up to the board to have a local business do it.”

He said that while this was important to him when considering a supplier, we wanted to make sure the product they sell would have no liability issues.

“I scattered across Abilene and find someone to make us masks,” Smith said. “It’s awesome that so many people are hand making them, but it was also important to ensure that the quality of the masks was good since the nursing students will be wearing them in the hospitals.”

While searching for a supplier, Smith said that locals in the community were eager for the opportunity to work with an organization from ACU.

Once he found the best supplier, he said he knew the nursing school would get high-quality, well-priced masks.

“We found a supplier that was fabulous with pricing,” Smith said. “It was obvious that some people were trying to up-sell, so we were happy to find someone who gave us a good price and made masks that matched up to CDC regulations.”

Smith said that the Nursing Association has already pre-ordered masks and will be sending out the first order soon with the possibility of being open to selling them to non-majors.