The university is taking alumni and students “Out West” for a Homecoming weekend with activities from Thursday to Sunday.

From performances of Shrek: The Musical and the Homecoming parade to the highly anticipated football matchup against Tarleton State University, the Alumni Association has been working for the past year to create a Homecoming experience for everyone.

Craig Fisher, director of alumni relations and annual projects, said Homecoming is “legacy, relational and community.”

“We are such a relational university,” Fisher said. “Our community likes to be together, no matter what we’re doing. We want to draw them back here because we want them to remain connected. We want them to bring their families, so that their children are seeing this place and kind of going, ‘This is something that I might need to think about as well.’”

This year’s theme is “Out West,” which Fisher said is to draw alumni back to West Texas. Events such as the Homecoming Parade will connect to the theme with western-themed floats, and the ACU Riding Team leading the parade with its horses.

“A lot of our alumni are close, but more and more and more, we’re spreading out all over the world,” Fisher said. “So to think about coming back home, we want to draw that emotion of coming back home or coming back to West Texas.”

Abby Easley, alumni and university relations officer, said once Homecoming is over, the planning for the next year immediately will begin.

“It looks like we evaluate what we liked, what we didn’t like, what we might want to change or keep for the next year,” Easley said. “As soon as the football schedule comes out, we start looking at what dates to pick. We start talking about themes within our team and other partners across the university, and so we pick the theme pretty early, and then we build our student leadership team.”

The student leadership team is just one of the campus partners that help run Homecoming weekend. Easley said Homecoming is a campus-wide effort, and it could not happen without partners such as ACUPD, the athletic staff and the university’s facilities team.

“Our aim is to make it so that we are doing everything behind the scenes, and our alumni can just have a good time like I think that’s really the heart of what our team does,” Easley said. “We build something, and we work really hard on it all year so that people can come back to campus and just have a good time and not have to worry about the logistics or where they’re going to eat, or what they’re going to do during this time.”

While one of the biggest goals of Homecoming is to connect with alumni, Athena Crum, alumni and university relations officer, said it is important for students to know that the weekend is for them, too.

“It’s also a time for [students] to get really involved and make memories too,” Crum said. “I think just encouraging students to get involved, do everything, meet some alumni, have some fun.”