The Student Recreation Center (SRC) has added three new administrators to its staff, who all have ideas on how to improve the center and expand on the programs offered.
Director of Campus Recreation, Chris Stachewicz plans to implement creative programming to engage students and to grow intramural sports.
“One of the new programs that we’ve looked at starting was some sort of outdoor adventure program,” Stachewicz said the department hopes to implement an outdoor adventure program. He notes that they’ve started small, with one trip over fall break and that they’d love to add more in the future.
“I know that we will definitely be doing one [trip] in the spring,” Stachewicz said.
He has also created Wellness Wednesdays at the SRC through the fitness program.
“Each week we focus on a different part of the Wellness Wheel,” says Stachewicz. “To be able to go through it, we want to be sure that we collaborated with other departments on campus, as well as [throughout] Weakley County.”
The Wellness Wheel focuses on the different aspects of wellness such as environmental, occupational, intellectual, spiritual, emotional, physical, financial and social wellness.
Amilicar Galindo, another new addition to the administration, also has plans for change.
Galindo is the new coordinator of facilities and activities for the SRC. He hopes to increase student attendance at the center and to increase SRC exposure to students.
“We usually have around 200 to 300 swipes a day in this facility,” Galindo said. That’s just under 3 percent of the UTM student body. At his previous school, The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) he saw just under 8 percent of students using their facilities regularly.
Galindo wants to get students involved in using the facility and the programs that the SRC offer.
“What’s different here is trying to get more programming or more ideas on how to bring more students here… and how to actually utilize it since they’re paying for it. You know, giving them that outlet; letting them know we’re here,” Galindo said.
Trace Stenz, the newest Intramural and Sport Club coordinator, joined the SRC administration with hopes to increase student involvement, as well as to improve the sport club teams and intramural sports.
Stenz also plans on expanding the sport club teams so that students will become more active and aware of the programs that the SRC offers.
“I want as many students to participate in intramural sports, and [for us to] offer as many wide ranges of activities as possible, such as, easy sports gaming, to try to reach a whole new type of student to come into the rec center that may not normally come,” Stenz said.
Stenz wants to reach out to students to hear any ideas that they have that could benefit the SRC.
“Any student that has anything in mind that they would like to see added, I am more than open to do that. I have a very cliché ‘open door policy’. Not necessarily that I will do it, but I will consider any new thing because I want to reach as many students as possible.”
With inspiration from the UTM faculty and staff as a whole, the SRC has students at the center of their attention.
“Student involvement here has been more than I’ve seen in other universities,” Galindo said. “The main university that I worked at for the previous six years- there was involvement- but I see that everything here in the university is really catered towards the students. Like, every single aspect of it. It’s ‘Let’s make sure the students have whatever they need’.”
With students on the center of the spectrum, Galindo plans to take the inspiration from the campus as a whole and implement the students best interests for the SRC.
“We’re looking into reorganizing and getting new equipment [for the] fitness center, which is the free weight area of the facility. We are currently looking to change out the layout in about July,” Galindo said.
“The purpose of changing that is actually having free space to do activities where you can actually, let’s say you wanna do walking lunges, you can actually have a space for that so you don’t have to walk between machines and walk between people.”
In order to successfully implement this change, Galindo has started what’s called census sheets. These sheets help count and keep track of the utilization of the machines, from the machines being used, to the ones not.
It will also help measure the demand so that the SRC can get rid of rarely utilized machines or purchase more due to high demand. This is a short-term goal that will help with Galindo’s long-term goal in the summer to rearrange and improve the free weight area.
All in all, the SRC is working to improve upon already implemented programs and to create new ways to get the students to utilize the facility.
“There’s a lot of failures [from past experiences] I would say, but, just learning from those mistakes [has prepared me for this job],” Galindo said.
“You know, there’s a million things that can happen. Our job at Campus Rec is not the same day in and day out. You deal with different situations; different things can happen. I mean, most of the time you might not expect something that is going to happen, and you just have to work along with that issue.”
