Brown and Hayden, rest of Top 4 hope to Revitalize Student Community Sunday, Sep 4 2022 

college experience and COVID-19 and Dorian Brown and Election and Katie Hayden and News and SGA and SGA and Administration and student body and student body president and u of l Joe Wilson 6:51 pm

By Joe Wilson —

Excitement, community, and potential. These are just some of the words that the the top 4 officers of the Student Government Association (SGA) use to describe the upcoming school year.

Earlier this week, Dorian Brown and Katie Hayden spoke with The Louisville Cardinal about their new roles as SGA’s Student Body President and Executive Vice President, respectively. 

Prior to Their Positions

Both Brown and Hayden were elected to their posts in Spring 2022, after a tumultuous election cycle that involved months-long lawsuits and a run-off election. Reflecting on the election, Brown recalls being caught off guard by the contentious end of the campaign. “When it got deeper into the process, it kind of fueled my fire to want to be a person that can make changes in the future so that this situation doesn’t happen again in the upcoming years,” he said.

Speaking about the election, Hayden adds, “It was really hard. I would say there are a lot of different factors playing into the election. At the end of the day, we were very happy that it turned out how it did.”

What’s in Store For The Top 4

Shifting the conversation away from the past, both Brown and Hayden expressed optimism about the future on campus, including a wish to revitalize U of L’s student community after the university decided to ease most of its COVID-19 restrictions from the previous two years. In August, the university announced it would no longer require students, faculty, and staff to wear masks indoors. 

Hayden noted the improvement in student morale after the mask policy change. “It’s kind of funny, because you see people around campus that you’ve known for years, and they look completely different because you’ve been looking at them under a mask, so we’re excited to get a lot more face-to-face interaction this year.”

Ultimately, Hayden explains, the changes to the mask policy were made in consideration of public health guidelines and students’ mental health. “We talked about a lot of different factors that played into it, whether the mental health aspect of wearing a mask, the depression rates,” she explained.

Brown adds that the university continues to monitor COVID-19 cases on campus and will update the masking policy as needed. “We’re still going to track the COVID positive rates and base our next decisions on those.” Above all, Brown emphasized his goal to give students a typical college experience.

Looking Towards a Safer Future

In addition to the COVID-19 pandemic, Brown and Hayden see campus security as a top priority in their administration. Hayden explains, “We’ve been working very closely with U of L PD to ensure we’re being extremely transparent in our measures. The university has put a lot of money into safety measures across the board.”

Reflecting on the other challenges the U of L community faces, Brown remains hopeful for the future. “We don’t know what’s in store for this year, but we have a lot of potential to have one of the best years the university has seen so far.”

To learn more about the SGA, you can do so here. You can follow them on Instagram here.

File Photo // U of L SGA //

The post Brown and Hayden, rest of Top 4 hope to Revitalize Student Community appeared first on The Louisville Cardinal.

 

While we may never “return to normal,” we can take the first steps Wednesday, Mar 24 2021 

class planning and college experience and COVID-19 vaccine and digital education and Dr. Beth Boehm and face-to-face and fall 2021 and hybrid classes and Livi Westbay and Megan Poole and Opinion and pandemic and Trevin Brent and virtual learning Catherine Brown 3:00 pm

By Catherine Brown–

After two semesters of hybrid and remote classes, U of L is finally offering face-to-face classes and 100% virtual classes in fall 2021. This can finally be the return to normal that many students have been anticipating.

U of L announced the transition in an email sent out earlier this month on March 12 via the U of L Update service account. 

In the email, Executive Vice President and University Provost Beth Boehm said that as vaccines are coming out, the university will be able to transition most classes from virtual to face-to-face in the fall.

This is the kind of news that many students and faculty have been looking forward to since last spring.

“I was very excited to see that we’d be going back to face-to-face,” Trevin Brent, a junior SPAD major, said. “As long as it is proven to be safe I couldn’t be happier about it!”

Brent added that he plans to schedule all in-person classes for the fall semester.

Meanwhile, Livi Westbay, a junior communication major, hopes that U of L keeps hybrid classes as an option for students to choose when registering for classes.

“I’m glad classes are going back to normal but I think U of L should keep hybrid courses an option,” Westbay said.

Accordingly, she plans to enroll in only online classes for the fall semester.

For faculty and staff, these changes mean planning out another semester of classes while also needing a contingency plan in case the pandemic rolls over into the fall.

Megan Poole, assistant professor of English at U of L, aims to make decisions for the class based on what her students are most comfortable with.

“The main practice I began during pandemic teaching that I will continue into future semesters is sending out a pre-course survey to ask what students expect to get from the course, how they plan to participate, and why they have enrolled,” she said. “This feedback allows me to tweak instruction plans to best fit student needs and interests, but it also gives students a stake in how the course unfolds.”

Poole said that she hopes other professors will be mindful of the physical and mental wellbeing of students as they plan for the future.

“More fundamental than whether I agree or not with the change to F2F or 100% DE is my belief that no matter what format our classes operate under next semester, professors should enter the classroom knowing that students might struggle with yet another transition in their learning environment.” 

Traditional freshmen in the 2020-21 school year might not have gotten the “college experience” that many upperclassmen got to enjoy in the 2019-2020 academic year, including in-person RSO meetings, school sporting events, and getting to meet classmates and professors in the classroom.

In fall 2021, incoming freshmen will get the chance to experience college life a little bit closer to the way it was before.

As more individuals across campus get the vaccine, we can anticipate a steady decrease in the number of COVID-19 cases.

We know that the virus will not be gone by the fall semester.

But we can still plan to return to a fraction of the way we once were.

File Graphic // The Louisville Cardinal

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