Fall 2020: Hello masks and goodbye President McLarty

If you read my last post, I was somewhat apprehensive about Harding's attempt to hold in-person classes this fall. But by the grace of God, we made it without having to go online a single day. The photo below is from our faculty lounge where a Math professor tracked how many days we met in person. President McLarty signed it the last week of classes.

Fall 2020 will certainly go down as one of the most memorable semesters of my teaching career. We held in-person classes during the COVID-19 pandemic while simultaneously allowing some students to attend online. I personally revamped all my classes to accommodate my remote students.

• The faculty did a tremendous amount of work to make the semester a success. Managing two different groups of students taking the same class is no easy task.
• The administration spent many hours and significant money making the campus as safe as possible for our students. Instead of having in-person chapel as we normally do, daily chapel videos were created for students to watch online.
• The physical resources department worked hard putting up plastic barriers in classrooms and getting the campus ready for our students.
• The students showed up and did what they needed to do. They didn't get to have all the social opportunities a normal semester affords, but they wore their masks and social distanced when possible. When I was their age, I doubt I would have social distanced at all.

COVID and masks

Honestly, I was a little uneasy being in the classroom with my students the first few weeks of school. I read about several big universities having so many cases of COVID and wondered if the same would happen here. I read about the faculty at some universities fighting against the administration and publishing open letters warning their students of danger. At Harding there were faculty who also thought bringing students back to campus was a bad idea.

But as the semester went on, I got more comfortable with the arrangement. My students wore masks and sat at least six feet apart. No one seemed to be getting COVID from being in the classroom. For office hours, I would often meet with students online or outside.

The first student to have COVID was confirmed on September 10, and the first of my students to get COVID came a week later. Four more of my students would get it in the weeks to come. As you can see from Harding's COVID dashboard (screenshot below), the number of cases spiked in mid-October and then again in mid-November.

If my math is right, about 8% of our undergraduates got COVID during the semester. My students told me their cases were very mild. Usually the loss of taste or a sore throat was the worst of it. Most students with COVID were isolated in Kendall Hall where I was told the students often played games in the halls and enjoyed hanging out with other students.

For the students who were close contacts and had to quarantine, it wasn't so nice. Some chose to go home and quarantine, but many stayed on campus either in their dorm room or in the Heritage Inn. It was a very lonely couple of weeks. Some were able to focus on their school work, but others got behind because of their lack of focus. I personally would have gone nuts if I was confined to a small room for two weeks.

Being in-person with my students this semester was so much better than teaching online. However, teaching in a mask is anything but ideal. At times I would feel out of breath or worry that some couldn't hear me. It was a lot harder to joke around with my students. When I said something funny, they couldn't see me smile, and I struggled to read their reaction. I encourage a lot of in-class participation, and when a student would holler out a question or a comment, I struggled knowing who it was that spoke. There certainly was a handful of awkward moments, but we managed to get through it.

President McLarty

On Friday, October 30, I received an email that I could hardly believe: The Board announced that President McLarty was retiring at the end of November after a seven year stint as President. Chancellor Burks would be returning to take over the role of President until a new replacement could be found.

As word of Dr. McLarty's resignation spread, I had family and friends ask if I knew anything more about the situation. I did not. I believe most of the faculty were surprised. I knew Harding's finances were not stellar after the financial blow that COVID dealt us, and I knew that our enrollment had been dropping for about four years, forcing the university to lay-off about a dozen faculty and staff last year. But I also knew that our situation was actually less bleak than many private universities. No one except the elite universities have been immune in recent years to the troubles facing higher education.

For our students, McLarty's resignation was also quite a shock. Not only was the country going to potentially elect a new US President next month, Harding was also going to change presidents. We prayed a lot for Dr. McLarty at the beginning of class throughout November, and prayed for a smooth transition to new leadership.

I am going to really miss Dr. McLarty. He did such a good job relating to students. He was quick to pose with students for photos. He always posted only positive messages on social media. He would tell the students the first week of chapel every fall: If you think Harding is not for you and you want to leave, come by my office first and chat with me. And he meant it. Who knows how many students stayed at Harding because of Dr. McLarty's positive influence. An article from The Bison echoes many of the same sentiments.

I wrote about the Board's decision to name Dr. McLarty as Harding's next President in November 2012, and I wrote a post summarizing Dr. McLarty's first 120 days back in September 2013. I'll conclude with this photo that I took on November 20, 2020 of Dr. McLarty leading the campus in an end-of-the-semester celebration out on the front lawn. You can see a video of the event here.