Gregory Eiselein
This past year was the most unusual in the history of K-State First and the strangest of my career in higher education.
In March, almost all students left campus and returned home as part of a public health move in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Faculty and staff worked from home. Instructors, most of whom had never taught online, were suddenly learning a whole lot about various remote and online educational practices. Campus events were canceled or moved to virtual venues. Even after the reawakening of campus for the fall semester, so much had changed. Everyone was wearing masks. Classrooms seemed sparsely populated, to allow for social distancing. And the campus just wasn’t as lively and vibrant as usual.
It’s been a hard year, though it’s not only been about the pandemic. The social unrest associated with civil rights movements, the recession and the attendant unemployment, and the chaos of a more divisive than usual election cycle have all contributed to a stressful and challenging time to learn or teach.
Despite this stress and strangeness, what I will remember most about 2020 are the various ways I saw students, faculty, and staff rise to meet these challenges. College students turned out to vote in unprecedently large numbers. K-Staters found a host of ways to express their antiracist solidarities and to support those most affected by the recession. The faculty members who lead our first-year seminars and CAT Communities took online course design classes and joined workshops to master active learning and community building techniques for online and socially distanced learning environments.
Most impressive of all, however, were our new students, many of whom missed out on senior proms and high school graduation ceremonies in the spring but launched themselves into their college experiences with curiosity, good humor, and resilience, determined to learn and to thrive in college, despite all of the challenges of 2020. In many ways, the connections they developed in their first-year seminars and learning has helped them (and, by the way, their teachers) navigate a challenging semester with real success.
We should also perhaps take a moment to remember all of the good things that were a part of 2020. K-State First celebrated its 10th anniversary as the university’s first-year experience program, with a fantastic in-person kick-off in January and many other (mostly virtual) events since. We welcomed a terrific new Vice Provost for Student Success, Jeannie Brown Leonard, to campus. We saw first-year to second-year retention in the CAT Communities break the 90% mark. We raised over $120,000 for scholarships, for CAT Community students and for K-State First Book scholarships. And much more.
It has been a strange year. But it was also a good year in many respects. I will never forget my students and what they accomplished this year or our faculty and how they rose to every challenge. For them, I am very grateful.
Thank you for your support of K-State First through our first decade and into the next! If you would like to donate to our program and support student scholarships and student success initiatives, you can do so here.