By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Missouri Western State University President, Elizabeth Kennedy, remembers well the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mostly, because Kennedy was plunged into the pandemic immediately upon become president of the university.
“So, my very first day in the office, I’m driving with some cabinet members up to Northwest to meet Gov. Parson to talk about the university’s COVID response,” Kennedy tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “So, you talk about like things hitting you fast and furious, yep, that was me. That was me.”
Kennedy says Missouri Western responded quickly, relying on the infection specialist it had on campus.
“I think as a campus it really showed that we could come together pretty quickly to deal with something so enormous and potentially so overwhelmed,” Kennedy says. “But you know what, we never closed the building(s). We never canceled classes, anything like that.”
Kennedy says she had to become accustomed to uncertainty.
“But I will tell you, one of the things I talked about a lot with our campus is when you don’t know what’s going on, you don’t know what’s happening, and you don’t understand it, it really tests your tolerance for ambiguity,” Kennedy says. “Because sometimes in life, you can’t know. You just have to make the best-informed decision and keep moving forward but also paying attention to what’s going on beside you.”
While Kennedy says Missouri Western relied on its experts, weekly community calls helped as well. Each week, members of Missouri Western, Mosaic, the St. Joseph Health Department, the City of St. Joseph, and Buchanan County held a conference call with the latest statistics and to coordinate the local response. Kennedy is proud that the St. Joseph campus never shut down or canceled classes during the pandemic.
Kennedy says the pandemic became a defining moment, whether people wanted it to or not.
“You know, when you’re in it, you’re just trying to get through it,” Kennedy says. “And now it’s kind of like that light bulb moment for people. When you think about an event, is it something that happened before the pandemic or after the pandemic?”
Kennedy says assessment of how the pandemic unfolded and how the university handled it continue to this day.
“It always takes a little bit of time in the future to look back on the past and really appreciate it,” according to Kennedy. “But, God willing, we never have to go through anything like that again.”