“How can we still keep it feeling like EMU when we’re not together?”

This question from Assistant Director of Student Programs and Residence Director Tyler Goss is one that many faculty and staff at EMU have been asking themselves lately. Goss specifically has the task of creating many of the events that EMU students participate in during the school year. He now has to do that online, but he has not let that discourage him.

“Whenever I create events, it feels like the world is the possibility,” Goss said. “There’s so much that could be happening—that’s the typical school year. But when all of a sudden there is so much more restriction on what it can be, I feel like the only way to figure out how that stuff happens is being more creative. It almost encourages more creativity.”

Goss has planned events such as screaming bingo, virtual trivia, and weekly challenges and puzzles. “The inspiration for this has just been to keep up with the good EMU vibes that we always know,” he said. 

Goss also made it clear that this has been a team effort. “As soon as things started changing, Rachel Roth Sawatzky, [senior] Shelby Alto, and myself all sat down and said, ‘What do intramurals look like? What do campus activities look like?’” Intramurals soon had to be nixed, but Goss and Sawatzky kept planning events. With the help of Dean of Students, Shannon Dycus, Goss and Sawatzky have been sending out surveys and event ideas for the EMU community. “A lot of the events are coming from the ‘yes, and’ rule,” Goss said. “Can we do Bingo? Yes, and how do we make social distancing work? … You just run with these ideas [that people email] and just trust that it will work out.” Goss says that he misses the face-to-face student interaction—it is what he loves most about his job. But, he said, “We at least get Zoom time.”

Associate Dean of Students and Director of Student Programs, Rachel Roth Sawatzky, echoed much of what Goss said. “We still want students to feel connected to each other, to EMU, to us; so much of what makes EMU special is what happens outside the classroom, and the relationships that we have in and out of the classroom,” Sawatzky said. She spoke of the difficulties surrounding student programming online. “There are patterns to follow for an online course—not that that wasn’t heavy for faculty and staff—but there aren’t a lot of good models for how you do programming [online]. We were inventing how EMU would do it.” Sawatzky said that she and Goss are “very open to student suggestions.” She encourages students to give feedback through email or Royal’s Radar. 

Programming faculty are not the only ones contributing to connection in the EMU community. Music ensembles are not able to continue online, but Music professor David Berry is still doing lessons online. In addition to that, Berry put out a short video medley of “happy” songs to bring some light to the EMU community. He felt that, as well as in-person classes, what is missing “is the interaction and the community of it all, especially at a place like EMU. That’s such a huge part of things,” Berry said. “[We are all] trying to keep a sense of connection, of humanity to it all, not just finish the courses.”

 After the Marketing Dept. reached out with an invitation to contribute to a video, Berry sat down at the piano one night with a pep band t-shirt and some happy songs. He wanted to do something fun that students might appreciate. “I thought I might as well go full 100 on it,” he said. “…hopefully it will make somebody feel connected.” 

Online school comes with its own set of challenges for everyone, but faculty and staff are working hard to make the transition easier while still keeping EMU feeling like a community.