FOUR DECADES OF CHANGE

WRITTEN BY RACHEL BAUGH, PHOTOS BY KT KING AND LAUREN BIERI

FOR MANY, THE YEAR 2020 HAS BEEN UNLIKE ANY OTHER, remarkable for a variety of reasons and unparalleled by any in recent memory. Life at UCO drastically changed, but for Kaye Sears, Ed.D., change isn’t new.

A full-time professor of human environmental sciences, Sears is in her 45th year at Central. Over the years, she’s witnessed student trends come and go, with various hairstyles and clothing coming into style, out of style and back into style again. Sears has taught under six different university presidents and watched as the Central campus grew from a traditional commuter college to a sprawling university.

When she began her full-time position at Central in 1975, computers in classrooms weren’t a topic of discussion.

“When I started here, I didn’t know teaching online was something you could do,” Sears said.

In fact, as Sears remembers it, it wasn’t until sometime later that trenches were dug across campus in order to lay cables for the first internet and technology systems.

“I didn’t even know what online was back then,” she laughed. She recalled the first campus computer taking up almost an entire room. “My dissertation in 1979 was done on a Smith Corona typewriter: cut, paste and copy; cut, paste and copy. My computer for data was a room full of the equipment to do punch cards.”

In all these years, she thought she had maybe seen it all, and even integrated as much technology as she could in her classroom. But then, like for most of us, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and everything changed.

Up until this spring, she largely taught her courses in person, with very little instruction conducted in the online environment. However, as the pandemic revved up, it became clear that the university would transition to alternative instructional delivery, meaning, for Sears, courses transitioned fully online. She quickly moved all of her learning materials to UCO’s online platform, D2L, and familiarized herself with Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

“I think this has been the biggest challenge I have confronted in my career, but in retrospect, living through all of it has been such a great experience for me,” Sears said. “I learned so much so fast. It has taught me many valuable life lessons and given me many new lifelong friends.”

She continues to miss her office family and seeing her students drop by to talk about news in their life or give updates on their children. But, like all of us, she’s learning and adapting.

“My kitchen table is now my office,” Sears said. “I sit down and go from 9 o’clock till 4:30 and work in my office. I actually get a lot done and I’ve enjoyed it.”

She said she has learned so much in such a short time, and even used Zoom to meet three times a week for her summer course.

“My students have been so nice and patient with me and just gracious about the whole process,” she said.

While the pandemic is likely temporary, Sears is sure that things will continue to look different.

“We will never return to our normal. I don’t know what two years from now will look like,” she said. “I think COVID has totally changed everything, and I don’t know if we will ever go back to the normal that we knew – it’s gone. I think there is going to be some very positive things though that come out of it.”

She can remember the polio epidemic and hopes one day, with the help of its own vaccine, COVID-19 will be a distant memory.

However, no matter what the outcome, Sears will carry on and keep adapting, as she has for more than four decades.

“The only thing you can ever count on is change,” she said. “We will just keep doing whatever we need to do to help our students.”