President’s Letter

Just today, I received a note from a friend that read, “The dumbest thing I ever purchased was a 2020 planner.” Without a doubt, this year has been one of the most disrupted of my lifetime. I understand the joke, but in reality, no year in my experience has taken more planning, more tenacity and more grit than the year 2020.

In January and February, we planned for a normal year. Then the pandemic hit, and our plans were disrupted, so we planned for an exceptional year. In April and May, we wrote the Healthy at UPIKE guidelines. They were modeled after the New Zealand plan, but incorporated much of what the CDC and Commonwealth of Kentucky were telling us was important. By late summer, we knew that the guidelines needed more flexibility, so we adjusted our practices. Our provost, deans and academic leaders realized that 16-week courses were fine face-to-face, but they were too long if we needed to move online. So, we pivoted to eight-week intensive courses. Students told us that course materials were too expensive for them to afford, so we pivoted to free course materials.

All of this took planning, exceptional planning, on the part of our faculty and staff. They planned, adjusted and replanned as we pivoted from face-to-face to online because of a sharp increase in the number of COVID positive cases on campus. Then everyone came back home, and they pivoted again.

In the middle of all this planning and pivoting, we had layers of change taking place all around us. Racial tensions erupted again in the summer. This is not new; it has been simmering under the surface and erupting during moments of injustice that catch the public eye. Injustice is an old disease that we must constantly work to eradicate. Political tensions are an old thing too, though they seemed more volatile in 2020 than in past years. I would remind everyone that this is not as bad as it can get; the City of Pikeville was captured and recaptured by the Confederate and Union Armies repeatedly during the Civil War. It can get much worse, and thankfully, it has not.

The Pikeville Collegiate Institute arose, in part, because of our location as a strategic outpost in these mountains. Indeed, during the midst of the pandemic, I would suggest that UPIKE has been blessed. Thanks to an anonymous donor, the Elliott School of Nursing will soon have a new home in the Community Technology Center. UPIKE celebrates seven Fellows in the American Society of Optometric Surgeons, our first two Presidential Fellows and our first recipient of a Fulbright Award. We have been the recipient of generous grants and gifts that fund scholarships in medicine and continue to watch as the lives of our alumni unfold in beautiful ways.

My 2020 planner may be a mass of black marker and red ink, but it is punctuated with the names of UPIKE bears who have proven themselves to be exceptional during times of stress. We celebrate each of them in this issue because together, they are planning, pivoting and yes, moving mountains.

Striving to serve,

Burton J. Webb President

The University of Pikeville is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to award associate, baccalaureate, masters and doctorate degrees. Contact the Commission on Colleges at 1866 Southern Lane, Decatur, Georgia 30033-4097 or call 404-679-4500 for questions about the accreditation of the University of Pikeville. It is the policy of the University of Pikeville that no student shall be excluded from participating in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination in any program sponsored by the university because of age, race, color, creed, religion, handicap, sexual orientation or national origin. All other inquiries should be addressed to the University of Pikeville at 147 Sycamore Street, Pikeville, Kentucky 41501 or call 606-218-5250. *EOE