Features – TrevEchoes Online

One year of COVID-19: life in a pandemic as college students

26Mar

By Naomi OverbyNo Comments

Coronavirus, Features

One year of COVID-19: life in a pandemic as college students

Just over a year ago, Trevecca’s campus cleared out for spring break; many students and faculty unaware that those classes would never resume in person. Some would never again set foot in a Trevecca classroom altogether. Students went from celebrating an extended spring break, to the harsh reality of a pandemic—an email asking them to return to campus when possible, gather their things, and transition completely online for the remainder of the semester as a precaution for a rapidly spreading virus. “I was definitely heartbroken when they officially told us we had to pack up and head home,” said Allie Tracy, an intercultural studies major who graduated last year. “I was not going to get to say goodbye to people. Not to friends, not to professors… I said goodbye to my r...

One year of COVID-19: the unforgettable experience of pastoring a college campus through a global pandemic

26Mar

By Caitlin LassiterNo Comments

Coronavirus, Features, Spiritual Life

One year of COVID-19: the unforgettable experience of pastoring a college campus through a global pandemic

When Trevecca chaplain Erik Gernand thinks back to his first reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic putting a halt to campus life as students knew it, it doesn’t take him long to remember the main concern on his mind. “I think the first pastoral prompt was how do we maintain some sense of connectivity as a campus community and how can we shift the content and the spaces we have to be able to try and address some of the current issues we’re facing,” Gernand recalls. In the early days of COVID-19, Gernand worked to create a YouTube series called “How Christians Respond in Times of Crisis,” where religion faculty, mental health professionals and medical workers joined him to speak about where faith fits into this new reality of a COVID world. Gernand also hosted a podcast with Tim G...

One year of COVID-19: how Trevecca’s educators adjusted to online teaching

26Mar

By trevechoesonlineNo Comments

Coronavirus, Faculty, Features

One year of COVID-19: how Trevecca’s educators adjusted to online teaching

By Diana Leyva Nine hundred and six LinkedIn Learn courses viewed, 2,471 active Blackboard courses (41 which are fully online for traditional students), 9,472 Blackboard video files, and 14,675 Panopto video views and downloads: These are just some of the statistics that can describe the spring 2020 semester at Trevecca. When the university announced that all classes would be moved completely online for the remainder of the spring 2020 semester, Director of Online Learning, LaMetrius Daniels and her team of instructional designers knew they had to be quick and strategic when it came to helping faculty understand how to deliver remote instruction. Normally, they would use a plan to approach online learning, but with the pandemic they had to steer away from the nor...

18Mar

By trevechoesonlineNo Comments

Campus News, Features

Self-defense class to be offered in fall semester

By Lindsey White Sarah Anne Colwell, a Trevecca student, was shopping at Macy’s at Greenhill's Mall, while talking on the phone. She noticed a young woman staring at her and immediately felt uncomfortable with the situation. The woman approached her as soon as she got off the phone and pleaded with Colwell, asking her to follow her to her car and buy some shoes she was trying to sell. “This did not feel right, there's something up. She just had this weird look on her face, I knew it was off,” said Colwell. Colwell remembered a tip she had learned in the self-defense class she took at Trevecca. She asked a sales associate to walk with her to her car and got out of there. “I wouldn’t have thought to ask a cashier to walk to my car with m...

Walden celebrates Black History Month on campus

22Feb

By Grace BecknerNo Comments

Events, Features

Walden celebrates Black History Month on campus

Walden, the student club on campus dedicated to building community around primarily African American and Black students, was determined to celebrate and share Black History Month with others despite barriers to planning events during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Black history actually does exist here on Trevecca’s campus, and so I think it is important that we celebrate it,” said Lea Bryant, the president of Walden. Walden held its first event of the month on Feb. 4 at Trevecca Community Church; a “get-to-know Black History Month” presentation for the students at KidPOWER, the on-campus after-school program offered free to families in the Napier-Sudekum Community. “Going through all the classrooms, there were really good discussions being held and the kid...

17Feb

By trevechoesonlineNo Comments

Features

Safety tips for online dating

By Lindsey White Paige Skaufel, sophomore history major, fixes her hair in the mirror and puts on her favorite outfit. Her phone dings with a text from her date letting her know he is waiting outside for her. With high hopes, she gets in his car, only to find the man she met on Tinder is much different than what she expected. “After meeting up with him, I made an excuse to go back to campus,” Skaufel said. According to a report released by Statista, 51 percent of college students used dating apps as of 2017. Due to lack of face-to-face interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic, college students have found online dating an alternative way to make new connections. The parent company that controls 60 percent of the dating app market, called Match Group, reported a 15 per...

Freshmen face unique challenges during pandemic

16Feb

By trevechoesonlineNo Comments

Coronavirus, Features

Freshmen face unique challenges during pandemic

By Isabel Landers Gathered around tables in the cafeteria and sand volleyball courts, jumping in the car with nowhere to go: This is how Trevecca freshmen have found community amidst a global pandemic. Freshmen students have learned to make traditions of their own. Ending their high school career with canceled proms and high school graduations prepared them for the things they would miss out on coming into college. “It's not really difficult to adapt to the situation we are in because it's not like we have known anything different,” said Adam Newman, a freshman. Trevveca’s 336 freshmen are among the 3.2 million high school graduates to start college during a global pandemic, according to educationdata.org. College administrators nationwide have struggled...

Religion professors shift course content to equip students for ministry in COVID-19 era

9Feb

By Caitlin LassiterNo Comments

Coronavirus, Features, Spiritual Life

Religion professors shift course content to equip students for ministry in COVID-19 era

As Tim Green sits down to plan the syllabus for his Fall 2020 Old Testament Theology class, there’s one thing he knows with certainty: he can’t teach this class the same way he has in previous years. Green, dean of the Millard Reed School of Theology and Christian Ministry, said a Zoom conversation with other Nazarene Old Testament professors across the country confirmed his feelings that the course needed to be redesigned from the ground up in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and other 2020 tragedies. “Can we ignore the elephant in the room and teach this like we would any old time?” Green asked himself. Immediately, he knew he couldn’t. So the redesign began. “For the group that made up our class, the elephant in the room was that their spring semester ended in March and the...

12Nov

By Maci WeeksNo Comments

Coronavirus, Features, Sports

Navigating cold and flu season during a global pandemic

Voice instructors adapt to teaching in a pandemic

24Oct

By Caitlin LassiterNo Comments

Coronavirus, Features, Music

Voice instructors adapt to teaching in a pandemic

Students participate in vocal seminar while wearing masks and practicing social distancing. Photo courtesy of Professor Bakara Nkenge-Hinds. As Bakara Nkenge-Hinds sits down at the piano to begin her first lesson of the day, a mask covering the instrument she has spent years perfecting and a plexiglass barrier between her and the student, one thing is clear: this is not the way she envisioned her first semester teaching at Trevecca Nazarene University. Nkenge-Hinds, an adjunct voice instructor, is well-prepared for the job of training vocalists on a college campus, but nothing could have prepared her for the challenges of teaching students in the middle of a global pandemic-- a pandemic that is riskier for singers because of the airborne-nature of the COVID-19 virus. “Bei...