A changed campus: What did the pandemic teach us?

The Global COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent restrictions on indoor gatherings has changed our daily lives. These measures also rapidly shifted the teacher-student dynamic as classrooms moved online and disrupted communication pathways with the general public. Over one year later, the majority of classroom instruction, community meetings, conferences and discussions in the laboratory take place in virtual environments. The lack of in-person interaction, repetitiveness of daily activities while being unable to leave the home, and sudden shift to online teaching in classes which had never previously been offered online have taken a toll on both students and instructors. Now as vaccinations are becoming more available and many universities are returning to in-person classes in some capacity, it is worth asking “how did we get here, and what did we learn along the way?”. In this talk, I will provide an overview of how COVID-19 has impacted education across the United States, and how this unprecedented event has changed the future of communication across the diverse field of entomology.