Greetings from the Department of History to our alumni and friends.  What a year it has been.  We hope that all of you are doing all right in this troubling time.  The national stories of pandemic, economic struggles, and racial injustice have impacted Mizzou and the History department, but we know they have impacted all of you as well. Undoubtedly for some of you the impacts have been severe.  

Back in February we were beginning our work on this newsletter, excited to share with all of you news of our celebrations, events, milestones, etc. (And don’t worry, you’ll read about those).  Then came COVID-19 and the decision on March 13th to move all Mizzou courses to remote format and to have everyone begin working at home. The Department then sprang into action and, by my count, moved about 80 classes (1756 undergraduate students and 28 graduate students) online in about 48 hours. Few of us had experience with remote instruction, but we learned how to record lectures on Panopto, create discussion boards on Canvas, and meet with our students on Zoom. In some cases our graduate students, who had more experience with those tools than many faculty, took the lead in helping the rest of us make the switch. 

In the midst of all of that, this newsletter took a backseat, but we are pleased to be getting it out to you now.  In this issue, in addition to the stories we already had planned, you’ll get to read about the experiences of some of our faculty and students with the shift to remote teaching and about some of the many ways in which our faculty and students have been using their historical knowledge to reflect on the issues of the day.

I cannot adequately express how proud I have been of our staff, faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students for what they accomplished this past semester.  In addition to radically transforming the classroom experience on short notice, faculty, post-docs, and students put together a weekly undergraduate newsletter to help maintain community among our majors; participated in Mizzou’s virtual celebration of graduates; began preparing for an uncertain fall (more than half of our faculty have been pursuing additional training in online education); and shared their relevant expertise with the public, on scholarship related to the pandemic and, more recently, contextualizing recent racial protests.

I am grateful every day to work with such a tremendous group of scholars, students, and staff.  I am looking forward to a time when we will see each other in Read Hall again.  For now, though, Campus is only slowly reopening and most of us will continue working from home for the rest of the summer. This fall, the History Department, like the rest of  Mizzou, will be offering a mix of fully online course, in-person courses (with social distancing and other safety precautions), and hybrid courses that include a mixture of online and in-person delivery.  This will be a new experience for everyone, but we will be ready!