A 'Thank You' to our Academic and Research Technology Team

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced all of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine’s faculty and staff to adjust, and a major component of the adjustment has been ensuring the college’s medical education remains effective and efficient. Much of the smooth transition can be credited to UK HealthCare Information Technology’s Academic and Research Technology (A&RT). The core academic technology team – composed of Charles Woolum, Megan Jones, Charles McCoy (Bowling Green Campus), and Russ Willmann (Northern Kentucky Campus) – has worked tirelessly and resourcefully to support the college’s educational efforts, allowing students to stay engaged virtually through the end of the spring semester and allowing faculty to instruct online with minimal disruption. When stay-at-home orders were put in place, A&RT established a channel on Microsoft Teams for simple online communication with limited onsite support. After just a few weeks, the team was able to transition all operations to remote work. Now, the team is active throughout each day, sharing status updates on uploading lectures and technology issues that normally would need to be addressed on campus. The group divides among them the daily lectures they will monitor, develops special documentation as needed to share, and is on-call for National Board of Medical Examiners shelf exams. The team also provides training and support one-on-one with faculty, staff, and students as needed. “I knew I had a great team before this, but this crisis has really brought them together,” A&RT manager Stephen Welch said. “They have done an outstanding job at providing support to our students, faculty, and staff in the College of Medicine.” The new system actually has one major advantage – more available assistance for the college’s regional campuses. Rather than having just two academic technologists onsite in Lexington and one each for the Bowling Green and Northern Kentucky regional campuses, all four team members are available to meet the needs at all campuses. The videoconferencing platform, Zoom, has already been a key component for classroom technology since the College of Medicine expanded its footprint with its Bowling Green Campus and Northern Kentucky Campus. Though in-person attendance is preferred for the optimum learning experience, Zoom rooms acted as a mechanism to broadcast to remote site classrooms. Since then, videoconferencing has become an extremely vital tool in ensuring the safety of the college’s students and faculty, while still maintaining face-to-face communication and a quality learning experience.