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My name is Jennifer Berger. 

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I'm the Director of Emergency

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Management at the University.

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And I have worked here for about three-and-a-half years.

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And I oversee the emergency operations

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plan that the campus has.

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And within that plan,

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we had a pandemic plan to

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annex that we pulled out when COVID first started.

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And started having meetings

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to look at that plan a little deeper

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and develop our plan for how we were going

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to deal with COVID on campus.

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Do you recall when it first came about?

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Who and then you

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realization that this was gonna be a big deal.

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Yeah. So the end of January 20,

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20 we learn we're

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hearing about a pandemic that was affecting China.

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And we were actually the Executive Council.

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We were doing a flood tabletop exercise at that time.

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And Judge Shaffer said,

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I think we really need to be worried about coronavirus.

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And from that we started looking at our pandemic plan.

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And it was just shortly after that,

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in the beginning of March where

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we started collaborating with

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different groups on campus

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and had our first pandemic meetings.

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Had, had the plan been in place

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at the time of H1N1 or did it had yes.

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That's what it was developed for was H1N1.

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And so we just took that plan

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and looked at it and we could use a lot of

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things from that plan as we looked at, at COVID.

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And so that was kind of her foundation

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for dealing with the pandemic.

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Can you can you cite a couple of

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examples of what the plan

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anticipated and recommended you doing?

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So the plan did talk about moving to remote work,

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remote learning for periods of time.

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They said to plan for 30 days of that.

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And obviously that extended

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much beyond 30 days where you,

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Andy was remote working.

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But that's the basis of the planet

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also involved supply chain.

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And so looking at your supply chain

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and how you needed to deal with shortages.

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It also looked at mass vaccinations.

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And the plan also dealt with

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isolation and quarantine of populations of people.

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Who were you working most closely with?

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Air plumber was the chief of police,

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VP of public safety at the time.

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And so he and I worked very closely together.

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But then we also started to involve

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the executive council and then other members of

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different areas on campus that needed to be

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involved with lots of planning such as dining, housing.

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Those entities that needed to deal with the pandemic.

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Talk about how the dining situation fit into all of this.

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So initially, um dining is switched to grab-and-go meals. 

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So students wouldn't be able to go into Wilkerson?

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Well, at the very beginning, I

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should say at the very beginning

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we moved everyone remote to class.

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And so dining operations

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ultimately pretty much shut down.

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They had limited operations

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at that time because all the students got sent home.

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But then when we looked at opening fall semester,

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they had to plan for grabbing

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goal tight meals and not

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being able to be seated in the dining room.

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So they had to shift some of

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their staffing patterns and

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supply chain because they needed

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to get lots of

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to-go containers to send meals

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with with kids back to their dorms.

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And was there a lot of

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cleaning and preparation of dining facilities?

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Yes. So we looked at

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cleaning and preparation of the entire campus,

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but ultimately also within dining.

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And we've always followed CDC guidelines.

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And so we looked at what CDC was putting out for

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cleaning guidelines and implemented

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those very quickly on campus.

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Were there other crises

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that have developed in these two years?

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Did you had to spend some time dealing with?

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Yes. We bought purchased many COVID supplies and

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we didn't really have

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a joint supply chain for the whole campus.

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Usually each department ordered

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their own supplies they needed

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within their in their departments.

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But we knew that we were going to bulk purchase masks,

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Hand sanitizer cleaning solutions, gloves, face shields.

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So we purchased all of those items using funds from

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fema and had to develop

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a supply chain distribution from a central center.

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And so the safety office has maintained that and

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continues to deliver supplies

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across campus that are related to COVID needs.

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Did you find that you had the resources you needed

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in order to meet those all of those obligations?

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Initially, we did struggle finding gloves

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and hand sanitizer at the very beginning,

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but we were able to secure those

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within a couple of months time

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and have enough for the entire camp.

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I just think the partnerships that we

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developed during the pandemic were very important.

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And we've continued those partnerships.

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They were developed before the pandemic.

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But I think because we had

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such great working relationships prior to the,

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prior to the pandemic.

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We have been able to work very successfully

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together to integrate with public health,

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like we've offered testing on campus with public,

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in conjunction with public health.

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And we've just really worked really well together as

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a community to be successful

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in dealing with the pandemic.

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Where did you give yourself a grade?

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I would say an A