Hoping to better gauge the impact of the pandemic on students, Liz Rainey, executive director of the Student Success Center at Loyola University of New Orleans, held a series of focus groups with students last year.
Discussions ran the gamut, she said, but one thing, in particular, stuck out, she remembers: Five of the nine students in the group said a friend, family member or neighbor had died of COVID.
“They’re like, ‘I can’t just pack that up and go back to life,'” Rainey said.
