At 10 a.m. Friday, June 25, the parking lot above the Jackson County Early College was nothing but a mundane expanse of asphalt on the upper campus of Southwestern Community College, all but deserted for summer break. 

Excitement could be heard in the unconstrained murmuring of elementary school students at Blue Ridge School Monday morning as they filed into the cafeteria. Tables were set with Mason jars, pre-cut vegetables of almost every color of the rainbow, salt, pepper and oregano. 

As the pandemic continues to recede, Western Carolina University is planning for a fall semester that “will look more like fall 2019 around here than fall 2020,” Chancellor Kelli Brown told trustees during a June 4 meeting. 

Western Carolina University is gearing up for a traditional college experience this fall with plans to resume all typical academic, social and extracurricular activities. 

In 2019, registered nurses were listed as the third most in-demand job in the U.S., and even though enrollment in nursing programs is also on the rise, it’s not keeping pace with the market demand.

As a respiratory therapist, Bruce Moyle is trained to deliver breathing therapies to people who struggle to draw oxygen. As a respiratory therapy instructor at Southwestern Community College, he’s trained to deliver the next generation of healthcare workers to a region that struggles to hire enough of them. 

For students in the nursing program at Western Carolina University, the Coronavirus Pandemic sauntered into their world during spring break 2020. On Wednesday of that week, the university informed students that the break would be extended by one week. By Friday, the news was more dire, students wouldn’t be returning to campus at all. 

With the first full semester of pandemic instruction now in the books, preliminary numbers at Western Carolina University show dips in fall-to-spring retention and student grades compared to previous years. 

By Geoff Cantrell • Contributing writer | In a typical school year, Highlands Biological Station serves nearly 10,000 students through more than 250 programs for 50-plus schools across the mountain region. 

This was not a typical school year. 

The third week of classes is now underway at Western Carolina University, and the Jackson County Department of Public Health has identified the first cluster on campus.