CHAPEL HILL (March 24, 2021) – Even the clouds of the coronavirus pandemic have had some silver linings.

“The most obvious advancement during the pandemic has been the improvement in our online offerings,” UNC System President Peter Hans says in the accompanying video. 

Many instructors weren’t prepared to teach online when the pandemic started a year ago, Hans says.

“Of course, necessity is the mother of invention. They’ve had to adapt. It hasn’t been easy – there’ve been glitches. But they found a way to make it work,” he says, praising faculty, support staff and students.

“It’s been a rough adjustment for all of us,” he says. But the UNC System’s online offerings “will continue to improve with all the lessons learned over the past year.”

THE PANDEMIC HAS ALSO stoked appreciation for university medical research, Hans says.

“That has been critical to helping us get to the other side of the pandemic. And that’s happening at your public university system,” he says.

Hans singles out infectious-disease experts at UNC Chapel Hill. 

“The research that they’ve been doing for years has been tremendously helpful to national experts and public health leaders throughout the world,” he says.

This researchers are not only devising effective COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, but “preparing for the next potential pandemic that in a very interconnected world may only be so far away – that we’ll be better prepared because of the investment in the University System,” Hans says.