FROM ONU FACEBOOK - The administration of Ohio Northern University says that it could not have completed a successful fall semester without Karen Schroeder, RN, health center director and her team.

For the ONU Health Center staff, keeping students safe is the expectation. And pandemic or not, they know that it always will be.

Faced with an unparalleled increase to her job’s degree of difficulty, Health Center Director Karen Schroeder, RN, set out to learn everything she could about COVID.

Being a new virus, the information available to her changed from day to day as doctors and scientists learned more.

The U.S. Center for Disease Control routinely issued new guidelines, and the state of Ohio and the Kenton-Hardin Health Department often followed with new rules and restrictions.

Schroeder soon learned that a good plan today might not be the best plan tomorrow, but her commitment to staying informed of new data and making the necessary adjustments to campus safety protocols proved vital to ONU’s successful fall semester.

The Health Center was also the logical choice to investigate and monitor all positive cases of COVID-19 on campus.

Any student who felt ill was instructed to call the Health Center first. If it was determined that the student had COVID-19 symptoms, the Health Center arranged for the student to be tested through the on-campus testing program.

Students who tested positive or came into contact with a confirmed COVID case then entered a quarantine or isolation period overseen by the Health Center.