Recalibrating Resources for the Postpandemic Era

For Miko McFarland, March 2020 is “a month that lives in infamy.” That’s when she was forced to make abrupt changes in the education abroad programs she oversees as COVID-19 swept the globe.

Like most of her international education colleagues at the University of Kentucky (UK), McFarland scrambled to bring students back home from study abroad destinations and cancel previously planned inbound and outbound programs. With international travel halted and study away programs shuttered, McFarland and her team were directly impacted: About 85 percent of the UK Education Abroad Office’s operational budget is generated from education abroad enrollment.

“Immediately, we established two main priorities as an office,” says McFarland, who is UK’s executive director of education abroad and exchanges. “The first one was to keep the staff employed at all costs, and the second was to keep our operations running.”

McFarland and her team limited their office spending to critical expenses only— primarily payroll and essential office technologies. In early 2021, a few education abroad staff members were temporarily reassigned to jobs elsewhere on the UK campus to slow payroll spending. The remaining staff shouldered the departing team members’ job duties, along with continuing their normal responsibilities.

“This was a really difficult decision to make, and it took a toll on everyone—the staff who were transferred and those who remained,” McFarland says. “At the time, we felt like we didn’t have a choice because we didn’t know when mobility would start back up again. We just didn’t have the enrollment