New CHALLENGES

In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic affected Utah State University in multiple ways. In-person classes came to a halt and work-from-home became the standard. The university accepted the challenges and transitioned to online learning by quickly adding 7,048 videos to USU’s eLearning system to finish spring semester.

A Year of Challenges Overcome

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The 2021 edition of “America's Best Graduate Schools” from U.S. News & World Report  recognized two of USU’s academic colleges for excelling at the graduate school level.

Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services

#29

of all graduate colleges of education in the nation

#6

Best Online Master’s in Education Program

#12

in Funded Research ($41.8 million)

College of Engineering

#27

Biological Engineering

#49

Aerospace Engineering

#75

Civil and Environmental Engineering

antiviral compound
Researchers at USU’s Institute for Antiviral Research began testing antiviral compounds and licensed drugs for their effectiveness against the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic. The scientists are investigating how the virus affects organs and tissues causing disease and how the virus responds to various treatments.

student presenting
Sixteen students from both the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business and College of Science enrolled in USU’s Master of Data Analytics (MDATA) program worked to track respiratory illness outbreaks, including COVID-19. BioFire Diagnostics, LLC, recruited the students to study its syndrome-based, rapid disease-reporting system dataset about the prevalence, seasonality and co-infections of dozens of respiratory pathogens detected in millions of patients. Among the team’s aims is developing ways to organize the data to maximize use of every morsel of information, including identifying signals potentially related to emergent pathogen strains.

2020 Goldwater Scholars
Students Matthew Hogan (physics with minors in mathematics and computer science), Andrew Kjar (biological engineering) and Jenny R. Whiteley (physics) were named 2020 Goldwater Scholars in a prestigious national competition that recognizes outstanding achievements in science and mathematics.

Sam Merrill
Utah State’s men’s basketball team repeated as Mountain West champions. Future NBA draftee Sam Merrill hit the go-ahead shot with two seconds remaining to lift the Aggies to their second consecutive title. The tournament win gave the Aggies their 10th conference tournament championship in team history and its second since joining the Mountain West.