College students staying busy during pandemic

A handful of college students from Chase County are back in the area due to on-site classes being moved online, but that doesn’t stop them from keeping busy.

Abby Almanza, a 2017 graduate of Chase County Schools (CCS), attends the University of Nebraska at Kearney.

An elementary education  major, Almanza was unable to finish all of her field hours since the semester was cut short.

“I was going to a first grade classroom at Northeast Elementary in Kearney and Bryan Elementary in Lexington,” Almanza said.

“I’m just bummed I couldn’t finish my field experience,” she added. “The students were just starting to get more comfortable working with me and I was also getting to lead more things in the classroom.”

Almanza should start her student teaching in the fall.

While back home in Imperial, Almanza has been doing classes online and working at Hill’s Family Foods.

One assignment was to create a children’s book.

“My book was about my dog and the different places he visited in Imperial such as the Chase County Fair and the skatepark,” Almanza said.

Ryelee Christensen, a 2018 CCS graduate, is attending Colorado Christian University and double majoring in business administration and biblical studies.

Christensen also works at a property management company in Denver.

She’s back home in Imperial doing her classes online.

“I’m here until they say we can go back to Denver,” she said.

Another 2018 graduate of CCS, Jack Bauerle is back home helping his dad with planting on their farm near Champion.

Bauerle attends Southeast Community College in Milford and is studying ag diesel technology.

“It’s nice to be home,” he said.

Bauerle has a physics class that he’s taking online.

The rest of his classes are kind of hard to do online

“I can’t really do my hydraulics class online,” he said.

But some things he’s doing for his dad could be considered practice, such as fixing pivots and maintaining farming equipment.

“It’s weird because I’ve always been in school during this time (of planting.)”

Scott Wheeler, a 2019 CCS grad, is completing classes online while working in Chase County.

Wheeler is a freshman at Chadron State College studying education.

“I’m taking all of my classes online,” Wheeler said, “but I can do most of them on the weekend.”

During the week, Wheeler works for Luhrs Certified Seed.

Also working for Luhrs is Molly Luhrs.

Luhrs attends Texas A&M University, where she studies real estate appraisal.

Because she was coming home from another state, Luhrs had to self-quarantine before she could start working at home with everyone else.

In addition to her online classes and working for her dad, Luhrs has a part-time job for one of her professors.

“I do the honor registry for the agriculture economics department,” Luhrs said, “so I developed biographies for potential nominees.”

Luhrs said it was nice to have all the college-aged kids back to help.

“We had a big increase of orders when this kind of started happening so it was really nice to have everybody back,” she said.

Another Imperial native studying out of state, Katelyn Leibhart is back home from Oklahoma State University.

Leibhart, a 2019 CCS graduate, arrived back home in Imperial three weeks ago and has been doing online classes and working at Nutrien Ag Solutions.

She is double majoring in ag business and accounting.

Leibhart worked last summer at Nutrien, as well as two weeks during Christmas break.

Tara Oxford of Nutrien said she’s happy to have the extra help with Leibhart around.

Leibhart said online classes have a learning curve, not only for the students, but for the professors, as well.

“One of our professors just didn’t show up for class one morning,” she said.