Jo Anne Gibson-Lucas, adjunct professor of communication, has been a part of the Baker University community for 14 years.

Since coming to Baker, she has served as a part-time faculty member, a co-sponsor of the communication honor society and helped with program assessment.

But last week, Gibson-Lucas shared that she was leaving Baker University to work full-time as a staff trainer at the Osawatomie hospital.

“She e-mailed my class beforehand and told us to bring our planners one day and that (Professor of Communication Susan) Emel would be coming in to speak with us about something,” senior Dani Weimholt said. “She didn’t give us a lot of detail.”

Once the news was shared with the class, Emel and Gibson-Lucas started discussing a new time for the class to meet, as Emel will be taking over the course next week and has another class during that time.

Instructor of Theater Patti Heiman will take over one of the Oral Communication sections and Nathan Webb will be taking over the other section. Webb is a graduate student in communication at the University of Kansas.

While plans for next semester have not been made, Emel knows it will be something that has to be coordinated rather quickly.

“This all came up suddenly and we went into crisis management mode, so we’ve been dealing with the immediate thing at hand,” she said. 

Senior Philip Schiffelbein is a communication major, and had Gibson-Lucas as a professor for the first time this semester.

“I really enjoyed her teaching style,” Schiffelbein said. “She always found ways to relate what we were talking about to whatever any of us were doing or planning on doing.”

Emel has worked with Gibson-Lucas for a number of years and also understands that this position is a good thing.

“This full-time opportunity was the best decision for her and for her family, and I’m very happy that she was able to get a position like that,” Emel said. “But of course, that’s very complicated for us. None of us wanted the timing to be this way.”