Online education led to the survival of many colleges and universities devastated by Hurricane Katrina. However, despite the subsequent recommendations of scholars to institutionalize distance education, many institutions found themselves ill-prepared for the shift to remote or online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. One university's strategy of building distance education infrastructure and instructional design capacity for fully online master (template) courses allowed learning and teaching to proceed--without closure--throughout the pandemic. Faculty increasing their use of instructor video and synchronous sessions resulted in high student satisfaction--equivalent to that before COVID. Recommendations for asynchronous and synchronous instruction are provided.