Understanding Individual Experiences of COVID-19 to Inform Policy and Practice in Higher Education

Helping Students, Staff, and Faculty to Thrive in Times of Crisis

Amy Aldous Bergerson, Shawn R. Coon, Amy Aldous Bergerson, Shawn R. Coon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000477566
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación superior

Utilizing findings from more than 200 interviews with students, staff, and faculty at a US university, this volume explores the immediate and real-life impacts of COVID-19 on individuals to inform higher education policy and practice in times of crisis.

Documenting the profound impacts that COVID-19 had on university operations and teaching, this text foregrounds a range of participant perspectives on key topics such as institutional leadership and loss of community, managing motivation and the move to online teaching and learning, and coping with the adverse mental health effects caused by the pandemic. Far from dwelling on the negative, the volume frames the lived experiences and implications of COVID-19 for higher education through a positive, progressive lens, and considers how institutions can best support individual and collective thriving during times of crisis.

This text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators in higher education with an interest in the sociology of education, higher education management, and eLearning more broadly. Those specifically interested in student affairs practice, as well as the administration of higher education, will also benefit from this book.

Part I

Setting the Stage

DOI: 10.4324/9781003189855-1

1 Introduction

Amy Aldous Bergerson and Shawn R. Coon

DOI: 10.4324/9781003189855-2

Introduction

Over the past 25 years, higher education institutions have grown familiar with managing crises. In 2007, Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech) experienced the violence of a mass shooting, and since then numerous mass shootings have shaken higher education institutions across the United States – nearly one every year (Voice of America, 2019). In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans, and local higher education institutions had to manage the displacement of students and their families, which left many students with nowhere to live. Similarly, the wildfires of 2019 and 2020 in California forced some higher education institutions to evacuate students during the middle of the term, resulting in significant disruptions to day-to-day operations. In each of these cases, institutional leaders and policymakers were required to simultaneously support students, staff, and faculty; ensure that the core work of their institutions could continue; and balance local government requirements along with local and national media attention. In each of these crises, the impact on higher education was to a large degree localized to a specific institution or geographic area. Bataille and Cordova (2014) note that in every crisis the “day-to-day work continues. But, some instances change the campus routine…” (p. 2). The COVID-19 crisis that emerged in spring 2020 was unprecedented in its impact on the day-to-day operations of higher education worldwide.

When the novel coronavirus was first reported in China on December 31, 2019, few in higher education could have imagined the havoc it would wreak on colleges and universities across the world. Even when the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced the first known case of coronavirus in the United States on January 21, 2020, the ultimate devastation of the virus was far from the imaginations of most people. In fact, the U.S. government, as well as state governments across the country, were slow to respond to the growing crisis; a hesitation, which ultimately cost thousands of lives. The magnitude of the virus’s impact was quickly revealed, and in early March of 2020, local and state governments began seriously considering shutdowns to curb the spread of the virus. One of the societal institutions impacted by the convergence of COVID-19 and politics of crisis management was higher education.

COVID-19, Higher Education, and Politics Collide

In mid-March 2020, the novel coronavirus, now becoming known as COVID-19, caused many higher education institutions to begin closing campuses to students, staff, and faculty in an effort to slow the spread of the virus. Like students, staff, and faculty at most institutions, the University of Utah community had little notice to begin preparing for a cataclysmic change in University operations. Over the course of 10 days, faculty made mid-semester adjustments to move their courses completely online, staff set up offices in their homes, and students considered how to adjust their learning styles to an online modality.

The University of Utah is located in Salt Lake City, the capitol of the state of Utah. Utah is generally one of the most socially and politically conservative states in the United States. A 2019 Gallup poll ranks Utah as the ninth most conservative state in the U.S. In Salt Lake City, however, a more liberal political and social environment prevails. The city has been governed by Democratic mayors for decades, The Advocate (2017) has listed the city as one of the most gay-friendly in the U.S., and as of 2018, the percentage of Mormons in the city was below half, compared with nearly 62% Mormon across the state (Canham, 2018). As the flagship institution of the state of Utah, the University of Utah straddles this more liberal local environment with meeting the needs of students state-wide.

As the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact began to manifest in spring 2020, the tensions between the local and larger state environments were laid bare. The Salt Lake City and County mayors repeatedly defied the state government’s somewhat lax approach to the virus, requesting exceptions to the Governor’s decision not to mandate masks state-wide in June 2020 (Dudley & Walker, 2020), expanding the mask mandate through the end of 2020, and then extending the mask mandate after the state dropped its state-wide mandate in April 2021 (Larsen, 2021). While masks were required in Salt Lake City and County, other counties across the state did not mandate masks until November 2020 when cases were skyrocketing to the extent the governor declared a state of emergency (Gonzalez & Canham, 2020).

Within this backdrop of political conservatism, the University of Utah relied heavily on public health officials and experts from the University’s medical campus to make decisions related to the coronavirus and its impact on the campus community. Alongside the other higher education institutions in the state, University of Utah leadership declared that all classes would move to an online format on March 13, 2021. At this point, while classes would be online, the University planned to offer all services in-person on campus. Then, leaders across campus were asked to identify mandatory on-campus employees and those whose work could be completed from home. By March 17, University leadership understood that, with positive COVID-19 cases being reported on campus and the closure of local schools, it was necessary to close the campus completely. All employees and students were notified that campus would be closed. On March 20, the campus was notified that students could select a credit/no credit option for all courses without penalty, given the sudden transition to online learning and other disruptions, including to their housing. Students in the residence halls were initially allowed to stay, but it soon became apparent that the closure was going to extend far beyond the initial two- to three-week time frame. By the end of March, the only students remaining on campus were international students and others who had no place to go. On March 30, leadership announced that all University operations would remain remote through summer term.

Across the U.S., higher education institutions faced similar difficult circumstances, closing their doors to students and asking faculty and staff to move all work operations online. Students, staff, and faculty reported issues with accessing the technology necessary to learn and work from home, and institutions scrambled to provide mobile platforms and the training required for their effective use (McMurtrie, 2020). Higher education also felt the economic impact of COVID-19. Bauman (2021) reported that over 650,000 or more than 13% of higher education jobs in the U.S. were lost in 2020, many as a result of the pandemic. The largest decrease in higher education jobs since the 1950s, when the Labor Department began to track employment in higher education, was felt most acutely by the lowest paid workers in the field (Bauman, 2021). This mirrored the pattern of job loss in the general U.S. economy.

Given the tremendous job losses as well as many institutions’ choice to furlough workers to avoid layoffs (Whitford, 2020), as fall semester 2020 approached, higher education leaders grappled with the decision of whether to return to campus in-person or continue operating largely online. As we conducted the interviews for this study in May and June 2020, the University of Utah’s plan for fall semester continued to evolve. In June, the decision was made to offer a hybrid fall semester, with first-year and specialized courses required for graduation offered on campus, along with labs and other courses that necessitated an in-person component. Many study participants reported learning about this decision from the local newspaper, rather than from University administration. In July, with COVID-19 cases skyrocketing around the country and in Utah, the plan for fall changed again; all but the bare minimum of courses would be offered online, campus housing would be available on a limited basis, and while on-campus support for students would be available, offices would be minimally staffed.

Other events shaped participants’ experience of adjusting to their new work and learning environments. The killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and the ensuing protests were fresh on participants’ minds as we talked. Even in Salt Lake City, where political protests are typically rare, small, and well-controlled, riots broke out in which police cars were burned, property was damaged, and many arrests were made. Participants struggled to reconcile their own privilege with the injustices facing so many others, particularly living in one of the most racially diverse parts of the state of Utah. They balanced a desire to join in protest with health concerns, and wondered how their silence might imply complicity. Students worried about other students, and staff and faculty expressed concern not just for students, but for colleagues who were disproportionately affected not just by the coronavirus, but by the racial injustices laid bare daily in the summer of 2020.

In the chapters that follow, we describe the experiences of students, staff, and faculty at the University of Utah as they adapted to the new COVID-19 reality in spring and summer 2020. The logistics of adjusting to online learning and working, the juggling act of managing their online learning and teaching while taking on responsibility for the learning of children in their homes, the reality of a struggling economy, and the social-political environment of a presidential election year and a burgeoning racial justice movement provide the backdrop for the experiences described in this monograph.

Higher Education, Covid, and Thriving

Our conversations with staff, faculty, and students reflect the toll that this extended period of uncertainty had for all participants. They struggled with the constant changes in return to campus plans, their fear for their health and the health of others, and the desire to contribute to the movement for racial justice. They expressed being pushed to their limits when it came to juggling work and home responsibilities. And, they talked constantly about the loss of community that they had come to realize was an important benefit of being part of the University of Utah community. This led us to consider the concept of thriving (Schreiner, 2013; Spreitzer et al., 2005) as the framework for these conversations. Thriving is an important component of college student success and an element of the work expe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• PART I: Setting the Stage
• PART II: The Experiences of Faculty
• PART III: The Experiences of Staff
• PART IV: The Experiences of Students
• PART V: Conclusion
• Index