COVID’s Wild Ride
The past 18 months have been difficult, for everyone. This reflection is not about who has had it the hardest, but is centered in my work and experience in higher education and student housing. And the pandemic’s impacts to student housing and higher education have been a closely lived experience for me.
Alongside my former team, I have ridden the roller coaster of the pandemic starting with that first scary drop of attempting to accommodate students from our overseas program into our residence halls state-side, and then very quickly moving into the 90 degree drop that was facilitating a move-out process in less than a week. To the ups and downs of redoing our room selection and housing assignments processes multiple times. And the screams induced by planning a fall 2020 move-in only to have the university go remote within in days of our planned move-in (though a few hundred students had already moved their items to campus). Then came the dive drops of furloughs and lay-offs. And upon returning from my own furlough, experiencing the barrel rolls of many of the remaining team members beginning to resign. When things began to look more positive for the spring term due to the roll out vaccinations, we coasted into efforts to rebuild a team began. Application screenings, interview processes (all via Zoom), virtual on-boarding, and the long-slog at attempting to rebuild the institutional knowledge lost via virtual trainings. But efforts to on-board so many new staff in the midst of the ever-changing landscape of virus variants, the ride started to move backwards. After such a dizzying 18 months, it’s no wonder so many are anxious to get off the ride.
And all the while, the majority of reporting and essays on the experience of higher education were generally focused on the three areas:
· The student experience: is virtual or hybrid learning as good as in person? Should students be paying the same tuition rates if they are not in person? Should COVID vaccines for students be mandated?
· The faculty experience: the challenges of switching to remote learning, or not wanting to teach in person without access to a vaccine, or requiring vaccination of students),
· The front line worker experience: like custodial, maintenance, or food services staff (who are most often at higher risk for COVID exposure and are often from marginalized communities)
But rarely did I really see the experience of higher education staff (or residence life staff) reflected in what I read. This week’s Ed Surge column “Higher Ed, We’ve Got a Morale Problem- and a Free T-Shirt Won’t Fix it” by Kevin R. McClure probably comes closest to touching on what I am hearing from fellow higher ed (and especially student affairs) staff.
For the Student Affairs and Residence Life staff charged with managing the co-curricular on-campus experience, expectations about the student experience have been growing increasingly higher over the years, with the necessity of navigating helicopter parents (lawnmower parents, bulldozer parents, etc.) and increasing mental health concerns amongst college students. Pre-pandemic, student affairs was already required to be incredibly involved in helping and responding to student concerns (suicidal ideation, Title IX, racial inequity and calls for anti-racist reviews of programs), but the pandemic has required the layering on of a full-blown medical operation to the existing student concerns:
· Managing COVID Isolation/quarantine housing
· Enforcing masking requirements
· Enforcing vaccine requirements
· Enforcing visitation and occupancy restrictions
· Facilitating surveillance testing programs
And if the aforementioned wasn’t enough, the particular challenges of Fall 2021 include the specific student related challenges of essentially 2 first-year classes at once (for institutions who were not in person for 2020-2021 school year); new and increasing mental health concerns amongst students who have felt isolated during the pandemic; students who are anxious to catch-up on what they perceive is the “missed college experience” of last year, resulting in a noticeable spike in alcohol incidents.
All things considered, I understand why staff and faculty are feeling burnt out and demoralized. Personally, in my 20 year career in higher education, I have always felt drawn to the function of university operations, and have (mostly) enjoyed the challenges that have allowed me to grow professionally and develop new skills. But managing the past 18 months of the roller coaster of COVID-19 in higher education, coupled with the personal worry for the health and safety of my family and myself (while facilitating remote learning for one child, and also caring for the other at home), has made me reexamine my work, and my professional goals.
So, if you’ve read this far, you’re probably asking why do I choose to continue to focus on higher education and student housing in my consulting and project management work? In the weeks and months leading up to my decision to leave higher education as full time staff member, I have been able to reflect on what I would bring to consulting and project management in higher education:
· I love my work and this new opportunity allows me to do the things that I love.
· I bring incredible experience and am exceptionally good at what I do. A consultancy allows me to do that work with more people and institutions, and expand my experience.
· In the existing environment of the pandemic and it’s impacts to higher education, I know I can still help, but consulting allows me the ability to define my scope, and empowers me to be my own boss
· I can still influence institutional change, but from the outside, which can often be more powerful
· I can balance my own mental and physical health and the needs of my family
For my colleagues in higher education, I am hoping that the roller coaster will slow down, and that you will be able to get off and focus on the real work. In the meantime, I am here if you need me.
