We all were following the story of the new virus creating havoc in China in the news and social media early last year, but, it didn’t hit us as something that will turn our own personal and professional lives upside down until late February and early March. At the College, President Johnson convened a group of us to think through various likely scenarios and how best to respond to each. As a physician and public health expert, she was able to provide authoritative information based on her understanding of the seriousness of the issue and in consultation with some of the world’s experts in this area. It became clear quickly that we had to make some tough choices for the sake of the health and safety of the community.

Despite the various scenario planning, by the 11th of March, it was quickly becoming clear that we were trending on closing the College and going remote. The final decision was made on the 12th, a year ago today, and the president sent the painful message to the College Community where she said:

Up until this morning, we had planned to continue classes through next week and begin spring break on time. However, in light of the newest information about the escalation in the number of cases and increased risk to our students, we have decided to accelerate our timeline.

• Spring break will begin on Monday, March 16, and remote instruction will begin on March 30. Remote instruction will continue for the rest of the semester.

This is when every department at the College sprung into action. From our perspective in LTS, we were already preparing for remote instruction by this time (such as conducting some workshops for faculty), but, preparing for something that “might” happen is not the same as preparing for something that soon became a reality.

While a group was working with our faculty development director to put together several additional workshops, another group was collaborating with residential life on answering questions from students who were concerned about a variety of technology related issues ranging from not having a viable computer to use, to not having internet connection at home or not having enough bandwidth. We also had so many questions from our own staff about what all of this means to them. Talk about snowballing effect resulting from a pandemic that became a reality!

Frankly, most of Higher Eds have gotten better at Emergency preparedness in recent years. Clearly those preparations in handy, but no one could have been prepared for something of this scale. I saw something at the College that I have never seen before – swift decision making. This required some tough choices but decisions were made by the senior staff or the president’s operations team, communicated quickly and as clearly as possible and every one scrambled to operationalize them.

We are a much smaller institution than most others, but it really doesn’t matter in some sense. We also have correspondingly smaller staff and faculty, so last March was one of the most stressful time. We needed to deal with the fear of the virus, the well being of our own families, logistics of remote work simultaneously by all members of the family, all on top of what we needed to do for work.

We all came together in ways that was remarkable – we prioritized the health and safety of the entire community, safely moving the students home, making sure we do our best to ensure that they had the right technologies to successfully participate in remote learning and made sure our faculty had a successful remote instruction experience. All in a matter of 2 weeks.

Obviously, it was non-stop work for several months. We needed to quickly work on a plan for the summer term, and then the fall term, COVID testing and so on and so forth. Crisis of this proportion brings the best in people. A year later, we can all look back at what was accomplished and feel proud to have been part of an institution that cares so deeply about its students, faculty and staff.

There are many memories along the way that will stick with me. But I want to mention a couple. The recognition of the work by Library and Technology Services to support remote instruction (Apgar award) is clearly at the top of the list! Another one for me is related to a student. We had set up Zoom rooms (open Zoom sessions with at least one staff member listening in at all times) last March and encouraged students to make sure that they could connect successfully and ask questions. Most students would just connect to make sure and then drop off. But one student stopped by around 9:30 one day and thanked us for everything we are doing to help the students. It is these moments that make it all worthwhile!

Things look optimistic for the Fall and let us keep our fingers crossed.