Weathering COVID-19: A look at the past year

Taking a look back on the past year of living through COVID-19 is nothing new. Binghamton University’s year was not necessarily unique. Though it’s difficult to sum up, it has certainly been a learning experience about how to work together.

When instruction went fully remote on March 19, 2020, no one could predict how long the pandemic would last or what decisions would have to be made to get through the pandemic, but delivering the highest quality instruction possible and providing a safe environment where students could still build community were the foundations that drove every decision, President Harvey Stenger said.

The University had anticipated the governor’s announcement in mid-March that the campus would have to move to remote-only teaching, Stenger said. “Still, the announcement required us to make changes involving almost every aspect of the campus, since not only were classes going remote, but so were almost all of the University’s day-to-day operations, with the exception of what were deemed ‘essential’ campus services.”

One challenge, he said, was finding ways to ensure that students had access to the technology they needed to continue their classwork. “Fortunately, SUNY and the Binghamton University Foundation really stepped up to help us reach out and provide computers and hot spots to students in need, and we quickly developed a process for flagging students who seemed to be dropping off the grid.”

Offering high-quality instruction remotely has been a challenge, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Donald Nieman said.

“We are a residential campus, so most of our faculty did not have experiences with remote instruction,” he said. “By early March, the Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT) had tools up on its website that provided guidance on remote teaching and how to use Zoom. The CLT staff and the college and school deans’ offices did an amazing job of supporting faculty and students.

“We also surveyed students and faculty several times about how they were doing and the problems they were having, and tried to address them,” Nieman added. “We created a liberal drop/add policy that expanded the number of classes students could take pass/fail and also allowed them to decide whether to exercise that option after they saw their grades.”

Though it was a stressful time for everyone, Nieman noted that the University’s retention rate for first-year students actually rose from 92% to 93% in 2020.

For the Division of Students Affairs, the challenges of the past year have been all-consuming, said Brian Rose, vice president of the division. “Challenges included managing the unexpected campus departure of almost all of our students last spring, dealing with substantial financial constraints in operations, supporting students who needed special assistance such as our international students who could neither return home nor receive financial support from family or lost jobs, developing re-opening plans and then changing them repeatedly as state guidance changed and trying to stay positive with all of our staff,” he said.

“From there, we had to figure out how to deliver a COVID-testing program, which we delivered upon ahead of most other campuses,” he added. “There is so much more, too, than people will ever realize. Most recently, the challenges of creating an entire enterprise to manage large numbers of students in quarantine and isolation has taken my full attention. We are doing all those things while also finding ways to provide all the usual services. This has been the most challenging year of my 30-plus years in higher education.”

The rapidly changing landscape was also a challenge operationally, said JoAnn Navarro, vice president for operations. Lack of clear directives from the state or SUNY left the campus making decisions, and then pivoting when directives were made, impacting the entire division, which includes Physical Facilities, Emergency Services, Environmental Health and Safety, Human Resources, the University Center for Training and Development, and Information Technology Services.

“Everything was moving very quickly and it was often a challenge to communicate the current status to staff,” Navarro said. “Early on in the pandemic, I would send a weekly email out to all Division of Operations staff giving them an overview of what happened the prior week and where we were going the next week. I think this helped to keep people connected, especially staff who were working remotely.

“We learned to be very flexible,” she explained. “We’ve also been in hundreds of meetings, and honestly, they’ve helped us build a camaraderie with colleagues that we may not have worked closely with in the past. People know each other better — and we’ve learned to have a sense of humor because there were days you’d go crazy without it!”

The uncertainty and unpredictability made planning difficult at many levels, Nieman added. “Even though we had a lot of pressure for giving answers early, we generally held off until we had to make a decision, knowing that making one too early meant that we would have to scramble to reverse course and sow chaos in the process,” he said. “Of course, it wasn’t only predicting the course of the pandemic that made timely decision-making difficult; we needed to act in ways that were consistent with state and SUNY guidelines, which were often late in coming.”

The hardest part of the changes necessary due to the pandemic was the impact on the social life and campus traditions that are so important to the campus culture, Stenger said. “For example, it was especially difficult to postpone Commencement for the Class of 2020: Graduation means so much to our students and their families, and having to cancel in-person ceremonies was extremely hard on everyone.

“I also really missed our international students, who were unable to be here due to international travel restrictions,” Stenger added. “We saw a large decrease in our international enrollment, which affects not only the research and scholarship environment on campus, but greatly changes the cultural life as well.

“Of course, having virtually no students on campus, period, last spring made this a far different place.”

There have been financial implications resulting from the pandemic as well. “The need to refund housing costs and student fees was something that was unexpected, but really was the right thing to do, as students and their families have had to cope with the own financial challenges,” Stenger said. “COVID has had a real fiscal impact on the campus — not only in terms of refunds, but also in terms of significantly increased cleaning costs, costs for testing and quarantine/isolation space and more.”

The decrease in international student enrollment has also had an impact, Nieman said. “We have lost revenue, especially due to a sharp decline in international enrollment, but also because of expenses incurred to meet the pandemic. We have met this in a variety of ways: refinancing residence hall bonds, federal assistance, strong domestic enrollments and costs savings from unfilled faculty and staff positions. The latter have placed stress on academic departments and delivery of a variety of services.”

“The campus is trying to spend less now, and we’ve been holding a lot of positions vacant, which can sometimes stress the remaining staff, but we’ve tried to reallocate workloads wherever possible,” said Navarro. “But in certain areas, primarily custodial and HVAC, we’ve actually had to spend more money on installations, upgrades and cleaning supplies.”

“A lot of the work on campus for the past year has involved shifting what we are doing to address the immediate challenges of COVID — changing classes, of course, but also food service and housing, athletics and social activities — pretty much everything had to adjust to the new reality,” Stenger added. “We are now also looking ahead to the economic costs of all of these changes. Fortunately, the campus was in good fiscal shape going into the crisis and I think we will weather the challenge.”

The campus had two major situations to manage in 2020 as well — one planned and one unexpected. The first was the Middle States Commission on Higher Education reaccreditation site visit, which was held virtually, and the second was a cyber-attack that seriously impacted the campus network.

Because it was held virtually, the Middle States visit couldn’t provide the collegial activities it would have in person, such as an opening dinner, sidebar conversations and campus tours that allow people to get to know one another, yet it was a success.

“The team concluded that we met all the standards with ease, provided students with an outstanding education, were devoted to continuous improvement, walked the talk when it came to strategic planning, aligned resource allocation with planning, pivoted successfully to meet the challenges of COVID and had a collaborative culture,” Nieman said. The next self-study evaluation for the campus will not be until the 2028-29 academic year.

The unexpected cyber-attack on Nov. 7, 2020, caused a disruption at many levels, but the University immediately contracted with a firm to investigate and began mitigation and restoration efforts. The outside firm, Kroll, determined that no information had been exfiltrated. Information Technology Services worked continually for months to restore systems and, with establishment of an Information Technology Task Force, made recommendations to improve information security moving forward.

Overall, the University’s abilities to manage through the pandemic has become a source of pride for Stenger and his senior staff.

“I am proud of the way in which staff and leadership across all divisions of the University have worked closely together to problem solve,” Rose said. “I am proud of our students for returning to campus and supporting one another. Every day I walk some of the campus and I see students enjoying each other and generally being safe. Those daily scenes make all we’ve gone through worth it.”

That sentiment was echoed by Navarro. “I am most proud of our people, not only in my division but across the entire campus,” she said. “One of the things this campus does really well is pull together in times of crisis. People supporting people.”

“While we all look forward to getting back to fully in-person instruction in the fall, I believe that because we listened, consulted, adapted, learned from mistakes and were committed to continuous improvement, we offered students high-quality instruction,” Nieman said.

“My ask now, for all members of our community, is to continue to care for each other and come together,” Rose said. ”Follow safety guidelines to protect your friends, classmates and peers. Instead of pointing out the examples of failures that can be easy to find amid such an overwhelming challenge, acknowledge the many successes and the efforts of all those doing their best to provide a genuine residential educational experience.”