91��Ʒ

By Amy J. Barry

Over the past eight months, 91��Ʒ’s administration and staff have been working resolutely under the leadership of President Zulma R. Toro to keep the COVID-19 pandemic at bay and its educational mission viable.

They have created and implemented advanced new health and safety protocols and substantially upgraded online remote learning technologies in an enormous and complex collaborative effort referred to as the University’s “Blueprint for Success.”

And 91��Ʒ’s response has been a great success — lauded as the best among state universities and beyond. It enabled the campus’s reopening for the Fall 2020 semester and will continue to guide University operations this spring.

Mark E. Ojakian, president of the Connecticut State University System, was so impressed that he asked President Toro to give a presentation on 91��Ʒ’s pandemic planning to the Board of Regents on Sept. 17. She also participated in a Sept. 4 White House conference call with higher education leaders led by Vice President Mike Pence.

During the call, leaders from Colorado State University, University of Notre Dame, and North Dakota State University shared details and insights on how their campuses have responded to the pandemic. Their comments revealed much to 91��Ʒ’s president.

“In most cases, nothing they were doing was better than what we were doing,” Toro recalls, “and in some instances, we were doing more — and theirs were the best responses across the nation.”

Planning pays off

Toro attributes the University’s success to early emergency planning, orchestrated by Sal Cintorino, 91��Ʒ’s Chief Operations Officer, which began in February — well before the state issued any guidelines.

“Therefore, we were able to react quickly when we learned of the first potential infection that triggered the closing of the campus,” Toro says, “and then we were able to put in place all the protocols.”

Toro started issuing updates to the 91��Ʒ community even before the physical campus shut down and the University became a remote operation on March 12. As the pandemic intensified, those updates and forthcoming reports became the basis of pandemic-related web pages, which are still regularly updated.

By April, the emergency response team started to tackle the question of how and when to reopen campus for on-ground classes and operations for the Fall 2020 semester.

Cintorino notes, “We began more than six months ago with daily meetings to analyze our campus and develop plans that aligned with best practices. Members of our committee, including myself, had been trained in FEMA emergency planning and preparedness. From day one, President Toro and I both committed to having the safety of our campus community as the foundation of our Blueprint.”

After analyzing early reports from its members institutions, CSCU leadership announced the that the system would reopen for Fall 2020 with classes delivered in a variety of on-ground, online, remote, and hybrid formats. It was up to each university to determine exactly how and which formats to build into the Fall 2020 reopening plan.

Workgroups comprised of more than 150 members of the University community gathered information and issued reports that would guide the many areas the reopening plan had to address, including health and safety measures; resident student logistics; contact tracing and testing; and new learning methods for students and faculty.

By late May, Toro announced the university would offer classes in all-remote and HyFlex formats for Fall 2020, starting Aug. 26. The HyFlex format allows for reduced in-person classes with social distancing measures built in, as well as new sophisticated audio/visual technology for students who prefer to study remotely.

Chief Information Officer George Claffey attributes 91��Ʒ’s overall successful response to a deep commitment to safety and staff’s awareness that it would need to be a very organic, fluid, multi-dimensional process. He emphasizes that flexibility, combined with a high level of collaboration and teamwork across the campus, has been essential.

“We immediately began conversations with various IT groups, including the Information Technology Committee that represents the faculty,” Claffey says. “We knew we would have to quickly and begin rethinking some things and started talking about mobility and agility and upgraded a series of technologies that that would support remote conductivity.” 

91��Ʒ has since invested nearly $2 million in campus-wide technological upgrades and purchases. Chief among them are a new ventilation system and the 35 classrooms, four lecture halls, and 29 labs set up for HyFlex learning.

Looking forward to spring

Following Thanksgiving break, CSCU leadership has called for all universities to conduct classes and final exams remotely for the rest of the Fall 2020 semester.

Health concerns already have affected the spring academic calendar, too. The CSCU office, in collaboration with the university presidents, pushed the start of the spring semester one week later than originally scheduled, and the usual spring break will be eliminated. Finals week, from May 10 to 16, will continue as scheduled.

The university will continue to offer a combination of on-ground and remote classes and activities.

“We’re planning for two different scenarios this spring,” Toro says. “We can’t control the virus. If conditions allow, we will be looking at about 35 percent HyFlex courses.”

Toro also charged three new workgroups to make recommendations for changes and enhancements for spring that will ensure the health and safety of our campus community.

The education of experience

Along with the huge challenges and round-the-clock demands during the past eight months, University leaders also have gained valuable insights and perspective.

“On one hand, we’ve learned that higher education is more adaptable than what people thought before the pandemic,” Dr. Toro says. “Another lesson we’ve learned is that we can innovate in record time.”

She notes that one of the unexpected positive outcomes of the pandemic and the necessity of increased online learning is that by integrating more technology into the educational process, 91��Ʒ can more effectively reach students who are balancing family obligations and demanding jobs with pursuing a college degree.

Claffey has seen a real digital transformation and learned that the future will need a mobile workforce to be ready to respond.

“We think of things more like Lego bricks now — with smaller interchangeable parts,” he says. “We put a chatbot together over the summer [a software application used to conduct on-line chat conversations]. That wasn’t in our playbook before and it probably will be forever.”

A big takeaway for Cintorino was a new awareness of how resilient 91��Ʒ’s students, faculty, and staff are in the face of adversity.

“The last eight months have been more challenging than most of our community has experienced in a lifetime,” he says. “Families spent more time in quarantine than most could have ever imagined. Our ability to unite and work together [shows that] 91��Ʒ is committed to being the best it can be. We are all part of the solution.”

Toro adds, “I am so proud of how our faculty has adapted and has been so creative during this process. And the staff has been so supportive of our students. We are in a much stronger position to address students’ social, emotional, and technology needs next semester, while increasing their opportunities for academic success.”