The Utica Campus was spotless. Our Facilities crew has been working on campus all this time and we all should be grateful for their commitment and hard work — the place is beautiful. The buildings and grounds stood out more than usual because there were so few of us on campus. It was a different feeling for sure. However, this was the plan all along: to keep our population density low to minimize risk and begin testing our approach to safety while the numbers are small.
After arriving on campus, I went to the checkpoint at Payne Hall and got my bracelet for the day. My first day it took less than five minutes to check in with a few people in line, and three days later it took less than one minute. The people staffing the doors to check for bracelets as people entered the building provided me an extra level of assurance that the people on campus have minimal risk of COVID-19, having answered the mandatory questions and not having a high temperature.
We have a couple of police academies in operation, in addition to several classes in the Science and Technology Building finishing classes that were suspended in the Spring. Walking around campus with my mask on felt as normal as going to the grocery store and was a small change to reap the benefit of running into colleagues and having unscheduled, informal conversations.
Walking around campus gave me a chance to reflect on just what a massive disruption this pandemic has created. We can “get things done” and check off our daily task lists while working remotely. But as I’ve learned over the years, “how” we get things done is often just as important as “what” gets done. Zoom and email certainly provide the technological means for our work, but the human element — even when six feet apart with a mask — is a powerful thing, particularly when it comes to the student experience.
Our challenge is to hold on to enough of that human element and provide what we can to the extent possible with safety measures in place. I often say that change never happens at the right pace — it’s too fast for some and too slow for others; too much for some and too little for others. Our phased return is intended to provide a slow and measured change to allow the College to implement safety protocols in ways that allow for evaluation and adjustment and provide all of us with a steady and supportive experience in emerging — if only a little bit — from our Zoom cocoons…and revisiting parts of our closets we haven’t seen in months.
If you have any questions or comments, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.
