Living in the Upside Down: Reflecting on a Year of COVID

We all have those moments when we remember exactly where we were when something significant happened.

I added Wednesday, March 11, 2020, to my personal list when I was sitting in the back row at the County Board of Legislators and County Executive Picente pointed to me and said, “The Governor just closed you.”

I remember wondering what that even meant. I know we close for snowstorms or power outages, but a virus? I called the office and the College’s Crisis Response Team (CRT) was already assembling. The next week was filled with all-day CRT meetings trying to make sense of it all, each day culminating with an email update for our students, faculty, and staff. It was mentally draining to slog through so much unknown territory only to count the day’s primary accomplishment as a single email to the College community.

By Monday, March 23, the entire College was operating remotely with a few exceptions of essential staff. The CRT met all day every day for several weeks then had daily check-ins through mid-July in an effort to develop the details for creating a COVID-friendly operation filled with density reduction, 80% remote instruction, residence life protocols, centralized health-screening check-in stations, bracelets, door monitoring, testing, and other details that did not exist prior to the disruption.

Everything was new. Setting up home offices, spending all day in front of Zoom squares, and having the normal rhythm of daily life turned upside down was unsettling to say the least. 

One of my most vivid memories of the early COVID lockdown was driving to the Newark, N.J., airport with my wife to pick up our oldest daughter as she caught the last flight out of Togo, West Africa, when her Peace Corps experience came to a sudden end. We drove on a dark and desolate five-lane highway at 10 p.m. with the NYC skyline on the horizon and not a single car in sight — a post-apocalyptic feel that I’ll never forget. Watching the nightly news and reading headlines trying to understand what was going on was mentally exhausting. Playing trivia games with friends via Zoom on the weekends helped ease the discomfort, but simply wasn’t the same.

The College’s Workplace by Facebook platform helped maintain some connection with the “Social Distancing Together” thread filled with random artifacts of working remotely — new coworkers and “officemates” of cute kids and funny animals and precious “throwback” pictures that we likely wouldn’t have seen otherwise. “Virtual happy hours” and different departmental strategies to stay connected despite the remoteness helped keep folks together. A virtual graduation ceremony was an emotional moment for me to consider the impact of what our students were going through and just how powerful our work is here at the College.

Summer was like living in parentheses — it was normal in a sense because of outdoor activities, but it wasn’t because there were no gatherings of any kind. At home, the relaxed pace provided an opportunity to inventory the upsides, like having both of our girls home with us and spending bonus time together, having our health, and having our jobs as we watched the devastating impact of the pandemic around the country. 

As August came and the College began a new academic year, all the anniversaries of our normally robust fall semester were hard to emotionally navigate. The absence of gathering at Fall Opening, new student orientation, sunny fall afternoons with vibrant campuses, soccer games and meaningful student activities made it that much harder to push through as the pandemic continued. The holiday-spike in positive cases and deaths were a sad development that quickly gave way to a return of 1% positivity rates and the optimism of the vaccines arriving.

I now find myself in a “COVID-normal” state of mind that provides a manageable routine without getting too anxious about things. I continue to be amazed at the dedication and commitment of faculty and staff that has been demonstrated over the past year. It’s as though the respect and trust I hoped we had developed in the culture here was amplified in ways that exceeded my expectations. That seems to be how we’ve made it through together — believing in each other and holding ourselves accountable to do what needed to be done.

And now it’s hard not to look to the future. What will it look like? If 2020 was the year of the upside down — full of shock and awe — 2021 is likely more a year of transition to something different, rather than a return to pre-COVID life. While we’ll likely have a “masked normal” for an extended period of time, I believe things will change dramatically when the social-distancing guidelines are fully lifted. Until that happens, we’ll continue managing within the parameters we have with an eye toward carrying out our mission in the best way possible — striving to do our best work while being patient with each other and ourselves … and the world as we know it.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Coming to Back to Life

I put socks on twice this week … er, I mean I worked two days in my office this week. Monday, July 20, was our first day back as part of a three-phase return for the Fall semester. I have to say it felt good and was a refreshing change for me in contrast to my “Zoom cocoon” of the past four months.

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.

Another Phase of “New Normal”

MVCC went fully remote on March 23, 2020. Over those 119 days, our world was turned upside down and rotated a few different ways, but we’re still on our feet. We all have masks now and the rhythm of our days is different yet the same. The Mohawk Valley region is doing fairly well with limiting the number of infections and maintaining capacity in our healthcare system. Higher education (and MVCC) was approved to reopen when the region achieved Phase Four status, so we’ll move from fully remote to partially remote on July 20, 2020. As we look toward our staggered return to campus, I can’t help but reflect on where we’ve been and where I see us going.

To maintain a reasonable density of people on campus, we’re bringing staff back in a staggered, phased approach. On Monday, July 20, we’ll begin a three-phased, staggered return of our workforce. Our Responsible Restart Plan that was approved by SUNY has an outer limit of the percentage of our full-time employees, but we’ll be well short in each phase, having the wiggle room to increase on-campus staffing if we need it as follows:

• July 20 — No more than 33% (26% projected)
• Aug. 3 — No more than 50% (34% projected)
• Aug. 24 — No more than 66% (46% projected)

While many of our essential employees in Facilities, Public Safety, and IT have been coming to campus every day and “flex-essential” employees in the Business Office and many others have been coming to campus periodically over the past four months, it’s time for many of the rest of us to move toward the “masked normal” they’ve all been living. We’ll have roughly 25% of our courses on campus along with more than 150 students living in the residence halls. Additionally, we’ll have an as-of-yet unknown number of students coming to campus for access to the internet, useful study spaces, and likely a sense of a normal college experience with in-person human interaction under current social distancing guidelines.

The transition to remote operations over the past few months has brought new and unique experiences to us both individually and collectively. We’ve been able to grieve the sense of loss we’ve felt from our lifetimes of routine and also celebrate the building of new memories both personally and professionally. Our challenge going forward is to commit ourselves in the effort of keeping everyone safe while raising our own bar of personal accountability to make sure the work gets done for students and each other in the face of unsettling and unfamiliar circumstances. I’ve been so proud to see our culture evolve over the past few years to increasingly adapt, innovate, and rise to the challenges that came our way.

Just when we thought transitioning to remote operations was our greatest challenge, rising to what the coming Fall semester is likely to bring will most certainly challenge us to bring our best selves to work every day, so get ready to surprise yourself and each other with what we’re going to do.

If you have any questions, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.