Coronavirus Impact
In Psychology Today, Marica Morris, a psychiatrist at the University of Florida and author of The Campus Cure: A Parent’s Guide to Mental Health and Wellness for College Students, shares ways to help students cope with the fallout from COVID-19. If students are distressed, Morris suggests encouraging them to maintain structure in their lives, promoting healthy behaviors like getting enough sleep, eating well, and exercising, and activities that make them happy like getting outside, playing an instrument, and talking with friends on the phone or videochat.
The New York Times reports that colleges across the country have started moving to pass/fail systems, after students argued that online classes are a poor substitute and that the chaos caused by the virus falls hardest on those with the least resources. Ohio State, Columbia and Carnegie Mellon are adopting a variety of pass/fail or credit/no credit systems. Some universities will still offer the option of letter grades, while others have dropped them altogether. According to the Times, some students are seeking a “universal pass” – meaning that nobody would fail, regardless of performance.
The University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus has a new food pantry to help with food insecurity among some students. The “Support-a-Bull Pantry” will be funded by campus donations along with the help of Sarasota-based All Faiths Food Bank. Jenni Menon Mariano, PhD, of the School of Education said, “This is a time when many people are losing their jobs, or at risk of losing their jobs, and they may need extra support to get them through this difficult period. It is so critical to support the food pantry and other funds that help our students.”
Inside Higher Ed reports that displaced students are looking to faculty for support and understanding at a time of anxiety and uncertainty. Caroline Gottschalk Druschke, an English professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said “People are putting in a really, really good-faith effort. I see the faculty around me, graduate students around me, really supporting each other and challenging each other to do better — which means doing less.” She said that faculty members who have been in touch with their students on a personal level can feel like they are “absorbing all their anxiety” and neglecting their own mental health.
After being sent home amidst the mounting coronavirus pandemic, some students and families have asked their colleges to refund their room and board fees. Many institutions have complied, offering a range of prorated refunds and credits based on the amount of time remaining on housing contracts or meals left on dining plans. Northern Illinois University is granting 50-percent room-and-board credits for the spring semester to students who moved out by March 22. The University of Wisconsin system is offering prorated refunds, as is the University of Dayton, in Ohio. Some colleges have offered prorated refunds only for graduating seniors, who won’t be able to use credits next year and, as the Chronicle reports, some schools, are saying no to the requests or telling students to wait.
E. Gordon Gee, president of West Virginia University, argues in Education Dive that to address the coronavirus, colleges and universities must lead and not follow. He wrote, “As we work through current challenges, we must constantly fix our eyes on the future. We must learn from our mistakes and from what we do right.” According to Gee, West Virginia University has a special calling to help protect West Virginians as a land-grant institution with Research 1 status and a comprehensive academic medical center. Gee writes that West Virginia University WVU Medicine is establishing drive-through collection points in five West Virginia cities to collect specimens from pre-screened patients to test for COVID-19. He said the university has made proactive and aggressive decisions to ameliorate the challenges of the coronavirus to our faculty, staff and students and to “flatten the curve” of its spread.
The New York Times reported that fourth-year medical students at universities in Boston and New York could start caring for patients months ahead of schedule. Several medical schools announced this week that they intended to offer early graduation, fast-tracking their students into front-line hospital care as the need for medical workers surges. In Massachusetts, the state would provide 90-day provisional licenses for early graduates, allowing almost automatic entry into clinical work. The move would make about 700 medical students in Massachusetts eligible to offer patient care at least eight weeks earlier than expected.
For many students who have been sent home from campus, on-campus jobs help them afford to stay in school. Some are part of the federal work-study financial-aid program, which offers subsidies to about 700,000 students nationwide. Others are part-time employees paid by the institution. According to the Education Department, forty-three percent of full-time undergraduates are employed in some capacity. Administrators at schools across the country are trying to figure out how to keep students on their payroll if there is no meaningful work for them to do. Some have pledged to keep paying out-of-work students. Others, like Ohio University, are tapping students for remote work whenever possible. Ohio University leaders announced last week that they would continue to employ and pay any student workers who wanted to keep their jobs. If they couldn’t work remotely – staffing a residence hall’s front desk, for instance – university officials said they’d find those students new roles. “We’re committed to providing opportunities for them to do meaningful work,” said M. Duane Nellis, Ohio’s president, in an interview.
Liberty University, an evangelical institution in Virginia, is being criticized for bucking the national norm of sending students home amid the coronavirus pandemic. The school invited students to move back into campus residence halls after spring break, a decision that runs counter to recommendations of health officials. As of Friday nearly a dozen Liberty students were sick with symptoms that suggested Covid-19. As of Sunday evening, one student had tested positive.
Schools are reaching out to their students to let them know that their health and counseling services are still available to them, even if only remotely, and offering advice on how to stay mentally well. Christopher Hanes, director of SCS at Iowa State said, “The shift to remote instruction impacted the method and types of services we can offer. With this shift, we have adjusted our counseling services to using telehealth-based services and have modified our scope of services. We offer accessible services by phone, including brief consultation and support planning appointments and crisis consultation services.”
WBUR reports that Massachusetts community colleges are scrambling to follow private colleges and universities as they move to remote teaching. Patricia Gentile, president of North Shore Community College and head of the Massachusetts Community College Council said, “This is a very fluid situation, and not everybody is in exactly the same situation nor has the same resources.” Gentile said the college has distributed laptops to employees so that they can work remotely, and purchased laptops for students who need them so that they don’t have to come to campus. “One of our challenges is community college students tend to be less affluent, [with] fewer resources,” said Lane Glenn, president of Northern Essex Community College.”A majority of our students are first-generation [college students], low-income, minority,” said Glenn. “Sometimes transportation is a struggle. Sometimes basic needs are a struggle. We’re very mindful of those things, which is why we don’t rush into closing things off to students before we have a plan for it.” Glenn said the college is trying to get laptops to students and is preparing teachers for remote teaching as classes resume.
University of Michigan hosted a webinar for student-athletes facing season losses in the wake of the Coronavirus. The webinar, called ‘Managing My Mental Health After Collegiate Athletics,’ is focused more on seniors but available and relatable to every class. Assistant director of athletic counseling Abigail Eiler said “The immediate response of our (mental health) team was to be present and offer counseling for our student-athletes.” She continued, “Their seasons were ending, and in some cases, their careers were ending. Those who weren’t in their seasons were asking, ‘Oh, my gosh, what happens now?’ There was so much unknown, and we needed to help them adjust to the best of their ability and the best of our ability.”