Some Perspective

Doom and gloom has dominated the public narrative around higher education for virtually all of 2020. Stories about the virus, positive test results, students suing universities to recover tuition and fees, budget cuts, gap years and the end of education as we know it have flooded the airwaves and social media.

Some perspective.

Universities have been around for a long time. The oldest continuous university in the world is generally considered to be the University of Bologna founded in 1088. That means this institution survived through the Black Plague, the Mini Ice Age, two world wars, several regional conflicts, an untold number of changes in the government of Italy, the Great Depression…. you get the idea. The University of Bologna is not alone. An impressive list can be found by clicking here.

Fast Forward to today.

UCF’s enrollment is up, not down. In fact it is up almost 4 percent. Classes are happening both online and in person. People are wearing masks. State financial support remains uncertain and challenges certainly lay ahead, but the sky is not falling. We are all adapting. Survival is guaranteed. In the words of Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) from Jurassic Park, “Life (or in this case, education) finds a way.”

Why?

Because education is about hope. My working class parents sacrificed to send me to college in the hope it would provide me with a better future. I became a faculty member in the hope that my work would make a difference to people like my parents.  State governments and private donors fund research, provide student scholarships and underwrite university outreach activities in the hope of creating a better world. Nobody wants to take a gap year, or give up on their future, or throw up their hands and believe the world is doomed. Purpose has driven higher education’s resiliency for almost a millennium. I don’t see that changing any time soon.

New Mandatory Business Attire

If you want in person classes to continue, the student union food court to remain open and UCF football to happen, the best thing you can do to achieve your goals is wear your mask. You don’t control much about this Pandemic, but you do control this. It’s how business is getting done in 2020. Think of it as a small act of defiance against the virus designed to get your life back.

How to do business in 2020

Managing Fear

In response to my call for some inspiration a few weeks ago, one of my Advisory Board members, Don Unser, reached out with a number of suggestions including management imperatives during this crisis.

This has been on my mind for some time. Whatever you think of the science or politics of the virus, people perceive this crisis very differently. At one end we have people who honestly believe this is a life or death situation for themselves and the people they love. They want to continue to shelter in place. At the other end are people who think it’s like the flu and not worth shutting down the economy or changing their way of life.

UCF has settled in the middle. The prevailing view of our public health experts is that we have to learn to live with the virus for a while (until a vaccine) and that proper protocols, especially masks and physical distancing, effectively mitigate the spread of the disease and allow us to return to some face-to-face classes at reduced capacity. My sense is that UCF’s emails and zoom proclamations have done little to allay the fears of those students, faculty and staff who are concerned about their health.

There are likely several reasons for this vast difference in views, one for example is that some people are more likely to suffer more severely from the virus than others. But from a managerial imperative standpoint, I think it comes down to something I wrote about a few weeks ago.. acta non verba: actions not words. People are going to judge the veracity of claims that it is time to return to work, by what leadership does, not what it says.

When it comes to the question of reopening, I either have to believe in the directive and help implement it, or step down and let someone who is willing to carry it out do so. I can write all I want about how the policy makes sense, but what I do swamps anything I write. If I really want to manage fear in this instance and support the plan, I need to be out front with a mask, engaging students, faculty and staff while remaining six feet apart. I also need to be transparent about what our data on the virus is telling us and how we may need to pivot to reach our goals. Only sound practices AND courage will defeat fear. It’s up to management to make sure we have both. I plan to trust the science and UCF and lead from out-front. I’ll see some of you in a week.

Is Zoom the Future of Higher Education?

When I was very young, I remember watching a television show in black and white called “Romper Room.”  It was around for a long time (1953-1994). The show was targeted at preschoolers (this was pre-Sesame Street) and took place in a classroom with children.  The viewer got to peer into the class and watch it unfold, kind of like lecture capture.  The highlight, at least for me, was “Magic Mirror.” At the end of the show, the teacher, Miss Nancy, would peer into her magic mirror and see some of her viewers. She would see Sue or Tommy or Ann and note that they were attentive and happy or that they were having a “special day.” Gullible kids everywhere believed in the power of Magic Mirror. Thanks to YouTube, you can see Miss Nancy’s confession by clicking here.

Now thanks to Zoom, Magic Mirror is a reality. The teacher can peer back at you, and if your camera is on, see what you are up to. Like driving while watching class on your smart phone (a recent IB student I’m told).  Or, observe your team working on a project. Zoom is clearly an upgrade from lecture capture, but is it the future of higher education— a liner progression from correspondences courses to Romper Room or Great Lectures on tape?

Zoom is an excellent product, but I doubt it’s going to replace the face-to-face university experience in a post-pandemic world. For one, you can’t play football on it. More seriously, an old (and very famous) United commercial  hits on why. View it by clicking here. You see, Miss Nancy really didn’t know Sue, Tommy or Ann. More importantly, those gullible little viewers didn’t really know Miss Nancy’s true nature. It takes real face-to-face interaction for that to happen. I’ll bet those kids in that classroom studio knew she was a con artist preying on the big hopes of tiny viewers like me.

This Spring, Zoom allowed students to complete courses that they had started face to face. But it wasn’t designed to be an educational tool. Ultimately, learning is social and best etched into your being at the edge of your comfort zone, not in some sterile environment on a computer screen. I’m not sure remote instruction using Zoom or something more structured as we typically do at UCF will be inferior to a face-to-face experience done with everyone wearing masks positioned at least six feet apart. My guess is that it will depend on the course, instructor and students. No one in the history of the world has ever thought they could get to know someone better and fully understand their views by maintaining social distance, but COVID-19 isn’t really giving us a choice and necessity really is the mother of invention. Some classes will figure it out, others won’t, as we learn to live with this virus for a while. What I do know is that the Magic Mirror is fake and when we get to the other side of this pandemic, we will want to leave Miss Nancy‘s virtual classroom and go to a real school just like I did.

A special thanks to Lonny for helping me get my blog mojo back…

I need some inspiration

I’ve been writing this blog for about ten years now. I’ve never missed a week. Inspiration has been easy because I’ve been living the college experience along with my faculty and students everyday. Almost every blog post is based on something I’ve encountered in the prior week— a conversation I’ve had with a student, faculty member, alum, corporate partner, staff member or friend of the college.

The pandemic has limited access to my inspiration and I’m not sure that I have the same grip on the student experience as I do when I walk the crowded halls of BA-1 and BA-2. I could use a little inspiration. So if you have an interesting topic or take you would like to share, leave a comment to this post. If it catches my attention, it might lead to a zoom meeting and a blog post. Otherwise, I’m just going to have to keep coming up with stuff on my own that I think will help my readers think differently about the college experience and get more value out of your time with us.