Leading the class: Small colleges like Seton Hill, Saint Vincent found ways to bring students back safely

Apr. 11—Jessie DiLeo was thrilled when she learned Seton Hill University would welcome students back to classrooms at its hilltop campus in Greensburg last fall.

Like millions of other college students across the country, the Erie woman gathered her books, packed her bags and headed home in spring 2020 when schools across the country shuttered as the coronavirus pandemic swept the nation. She finished the second semester of her sophomore year online, but it was a reach.

"It was a really big adjustment," DiLeo said.

Near the end of the semester, a notice came for her to join a Zoom call with Seton Hill President Mary Finger and other student ambassadors at the university. DiLeo signed on and voiced her concerns, as did others. Most were eager to return to campus in the fall.

"When I saw it (the notice for in-person classes), I said I'll do whatever you want me to do, just let me be on campus. I couldn't do another semester online," she said.

Finger said she took their comments seriously and began planning for a different kind of semester that would allow students to return to their classrooms or sign on remotely.

According to the College Crisis Initiative dashboard at Davidson College in North Carolina, which tracked colleges and their plans for fall 2020, Seton Hill — a private university with an enrollment of about 2,000 students — was among nearly 800 colleges that opted to keep dorms and classrooms open. Of those schools, 114 were fully in person. The remainder, like Seton Hill, offered students the option of attending classes remotely.

Another 301 were fully online. Among those was California University of Pennsylvania, a state-owned university in Washington County. Citing student and staff safety concerns, Cal U opted to go totally online last fall. The school began offering a limited number of in-person courses during the spring semester and plans to resume normal operations this fall.

Getting back

The pandemic year provided countless challenges for residential colleges and universities attempting to offer students a seamless track to graduation.

Locally, small private schools such as Seton Hill and Saint Vincent College, which enrolls about 1,900 students at its campus just outside Latrobe, reported a good response to efforts to continue offering in-person instruction while providing options for online learning.

"About 90% of our classes were face to face," Finger said. "The first semester we had about 60 students who opted to be fully virtual because they were high risk. This semester we have about half that many, and some of them had internships. They really like being with each other."

Seton Hill junior David Conley of Bethel Park said the chance to build community at a small college and get to know his professors and classmates was one of the reasons he chose the university.

"Coming back was a huge deal for me. I really feel like I'm getting my money's worth," he said. "A lot of my friends who chose big schools had to do it all online this year. One of them decided to take a semester off and work rather than pay not to attend class and sit in Zoom meetings every day."

The University of Pittsburgh, with its main Oakland campus that includes nearly 30,000 students, as well as smaller campuses in Bradford, Greensburg, Johnstown and Titusville, opted for a hybrid program it called Flex@Pitt. It provided for limited in-person instruction as well as online options. Officials hoped testing for the virus, coupled with enhanced public health protocols, would keep spread of the virus under control on its Oakland campus, which always has boasted a robust social life.

Despite extensive testing, social distancing and limited face-to-face interaction, officials at the Oakland campus have faced a surge of infections in recent weeks, leading to a recent shelter-in-place order as the university community prepares for finals and graduation.

Mitigation efforts at its Greensburg campus, which enrolls about 1,300 students, have met with more success. Pitt Greensburg President Robert Gregerson said the school, which offered about 30% of its classes in person, saw 17 confirmed cases of covid-19 this academic year.

Many factors figured into operational decisions at colleges and universities in the 2020-21 academic year. The mix of majors at some schools made it less likely that students would thrive online.

Finger said Seton Hill's concentration of students with majors in health sciences and the arts was a major consideration there.

"About 60% of our students are in natural or health sciences or visual or performance art, the kind of things that make it very difficult to learn remotely. We felt we were better face to face. This is the kind of education we offer," she said.

Most schools that opted for hybrid or flex models also made allowances for lab and workshop classes to continue in person.

Cost of safety

Officials also had to consider infection levels in communities surrounding campuses, as well as student and faculty concerns. The College Crisis Initiative found many of the schools that operated totally or primarily online last fall were clustered in cities on the east and west coasts that had seen high infection levels.

Housing and revenue also played into calculations.

At Pitt's Oakland campus, officials approved $22 million for leasing nearby hotel rooms so Pitt could offer incoming students a taste of college life without the typical crowding in freshmen dorms. At nearby Carnegie Mellon University, officials limited campus housing to about 25% of capacity to avoid congested communal living situations that experts worried would contribute to the spread of the virus.

In residence halls and classrooms that remained open, everything from traffic patterns in the hallways to the placement of furniture and hand-washing stations came under scrutiny as officials struggled to meet public health protocols.

The cost of testing students and staff for covid-19, providing options for quarantining those who became infected and adding provisions for remote learning and social distancing added millions of dollars in expenses at institutions already struggling with the cost of offering room and board refunds from last spring.

Seton Hill alone spent more than $1 million testing for the virus this year.

Finger said it has paid off.

"It was the only tool to keep people safe. We haven't had anyone sent to the ER. There have been no hospitalizations, no spread in classrooms or labs, so I think the risk mitigation has been effective," she said.

Forging ahead

With the 2020-21 academic year largely in the rear-view mirror, colleges and universities across the country are planning to offer in-person commencement ceremonies this spring and anxiously are planning to resume full operations on campus this fall.

Preliminary data suggest some small colleges and regional state universities are facing a decline in applications. But that isn't the case across the board.

Although officials at Pitt Greensburg have seen a slight decline in applications, a university spokesman said applications to the Oakland campus are at a record high this year. Nearby Duquesne University recently reported a similar surge in new applications.

And at Seton Hill, the school that stayed open during the pandemic year, applications are up, but Finger isn't celebrating just yet.

"Completed applications or deposit are a little behind compared to last year. But I think some of it is students not being able to get the documentation," she said.

Deb Erdley is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Deb at 724-850-1209, derdley@triblive.com or via Twitter .