Quick decisions will leave lasting marks on colleges, after pandemic-tinged school year
Jun. 20—Saint Anselm College's president got a lead on a COVID-19 rapid-testing machine last June, with a connection helping cut the months-long waiting list. The college had to act fast.
"We had about an hour," college President Joseph Favazza said.
But the decision didn't even take that long. By then, it was clear that people who were not symptomatic could spread the coronavirus. Having an on-campus testing site would make it much safer for the small Catholic liberal arts college to bring its students back to its Goffstown campus.
Such split-second decisions shaped the last year on college campuses, and institutions will feel their impacts for years to come.
For Saint Anselm, getting students onto campus was key. But a few miles away at Southern New Hampshire University, Dean of Students Meagan Sage said the college was confident enough in its ability to deliver a good experience online that the university decided health concerns outweighed students' desire to come back to campus.
"We were well-poised to move online because we already had systems set up to do that," Sage said. Southern New Hampshire University's long experience delivering remote instruction to its tens of thousands of online students was informative in taking the on-campus students remote too, she said.
Southern New Hampshire University was the only college in New Hampshire that stayed fully remote this past year.
"Certainly students who value and really like the in-person experience were disappointed," Sage said, though she said some — especially students who work — liked the flexible schedule online college offered.
But some students struggled, Sage said. Online classes did not work for everyone. And students missed the campus community. Like dozens of colleges around the country, Southern New Hampshire University faced a class-action lawsuit last year over the difference between the on-campus and online experience for students. The college ultimately settled the suit for $1.25 million.
"They missed the social life, the social aspect of being on a college campus, that is really hard to facilitate online," Sage said.
Cost of the comeback
The importance of the campus community was heavy on Favazza's mind as he and other Saint Anselm leaders weighed their options for the fall of 2020.
If Saint Anselm had closed its campus for a full semester, students might have taken a semester off, or even transferred. Administrators also were keenly aware of the way students' experience and safety could impact the institution, at a time when small colleges are struggling financially.
Worries about institutions' stability promise to last long after the pandemic. Nicole Heimarck, director of the New Hampshire Alliance for College and Career Readiness, noted during a recent roundtable on higher education that the number of high school students in the state dropped 14% from 2009 to 2019. Fewer than 60% enroll in college or community college, she said.
Longer term, the picture is bleak. During the same roundtable, Brian Prescott, vice president of the National Center For Higher Education Management Systems, predicted an "enrollment cliff" by 2026.
Bringing students back was important for Saint Anselm, but in the spring of 2020, it seemed far-fetched. When the rapid-test machine came up, plans started clicking into place.
"Initially, we had to take a big gulp, because we saw what it was going to cost us," Favazza said. "If we believe this is a critical strategy to bring students back, let's do it."
Over the school year, Saint Anselm performed more than 32,000 tests on its 2,000 students and the 700 faculty and staff who work on campus. All students got tested when they arrived on campus and were screened through the year. The NCAA required students competing in spring sports to be tested three times a week, Favazza said.
Lower-tech measures, like a "community covenant" with penalties for breaking COVID protocols and good old mask-wearing and social-distancing, helped Saint Anselm stay open.
For students who tested positive or who were in contact with a positive case, the college converted offices into temporary quarantine quarters — including a few rooms on the top floor of Alumni Hall that once housed the monks of Saint Anselm Abbey.
Like other colleges that had students on campus, Saint Anselm sent students home after Thanksgiving and held online classes until February. Cases had been low in the fall, but by the late winter, the virus was surging.
"We didn't know if we could contain it. They were coming from all directions," Favazza said. With more cases and colder weather keeping people inside, the mitigation measures that worked in the fall were less effective by March. Saint Anselm made the decision to send all its students home for a few weeks around Easter.
But as vaccination took hold and cases dropped, students were able to return. In-person commencement ceremonies for the class of 2021 and the class of 2020 looked almost normal — and helped cement students' bond to their alma mater.
Building community online
While the online college experience cannot replicate campus life, Sage said Southern New Hampshire University tried to bring as much of the small-scale human interaction online as possible.
Relationships are at the heart of the campus experience, Sage said. The university has a platform that lets students talk to each other online, and Sage said orientation for the fall of 2021 will be remote. Faculty especially worked to maintain regular one-on-one meetings with their students.
Sage said she thought holding office hours online might persist post-pandemic, since it is much more convenient for commuter students.
"I think SNHU has been ahead of the game in many ways when it comes to the online education world," Sage said. By the spring, she said, she thought on-campus students were seeing the benefits of online classes.
The SNHU campus will be open in the fall, she said, but students will have the option to take online classes. She expects many will.
"It was trial by fire. You had to really quickly learn how to adapt," Sage said.
Those adaptations aren't going anywhere. While students are clamoring to get back normal on campuses this fall, the pandemic's impact will be felt on colleges for a long time.
