Challenges and Opportunities

March 04, 2021

One year ago, on the evening of February 27, I provided the welcome at a student organized event at my previous institution titled "Black History Matters." As I walked home after the event, I kept thinking how that was the perfect way to end my time as president there, and now it was time to shift my focus to my new role at Southern Illinois University, which was very exciting. I got up early the next morning and as I packed our moving truck and my wife Laura and I drove it to Illinois, I wondered about the challenges that lie ahead.

We attended a dinner that Saturday for the SIUC AGR fraternity and spent a great evening talking with students, alumni, faculty, and staff. It seemed like during that next week, we never stopped. We spent a couple of days in Carbondale, a couple of days in Edwardsville, and then the weekend at the MVC tournament in St. Louis, before Laura went back to South Carolina and I headed to Springfield to tour the School of Medicine. My excitement about my new role continued to grow throughout that week and half.

At that time, discussions about COVID-19 were constantly in the background, but it had not yet impacted us. Then, in just a couple of days, everything changed. The gravity of what we were facing as a nation and as a university system became clear. It was then that our campuses decided to conduct classes virtually for the remainder of the semester and move most of our employees to work remotely. For the next seven weeks, with my family still living in South Carolina, I was almost completely isolated and rarely saw another human being in person. That contrast, between the non-stop human interaction I had when I arrived, which had been my norm for many years, and what I experienced for those fifty days made that time feel even stranger. As things got better and my human contact increased, it became clear how many of the plans I had for taking advantage of my time living in Carbondale and Edwardsville had to be significantly reduced or eliminated altogether.

However, I also recognized that I was incredibly fortunate both then and throughout this last year. First and foremost, my family was healthy and safe and we had what we needed. I know that was not the case for everyone. I mourned for those we lost, both those I knew personally and those I did not. A loss of over half million people in the United States alone is still very hard to process. In addition, I certainly sympathized with so many more who were negatively impacted in other ways. Finally, I was consistently reminded about the need to be understanding and supportive as members of our community faced increased challenges in their homes and lives.

Second, I had a great job and was surrounded by so many impressive people who were doing what was necessary to get us through this extraordinarily difficult period. I felt blessed to be here, even if being here was not what I had envisioned. And there were so many excellent examples of people within the SIU community being flexible and innovative in ways to support our students, our communities, and our institutions. I would start listing them, but the list would become incredibly long very fast and I would hate to leave one of them out.

As I reflect on my year, I am not sure I did anything particularly innovative, but I did learn to be more flexible. For example, I told people in March that I would not hire someone for a senior executive position unless I could first meet them in person. Then, I did it twice and felt great about both decisions. Of course, I could not have done this if others were not willing to support and actively participate in virtual interviews, so I did not do it alone. Before August, I had never taught an online or hybrid class and would always tell anyone who would listen that there was nothing better than being in a university classroom. Now, I have taught online twice and am scheduled to teach online again next academic year. While I will miss it, I realize I may never teach in a classroom again and I have become comfortable with that as well. However, particularly given my rather mediocre tech skills, I could not have done that either if it was not for people who have been helping me with learning to be a good online instructor. So, I learned I can be more flexible than I thought I could, but like almost all of us, I could not do it alone.

And that's just a miniscule look at what this past year was like, but as we now look to the future, particularly as we are developing our SIU System strategic plan, I have been thinking a lot about what we have learned and come to understand better over the last twelve months.

We have a lot of talent and expertise within our university system. Whether it was making decisions about the 2020-21 academic year or helping communities in our region, I have been amazed how easy it has been to find someone who both had the necessary expertise and the willingness to do whatever they could to help. We need to continue to find better ways to utilize this talent and expertise when we are past the current crisis.

While dealing with the pandemic absorbed much of our focus and attention, we were able to move forward on initiatives that are important for our future. This includes new initiatives related to community impact, rural health, antiracism, diversity, equity, and inclusion, student recruitment, and many others. While there is a still a long way to go, our ability to make progress in these areas, even during a period of crisis, will better prepare us for the future.

In part because we did not have another option, we all found that we can be more flexible about how we do our work as it is not likely we will ever go completely back to our previous way of doing things. From both my own experience and from talking with others at SIU, many of us have found new ways to do some things that will help us to be better in the future. As we implement our strategic plan, we will need to consider how to take advantage of what we have learned to improve the experience for our students, faculty/staff and many others.

That being said, we all desire to return to many aspects of our previous normal as soon as it is safe to do so. I miss the in-person human interaction and I simply need much more of that in my life than I have had in the last year. I know I am not alone because I hear this very same thing from all of the stakeholders at SIU and even from my two children, who are looking forward to having their college experience being much closer to Fall 2019 as soon as possible. And let's face it, there are many classes and activities that are simply much better in person, so we will certainly not be changing everything to a new way of operating.

And, finally, this year was another reminder of the importance of working together. I often talk about looking for leaders who are natural collaborators and that was never more important than these past long months. There is nothing I was able to do in the last year that I could have done alone. While I would say this has always been true, during a period of crisis and uncertainty when we all had to deal with so many things with which we had little or no prior experience, our reliance on each other became even greater.

The challenges we face in higher education in the next decade will not go away after we move past this pandemic. I think we all know this mixture of old and new ways of doing things is going to be our new normal moving forward. As a university system, I personally believe our chances to successfully navigate through this upcoming decade will depend very much on what we have learned this past year, on our ability to collaborate, to be flexible, to maximize the talent and resources around us, and to realize the confidence that comes out of weathering a crisis. These are the virtues that will be woven into the fabric of our strategic plan. I believe that when each of those threads are brought together, we will truly be successful in achieving the goals we have for the SIU System. I am excited about this opportunity and I look forward to working on this and so many things with our faculty, staff and students. I hope you are too.

Categories: All Categories, Challenges and Opportunities, COVID