Connection: Faculty Meet Two Crises Head-On
By Rebecca GoldfineFaculty leaned into that shift online and learned from it, but it was not a shift that anyone expected or wanted. As the days ticked by in June, it became clear that, although everyone had hoped that all students would be back in the fall, that simply couldn’t happen. The Continuity in Teaching and Learning Group had been convened months prior and had worked hard all spring and into the first part of the summer to research how best to tackle another remote semester. Just as they concluded their work, it was announced that teaching for the semester would be almost completely remote, but now faculty had data and recommendations and advice to follow.
Nearly simultaneously came attention to a second pandemic, one that many knew had been there all along: pervasive, systemic, and profoundly destructive racism in America. Faculty are responding to the challenges of this historic confluence with creativity and energy, rooted in pedagogy and propelled by the deep sense of duty they feel to their students and to this moment.
“Our faculty really rose to the occasion and understood that this was an opportunity for all of them to collaborate, to share ideas, to draw on our expert staff, and to build long-term best practices in teaching to deliver courses that achieve our goals of equity and accessibility.â€
—Elizabeth Pritchard, associate dean for academic affairs and associate professor of religion
Faculty stretched themselves this summer to adopt new technologies and new strategies for teaching online. At the same time, many also reconfigured their courses to include a more pronounced anti-racism focus. While some introduced new books, new writers, or new sessions into their syllabi, others responded by designing new courses to specifically address anti-racism in their field.
“One of the things I’m going to be doing on my sabbatical this year is creating a new course that is centered on this material,” said Eric Chown, Sarah and James ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Professor of Digital and Computational Studies. “If you’re going to talk about things of a digital online nature, then you have to talk about the hate online, you have to talk about the racism online, and you have to talk about why it’s happening and what sorts of things we can do about it.”
Lecturer in English Meredith McCarroll chose a new book to use in her first-year writing seminar on whiteness—How to Be an Anti-Racist, by Ibram X. Kendi—because she thought it would give students an intellectual and practical grounding in the subject. “The book gives us really concrete language on what anti-racism means in practice, and how to think about structures of racism in concrete ways,” she said.
As faculty adapt to unique and challenging circumstances and to pressing social issues, they are being supported at every turn by ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ staff. In particular, they’re receiving technological and pedagogical guidance from a group called BOLT, or ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Online Learning and Teaching. Led by Pritchard and made up of faculty and staff from academic affairs, the library, information technology, and communications, BOLT was “born from the desire to make sure faculty had everything they needed to be successful in the fall,” as BOLT Operational Lead Themba Flowers put it. He likened the College right now to a nimble start-up requiring its team to learn something new every day.
“As we go online, we have to think about how do we build community, how do we do it intentionally, and how do we welcome people in?”
—Professor Madeleine Msall
Through July and August, BOLT organized a slate of conferences, seminars, and weekly consultations with instructional designers. By summer’s end, 86 percent of faculty had attended at least one BOLT offering, with most attending many more. Another thirty-five lab instructors, departmental coordinators, curators, and academic staff also participated in trainings.
Additionally, many departments organized book reads among their faculty members to start discussing how to integrate anti-racism into their classes. Other professors took advantage of a campuswide reading of Me and White Supremacy, organized by the Office of Inclusion and Diversity in Student Affairs.
One of the outcomes of these twin crises, many have observed, is that faculty are expanding their definition of the common good and working harder to make their classes inclusive. This may be due in part to what lies at the root of both online teaching and anti-racism education: both require a sense of community and connection to be successful.
“The pandemic circumstances are terrible, but it’s a moment in which we are being required to be creative about what we do,” Professor of Physics Madeleine Msall said. “As we go online, we have to think about how do we build community, how do we do it intentionally, and how do we welcome people in?”
Pritchard noted that BOLT encouraged faculty this summer to think about ways to develop online communities. “Today’s technology is good at facilitating communication, but the most effective and long-lasting learning is social,” she said. “Communication must entail a feeling of connection and community. It must reflect responsiveness to each and every student, a sense of our shared humanity, a sense of purpose, and a sense of the common good.
“And technology per se doesn’t do that,” she continued. “So professors had to intentionally build into their virtual interactions that sense of humanity and sense of purpose. Faculty at ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ are really good at doing that in person, but I think they had to think carefully how they do that online.”
