BY BOB NOWLAN
One of the most egregious dimensions of outgoing University of Wisconsin system president Ray Cross’s May 7 “Blueprint for the University of Wisconsin System Beyond COVID-19”—which calls for a radical restructuring and effective elimination of the comprehensive dimension of the system’s eleven regional comprehensive universities, as well as an effective jettisoning of commitment to liberal arts education—is that this is not what UW students want or need. During the second half of this extraordinary spring semester, I have been in close touch with a vast number of students, most of whom I was currently teaching but also a great many from previous classes and my outreach on student mental health as the faculty advisor for the National Alliance on Mental Illness at UW-Eau Claire. Overwhelmingly, students greatly prefer in-person classes and the holistic on-campus experience. At least 95 percent of students with whom I have been in contact passionately favor transitioning back to campus for the fall.
For a great many students, the forced all-online approach to teaching and learning paled drastically in comparison to what they experienced in person, prior to the conversion to all-online classes. Over and over again students shared how difficult it is to learn this way, to feel and continue to be motivated, and how much learning they are missing because of the myriad forms of educational experiences on campus, in and outside of class. Try as we do, these interactions simply cannot be matched online. Students and faculty—even those of us who have long prized creative and interactive in-person classes—found this all-online teaching and learning experience has vastly enhanced our appreciation for the value of in-person classes and on-campus teaching and learning experiences.
A considerable number of students have shared with me they frankly “hate” this mode of teaching and learning and are strongly inclined not to return to UW-Eau Claire if it continues. I have striven to convince them we all share a desire to return to in-person classes and campus as soon as possible. I have dissuaded multiple students from transferring by convincing them their experience of UW-Eau Claire that has been negatively impacted by this all-online half-semester is not UW-Eau Claire—it is the pandemic. Every other institution to which they might transfer has had to make the same unpalatable changes. The students and the many faculty with whom I am in touch find all-online classes, especially under present circumstances, demand grueling work yet are simultaneously far less rewarding, despite us trying heroically to make these experiences the best they can be.
Just two weeks before the end of the semester a student in one of my classes who had been outstanding—exceptionally intellectually and academically engaged and an extremely compassionate and self-critical young man—wrote that he had to step away from doing classwork for an indefinite period because he was experiencing a severe crisis in his mental health. He told me he was in a safe place and had moved out of his home with his parents, which had helped, but that he was struggling quite badly and had suffered grave burnout from all-online class work. As I do in all too many of these situations, I did everything I could to convey how deeply I was concerned about and appreciated him, as a human being and my student, and that I wanted him to keep in touch.
Prior to the pandemic, students sharing serious mental health challenges with me had rapidly accelerated over the course of the last decade. The extent of this has further skyrocketed during the second half of the semester. While the pandemic itself and the economic depression it has caused are undoubtedly chiefly responsible, the conversion to all-online classes has brutally exacerbated so many students’ mental health challenges. For faculty, the conversion seriously undermined how well we could be fully helpfully empathetic, despite working exceedingly hard to try to do so.
Students do not want more distance. They do not want more online classes. They do not want fewer direct points of contact and immediate helpful conveyors of critical campus services on campus. They do not want fewer choices and limited opportunities. They want a genuine, caring, substantive community—a community committed to empathy and solidarity. They want far less alienation in their lives, not far more. Students value UW’s lived commitment, at the core of our mission statement, toward fostering in one another creativity, critical insight, empathy, and intellectual courage. This requires we continue a comprehensive liberal arts university: intensively and extensively engaged in-person with our students’ lives and their well-being, with all of their hopes and fears, and with all of their dreams and aspirations.
In order to thrive, students depend on everyone with whom they routinely interact in living and working on campus—and that includes all of the representatives of the essential services President Cross proposes to centralize in Madison. We as faculty are only able to continue to give above and beyond as we do because of the help of our immediate colleagues here at UW-Eau Claire. It was not Canvas administrators in Madison who made the difference for those of us rushing to convert classes never intended for all-online delivery but rather members of our IT staff right here at UW-Eau Claire. Without their crucial assistance and incredible dedication, to their colleagues and to our students, so many classes would have crashed and burned rather than continued to provide the semblance of what we aspire to offer.
Guest blogger Bob Nowlan is professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, vice-president of the United Faculty and Academic Staff of UW-Eau Claire, AFT Local 6481, an AAUP at-large member in the AAUP Wisconsin conference, and faculty advisor of UW-Eau Claire Progressive Students and Alumni and the National Alliance on Mental Illness at UW-Eau Claire.
First, “HI” to Bob Nowlan, with whom I have a history from long-ago interactions about the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
Regarding this issue, I have had considerable (12+years) experience teaching on-line courses and have found ways to make them the near-equivalent of in-person classes. (There are, of course, MANY courses that do not lend themselves to easy conversion, especially if specialized facilities/equipment are involved and when faculty interaction is crucial (i.e., performing arts) beyond lecturing and leading discussion.
In some cases, remote instruction is actually preferable — if done well. For instance, many of my on-line grad students work, have families, or have other responsibilities that prevent them from moving to a physical university setting in order to reap the benefits of in-person instruction and frat/sorority parties. 🙂 With so much information on-line these days, including virtual libraries, streaming instructional videos, etc., a diligent student can find MOST (but certainly not ALL) resources available for study and learning.
That said, I still believe that in-person teaching and learning is preferable, and one aspect highlighted by Bob Nowlan is significant: the mental health factor (for both students and faculty members). The isolation of remote education is bound to have an impact on some participants, as does the overall lockdown conditions of the Plague. My most recent academic affiliation, Hofstra University, has elected to start the Fall 2020 semester in the opposite way from UW, Eau Claire: It will open a week early as an in-person university, skip Fall break, and conclude campus learning after Thanksgiving. After that, on-line instruction will take over.
While both Hofstra and UW are probably basing their respective schedules on financial (i.e., tuition and “yield” factors), there are certainly pro- and con- arguments about when and how to begin a Fall term, especially since the future path of the virus is still somewhat uncertain. One might say that an early return to in-person classes puts everyone at risk of contagion, or that remote instruction severely diminishes students’ chances to learn. Those choices are, as the old cliche goes, “beyond my pay grade.”
However, they are also beyond the pay grade of students, whose input should be considered but, in my opinion, not be the sole arbiter of what happens in a confounding situation. Thus, while Bob Nowlan’s unofficial survey may demonstrate that “Overwhelmingly, students greatly prefer in-person classes and the holistic on-campus experience. At least 95 percent of students with whom I have been in contact passionately favor transitioning back to campus for the fall,” their preference as important stakeholders may not be fully informed by all the available facts and factors that would make for an informed judgment — e.g., the role of older faculty and students, who might be most vulnerable to acquiring or spreading the pandemic; university costs vs. financial intake; etc. As one of my mentors once said, “Students are temporary; faculty and facilities are forever.”