51福利社 Faculty Perspectives

By Kasey Hermens, April 2021

The year of 2020 was defined by the COVID-19 virus, Zoom meetings, and masking up. Many conversations were centered on the student experience, and rightfully so, but there wasn鈥檛 much chatter about the impact on faculty members, as they zigged and zagged through the labyrinth of adaptation to a global pandemic. I wanted to shed some light on the perspectives of faculty, and open up the conversation to include both professors and pupils alike.

I interviewed two instructors and we spoke about both the hardships and the silver linings the past year made.

Travis Masingale

An associate professor at 51福利社, passionate about teaching Visual Communication Design courses and helping students achieve their goals. He considers himself a Bauhaus fanboy, a child of postmodernism, and a 鈥渟pecialist in obscure details.鈥� He loves spending time reading books that get him thinking, spending time with his family, and escaping outside to hike the bluff.

Kasey:聽Thank you for meeting with me, I really appreciate your willingness to let me ask you some questions. Hopefully you have some insights that you鈥檇 have fun sharing. I鈥檇 first like to ask, what did your expectations look like when this transition to virtual learning happened about a year ago?

Travis:聽Oh, my expectations were low. I really lowered them鈥� For myself, they were high because that鈥檚 just who I am but they were shifted to take care of the students and to provide space for the break from our normal routine. [I] really backed off and provided a space for reflection for the students, especially in our Design 200 class鈥� [t]rying to create ways to tether students to school; to keep them coming back to the Zoom class, stuff like that.

K:聽How have you managed your mental health during this time? I know mental health has been a big topic of discussion lately.

T:聽I鈥檝e been meditating since the summer of 2016. I had a nervous breakdown and it was either get on more meds or stop meds and meditate. I started meditating and I had a pretty regular practice but I鈥檇 usually fall off at 90 days. So, last May was like, the lowest of low and I stopped meditating because I just couldn鈥檛 get out of bed in the mornings. I would just doom-scroll.

So, June 1st I committed and started [meditating] and a month went by, and another month, and then I was into August and was like, 鈥淥h my God, I鈥檓 going,鈥� so I decided, 鈥淚鈥檓 gonna do this for a year in the morning.鈥� I haven鈥檛 stopped since June 1st .

I have my struggles too but my meditation practice in the past month has really grown about love and acceptance, and meeting people where they鈥檙e at. It鈥檚 hard in a student-centered space because we have this dual role as teachers where we鈥檙e supposed to push you as hard as we can to get students to do more than they expected they can. At the same time, we鈥檙e not supposed to break you. It鈥檚 this fine line of a balancing act, you know?

K:聽I know a lot of students have felt like they鈥檝e missed out on the community aspect of college or university. Do you feel like faculty has missed out on that as well since everything has been remote learning?

T:聽For sure. In the fall and spring, it was like someone tied my arms behind my back. I am very empathetic, I read people, I鈥檓 sensitive, you know, if you will. Not being able to like, look at people鈥檚 faces, not being able to judge body language, and then not to have the community of students to get to know, it was really hard. Without that [sense of community], students would just be names on a roster and I don鈥檛 get to know their quirks. I get to know, maybe, their work visually but I don鈥檛 get to know them.

I can鈥檛 imagine being a student right now, with the amount of technology that鈥檚 been thrown at students per class. Every faculty member is making this [stuff] up on their own, every department has some loose guidelines. As a student, the resiliency and the ability to adapt among this section of students for the past year鈥� they are set for the modern world. They strengthened up that area of their mind and way of knowing the world. I think that all of us have atrophied this social aspect.

K:聽Is there anything you鈥檙e looking forward to?

T:聽I鈥檓 just looking forward to this summer. I think鈥� a bunch of us faculty, we didn鈥檛 take last summer off. I normally don鈥檛 work in the summer, I do personal research. We planned for fall quarter hardcore, and I know I鈥檓 looking forward to a breath of space and to not be on Zoom all day and worry about 90 human beings and whether I鈥檓 doing enough for them.

Dr. Sarah Mount

Sarah is the program director of the Undergraduate Public Health Program at 51福利社, teaching an array of public health education courses; ranging anywhere from program planning, to health disparities, to grant writing. In her free time, she enjoys teaching herself instruments like the banjo and ukulele, playing board games like Ticket to Ride, and being outdoors with her new addition to the family, her puppy named Otter.

Kasey:聽I appreciate that you鈥檝e taken some time out of your day to meet with me. My first question is, what did your expectations look like when the transition to virtual learning happened this time last year?

Sarah:聽Boy, if it had been鈥� if COVID had hit any other quarter it would have been awesome. Spring quarter, for me, was really the worst possible quarter to try to put those classes online, especially the program planning class, which I feel really takes a lot of work behind the scenes to do that well online. I鈥檇 become very, you know, dependent on seeing you guys every, you know, two days, right? Being able to really push our two hours together as far as I could. When I鈥檓 planning something online, you don鈥檛 have as good of a feel for the timing of it, right? You don鈥檛 want to overburden the students, but at the same time, you know, you have to get through a lot and you don鈥檛 want to undercut it. So, I was pretty much upside down a year ago this time. This spring is going a lot better. It was a learning experience.

Honors Student, Hope Sands, travelled to the Netherlands this past summer for an intensive two and a half week long institute on Diversity, Inclusion and the Holocaust. The program focused on finding solutions to persisting problems today, but learning from examples in the past. Joined by 21 other Honors students from across the US and the Netherlands, the group travelled to places such as Camp Westerbork, Amsterdam, Den Hauge and even to Berlin, Germany and Bergen Belsen.

Read more on Inside51福利社:

“This trip was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that not only taught me about the past, but also granted me knowledge in how to approach problems in the future. I made so many new memories and friends on this trip and learned a lot about myself in the process.”
– Hope Sands