On the Front Lines of the University Community

Many have noted that this semester feels different from last academic year. Georgetown has liberalized masking requirements in classrooms and has resumed many of the convenings of outside speakers and groups. In large part, we are back to our pre-COVID practices, albeit with a keen eye to new variants and other public health threats.

While we’re all defining the new reality, the contrast to past months reminds us of what we’ve all experienced and how the Georgetown community made its way through to this point.

It is true that faculty and students, in mid-March, 2020, successfully navigated the fastest and largest change in operating procedures in the history of the university. It was painful for both. Faculty invested much more time in designing and delivering their instruction to the students. Students relocated to other locations, often in isolation of one another, and pursued their studies online. Most of the media coverage of this period has described that side of universities.

Less noted is the work of staff during these times. Their mobilization too often didn’t make the headlines of media treatment of higher education.

When many faculty and students were off-campus during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, many frontline staff were present. Our custodial teams were integral to move-out in March 2020 and continued to keep us safe with enhanced cleaning protocols when the majority of our community returned to campus. Staff from the offices of Residential Living, Maintenance, Environmental Health & Safety, and Transportation Management also ensures the campus was operational and safe for the residents and researchers that remained on-campus.

Academic staff, always key to supporting faculty and fielding student questions, invented new ways to communicate and distribute materials to their remote colleagues. They became experts in organizing Zoom meetings of work groups, creating internet-based question and answer protocols, documenting work group progress. Someone in most offices periodically came to campus to review delivered mail and keep the office in contact with its key stakeholders. Staff in CNDLS aided at least 1900 faculty in workshops and consultations throughout the period. In an effort to prepare for a new way of delivering our instruction, classroom technology throughout the campus was upgraded. UIS staff distributed laptops and devices to improve internet connectivity to faculty and students.

While residence halls were largely empty, our Capital Projects team moved at an unprecedented rate completing 10-years’ worth of residential renovations in a limited timeframe. We renovated Village C West and Village A, opened 500 First St for interdisciplinary collaboration, and began construction on 125 E St as the future home of the McCourt School of Policy just to name a few initiatives. During this time we also created an Office for Engineering and Utilities to help manage our Georgetown Energy Partnership, which has actively been completing projects including the LED light upgrade which is already making our campus brighter.

Other staff guarded the health of those on campus. When vaccines became available and vaccination mandates occurred, that staff designed and implemented completely novel protocols throughout the university. The public health staff provided individualized care for each positive case. Staff helped students to isolation rooms and delivered food to the rooms throughout the isolation. Staff conducted repeated check-ins on the status of the positive cases of all the community.

In sum, from March, 2020, onward, the faculty and students could not have completed their shared activities without all of these staff contributions to the university during the pandemic. The media coverage of these months largely missed this point, but we shouldn’t forget it.