When Quinnipiac University students of the early 2020’s think back on their experience at the Hamden, Connecticut school, they will focus on how COVID-19 shaped their experience, from mask mandates to social distancing.
Looking ahead, however, they may turn their attention to how the pandemic affected their ability to learn and their teacher’s capacity to teach them skills needed to succeed after they graduate.
“When the school announced that masks were no longer required indoors, I would say most students and professors seemed to be excited,” said Devin Naidoo, a graduate student at Quinnipiac who has experienced college both with and without mask mandates. “It feels like everyone is way more open to converse and have face to face interaction, which is important for me at least.”
Has the learning for students gotten easier since the restrictions were dropped? Has it been easier for professors to interact with students since the restrictions were dropped? Both are very important questions when thinking about giving students the most beneficial college experience they can have. If professors cannot teach to the best of their ability, then is going to class worth the students’ time?
The restrictions, Naidoo said transformed previously energetic classrooms into “dreary” places where important questions were left unanswered as both students and professors struggled to engage.
“All the restrictions made it easier to be less focused because it was a dreary environment in the classroom all spaced out and faces covered, it felt like we were doing something wrong if we would get close to someone to talk,” Naidoo added jokingly.
College athletics likewise felt the hammer of COVID-19.
“It wasn’t what I expected my first college track and field season to be like,” said Quinnipiac sophomore Alyssa Romagnoli looking back on her first season as an NCAA Division I athlete.
College sports teams of all levels experienced new hurdles every day when they returned to campus.
To combat the spread of COVID-19, many schools began implementing the practice of contract tracing.
The way contract tracing works is if an athlete came in close contact with someone who recently tested positive for COVID-19, they would be put in quarantine for fourteen days, whether or not they show any symptoms of the disease. This results in no practice and certainly no field time for the athlete for a two-week period. If enough members of a team are quarantined at the same time, games are forced to be postponed or canceled.
Contact tracing ended up being a very controversial, and sometimes, a problematic solution.
“Every week when we would go get tested, we all held our breath until our results came back,” Romagnoli added. “If one person tested positive, then contract tracing would affect the whole team. I had to quarantine three times in one semester because one of my teammates tested positive even though my test came back negative.”
COVID-19 affected students, faculty and staff in different ways.
Professor Amy Paros, an assistant professor of management at Quinnipiac, said that the pandemic obviously changed her teaching experience, but she even has seen some benefits from this odd time.
“My experience changed as much as the students’ did,” said Paros.
Paros said the biggest concern as the pandemic deepened focused on access to students and students access to her for advising and extra help.
“My biggest concern was letting students know that we were still there, letting students know that for all the worldly concerns you guys had, we did too,” said Paros.
Ironically, Paros said she learned much about herself and the way she teaches because of COVID-19.
“I was lucky enough to have taught for years online prior to the pandemic, so from a technological standpoint, I was ahead,” said Paros. “The question for me was how do I keep the students engaged who haven’t gone through this before?”
As students seemed to be drifting away in her online lectures, Paros developed an idea to make the classes more personable and less like the drab online structure of Zoom and discussion boards.
“One of the things that I ended up doing every week was I took a video somewhere else, usually in my yard because many of us weren’t able to go places, and show the kids different perspectives and backgrounds which gave more of a personal touch for the students,” said Paros.
As students returned to campus in the fall of 2020, Paros faced a new challenge, making sure students felt comfortable attending in-person classes. If not, they could select the remote option.
When students returned, they found a strange new world of Zoom carts, classes emptied of half the seats to enforce social distancing, and signs reminding them where to sit, to wear their masks and to wash their hands.
“I let students decide if they prefer to always be on site or on zoom,” said Paros.” This way, everybody who wanted to be there every class period was able to come, and then I was able to create a system where people could sign up to come into class if they were in the pool of people that wanted to be there sometimes, but not every time.”
Despite the inconveniences of mask-wearing, social distancing and other restrictions, students did learn valuable lessons.
“The last point I would make is, we have found some outstanding gems of this new best practice,” said Paros. “Because of this pandemic, I was introduced to many different teaching styles and tools that I could use in order to be a more effective leader.”
With such an uncertain future during the pandemic, students seemed to cherish the fact that they are unique in having gone through COVID-19 while in college.
“We learned to not take a second of anything for granted,” stated Romagnoli. “The chance of having our season ripped away from us any second really made us appreciate everything from class, to social life, to sports that much more.”
Still, many find it difficult to overcome the sense that they missed out on the full experience of collegiate life.
“Overall, it took away a huge social aspect of our college experience,” Naidoo added. “Not only the large-scale social aspects like going out on weekends, but small scale aspects too such as not being able to see people’s faces around campus or having to sit far away from one another.”
Some students questioned whether Quinnipiac administrators went too far with the restrictions, asking whether the school sought to protect its public image rather than the health and safety of students.
“It was so obvious they were doing everything they could to save their public image,” said Naidoo.
With the COVID-19 regulations driving a wedge in between the students and administrators relationship, Quinnipiac said on its website that “supporting our health protocols and policies is the key to sustaining many of the in-person, on-campus activities and experiences we all enjoy” (https://www.qu.edu/health-wellness-and-safety/covid-19-resources/).
In summer 2021, students received an email from Quinnipiac Health and Safety stating that “We hope you’re having a relaxing summer. We look forward to seeing you back at Quinnipiac this fall as we plan for a safe return to so many facets of campus life that we enjoyed before the pandemic. We continue to review the most recent public health guidelines and recommendations on both the vaccine and COVID-19 virus. We also want to share our plans for the fall semester as well as the policies and expectations we’ll have in place for our university community. The policies below are effective beginning today, July 6, 2021.”
Quinnipiac planned to continue to replicate life before the pandemic as best they could, while keeping the community safe.
Whether that plan worked remains to be seen, but students will find out before anyone else as they seek to find jobs and satisfying careers as the pandemic recedes.