A President and Provost on Plans for the Fall
15 Jun 2020 · 45 min
In this Future You episode recorded June 15, 2020, hosts Michael Horn and Jeff Salingo interview Lenore Rodicio, Provost and Executive Vice President of Miami Dade College (MDC), and Farnam Jahani, President of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). The conversation centers on how two very different higher‑education institutions are planning for the fall semester amid the COVID‑19 pandemic. Lenore describes MDC’s challenges as a large, multi‑campus community college serving 120,000 predominantly low‑income students. She explains how the college quickly identified device and broadband gaps, distributed roughly 2,000 laptops, partnered with internet providers, and instituted a two‑week hiatus to prepare faculty and students for remote learning. She outlines a phased academic calendar, the shift of the summer session to June 1, and the development of multiple fall scenarios—including fully remote, hybrid rotation schedules, and selective in‑person labs for programs that do not translate well online. Decision‑making is tied to Florida’s three‑phase reopening plan, the State Board of Education meeting in mid‑July, and ongoing monitoring of local case trends. Lenore also highlights weekly meetings with the faculty‑union leadership to protect vulnerable staff and incorporate their concerns. Farnam discusses CMU’s response, noting that within three days the university moved 4,900 course sections online and supported 400 residential students who remained on campus. He outlines a hybrid fall model that will prioritize small‑class, in‑person instruction while delivering large lectures remotely, extend class‑change intervals, enforce masking, distancing, testing, and contact‑tracing, and stagger the return of research activities. He emphasizes CMU’s long‑standing investment in the science of learning: active‑learning design, lower‑stakes frequent assessments, teaching liaisons linked to a Technology‑Enhanced Learning Group, and data‑driven iterative improvement. He also describes how much of CMU’s research pivoted to pandemic‑related work (e.g., an ultrasound‑based contact‑tracing app, low‑cost ventilator design, PPE production, Covidcast forecasting) and how research funding streams have remained stable. The episode closes with a forward‑looking discussion on how COVID‑19 is accelerating pre‑existing higher‑education trends—access, affordability, reliance on international students, and the growing role of universities in regional innovation ecosystems—and how technology will shift from a supporting role to a driver of pedagogy. Both guests agree that the pandemic will compress a decade‑long transformation into a few years, reshaping instruction, research, and the business of higher education. Key takeaways: Rapid digital‑equity interventions (device distribution, broadband partnerships) are critical for community‑college students. Phased calendars and scenario planning (remote, hybrid, selective in‑person) allow institutions to adapt to evolving public‑health guidance. Faculty‑union engagement and protection of vulnerable staff are essential for operational continuity. Hybrid models can combine small‑class, on‑campus learning with remote delivery of large lectures, supported by testing and contact‑tracing. Learning‑science principles (active learning, frequent low‑stakes assessments, technology‑enhanced support) are being embedded into post‑pandemic pedagogy. Research can continue remotely for many disciplines, but labs and pandemic‑response projects (contact‑tracing apps, PPE, forecasting tools) illustrate how universities can contribute to societal needs. COVID‑19 is a catalyst that will accelerate long‑term higher‑education transformation, making technology a driver of pedagogy and prompting a re‑engineering of the entire university business model.
Chapters
This is Future youe with Jeff Salingo and Michael Horn.
Welcome to our latest episode of Future youe. I'm Michael Horne, coming to you from my home in Massachusetts, where I'm sheltered in place for week 10 or 11 now and thrilled to be with my co host, Jeff Salengo.
Michael, it's great to be with you. I'm coming from my home in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. as we continue this remote hosting of Future youe at the end of this season. One day, Michael, I'm hoping that we'll see each other in real life again. And I think colleges and universities are saying the same thing about their faculty, students and staff as well. When might we see each other in real life? And in recent weeks, we've been seeing campuses announce their plans for the fall. Some, like Cal State, say they're just going online. Others, like Notre Dame, are coalescing around this idea of starting on time or early on campus and then wrapping up by Thanksgiving in person. My own alma mater, where I'm on the board, has decided to start later in October, reducing or eliminating breaks in order to give more time for the campus and the state of New York, which we know has been hit pretty hard by COVID 19. Time to get ready. We want to focus today's episode on all these scenarios and how institutions have gone about their planning. We have two leaders with us from very different campuses today, both from institutions in big cities, both but one with more of a commuter population and the other more residential. That's going to be Carnegie Mellon, and we'll be joined by its president later on.
But first up, we get to welcome Lenore Rodisio, provost and executive vice president of Miami Dade College. Lenore has been with Miami Dade since 2002, when she started as an adjunct professor of chemistry. And welcome, Lenore, to Future U.
Thank you. Good to be here.
Michael and Jeff, we're thrilled to have you. And much of the national response on press coverage of higher education obviously has been around the impact on residential campuses. But we all know that a major, major block of students now in higher ed are not that stereotypical, if you will, residential student, but instead adults going to school, and they're often going to school part time. And at your college, you might not have the same housing issues on campus to deal with that some of the residential campuses are thinking through right now. But I'm curious, what are some of the unique issues that you're weighing in a system with eight campuses throughout Miami Dade county with 120,000 students.
So the magnitude of the number of students that we serve in and of itself is a challenge for us. And that is compounded by the situation in which most of these students live. So when you look at those 120,000 students, the great majority of our students, over 65% of them, are actually low income students and 44% of them live below the poverty line. So when we suddenly cease classes for this population of students, it not only put a stop to their educational plans and really throws a wrench into their career goals, but it also creates some real situations in terms of the continuation of their studies in a remote setting, because many of them just do not have the inherent capacity to do that. And that was one of the big things that we struggled with early on, was how to make sure that our students were ready for this transition to remote learning.
What were some of those big issues that you saw in particular of helping them transition then? What did that look like, given, as you noted, all of these other extraneous situations? Hitting them all at once, frankly.
So when we started to see in March that there was a move to begin to put in tighter restrictions and start to really think about the wisdom of having all of these students in classes with this emerging pandemic, at that time, we started to make our preparations behind the scenes to transition to remote learning. One of the things that we did early on was to decide to take a two week hiatus from classes so that we could prepare both faculty and students for the transition. So on the student side, there were a couple of things that we needed to make sure became apparent. One was, do they have the devices at home in order to be able to make this transition? And number two was, do they have the Internet connections available to be able to connect those devices and connect with their faculty? And so on the device side, we very quickly worked with a number of our local partners to identify devices that we could quickly acquire and bring in to help those students, and created distributions on our two largest campuses to make sure that we could get those out to the students and where needed, actually couriered some of these over to our students, and then worked with many of the Internet providers that were offering free services to help get our students connected. So at the end of the day, we distributed close to 2,000 devices for our students and helped them to make those connections with the Internet service provider so that they could be prepared for this transition.
So, Lenore, you've also moved to remote learning for the summer, I think. Right. And so can you walk us through the various scenarios now? You're Thinking about for the fall, you know, all the learnings that you've done from the spring and the summer, and what are some of the upsides and also the downsides of some of the plans that you're working through come fall.
So we've taken a very phased approach to this, and it's been different as we've gone through the different semesters. So for the spring, the conversation really was around, how do we finish out these last four weeks of the term and just get those students completing their courses, completing their degrees. For those that were set to graduate, moving into the summer, it was okay. Now we have to transition an entire semester online. But given that enrollment is typically lower in the summer, it's not as heavy a lift as it is during the major fall and spring semesters. So now looking to the fall, we're trying to figure out what are the scenarios and how do we prepare for those. So one of the decisions that we made early on was to shift our academic calendar. So our summer session actually started yesterday when it was scheduled to start on May 4th. So we pushed it out by a month, started out June 1st. That gave us time to train faculty. It gave us time to build the courses that weren't already available on our learning management system, get those uploaded, and get the faculty and students again prepared for this transition. Now, looking to fall, we're looking at what are the various scenarios. So if we were to remain completely remote, we're trying to figure out what additional courses we have to build out that weren't already built out in the spring and the summer, if there is going to be the possibility of returning in some capacity back to campus. What we have the academic deans and the chairpersons looking at now is what are those courses that are really clunky to run in a remote environment, thinking of things like science laboratories, many of our workforce programs, so that we can prioritize those as the first round that we will bring in face to face. And then the last thing that we're looking at is how do we make use of hybrid or blended courses in a different way that we have in the past to be able to create rotation schedules where students are on campus on certain days, with faculty in a limited capacity, with social distancing on campus, and then the remainder of the learning remains remote. So we're running through those various scenarios right now so that we can prepare for the fall, which we've also pushed out, and students aren't expected back on campus until September 1st. So that gives us a couple of extra weeks as well to get everything prepared.
And when do you think you'll be making some of those decisions? Right. What are some of the events? Are there certain events or conditions or milestones that you're trying to hit to try to say, okay, what are we have to tell people it's going to be this way by August 1st, or what are some of the things you're thinking about in terms of those scenarios?
So our state and county, I think like many across the nation, have developed a three phased approach for reopening. And we are closely monitoring that and being a little bit more conservative on our phased reopening. So whereas the state and the county started their phase one a few weeks ago, we started ours on Monday. And so we're a little bit behind on that, trying to again, be conservative, keeping everybody's health and safety in mind, trying to alleviate concerns. So that's number one, is looking at what the state and county are doing, what are the shelter in place orders looking at. But we're also in very close conversations with the State Board of Education and the Florida College system, so that we are also doing our reopening in concert with what's going on across the 28 colleges in the state. It's a little bit different here in Miami Dade county because of course, we are a larger population center and with that come a larger number of cases. And so that's why we're being a little more conservative. But that's another set of triggers as well. And then of course, monitoring the cases here in the county and whether or not they're following the same progress as the rest of the state. So right now, our timeline for making a decision for the fall is going to be in early at the latest mid July. There's a State Board of Education meeting in that timeframe at which the chancellor for the Florida College System is planning to announce what the decisions are for the 28 colleges. And by then we will have decided how we're going to run our fall semester. And then that will also give us about a month and a half to make those final preparations.
So you actually just alluded to something that I think is interesting in those preparations and making those decisions, which is that we're hearing a lot in the media about the student side of this equation, but less about faculty members and community members. Obviously, as a community college, you're nestled in the community. It's not an enclosed environment. You have a lot of adults of varying ages, of varying health care conditions interfacing with students and so forth. How does that play into things as you start to develop these plans.
So one of the things that we learned early on, especially when dealing with this population where you have adults, both on the student side as well as on the faculty side, we have a large number of faculty and employees who are also fall under the vulnerable individuals category during this uncertain time. And so making sure that we have protections in place in particular for those individuals has. Has been important from day one. But communication has been key. So one of the things that I began to do when we first started to make plans was to schedule weekly meetings with the leadership in our faculty union. And those have been extremely helpful conversations because we are able to hear from an administrative standpoint what the concerns are from this very important population of employees. They are the ones that keep the college running, that are. That are going to be able to make this successful. And so hearing what their concerns are early so that we can address those and make sure that they're built into our plans and at the same time, using them, the sounding boards, as we develop the different plans for reopening and or for remaining remote, we hear what the concerns and the anxieties are, and we're able to communicate through those as we go through each step in this process.
So, Lenore, I think we want to look beyond the fall now or just beyond the opening side of this scenario planning and more longer term through next year and the year after. And you know, history shows that enrollment in community colleges, because I know you also have a decent amount of bachelor's programs there as well. But the enrollment in community colleges tends to increase in an economic downturn. Are you planning for that to happen again, or is there any sense that this time might be different?
It's a little hard to tell. And I think a lot of it is going to have to do with whether we remain remote or whether we're able to begin to open up the campuses as well. I will tell you that the early signs are that we are going to see an increase. So going into the fall semester and the spring of the academic year that we're in now, we have seen about a 4% decrease in our enrollment. But going into the summer session, we're seeing that our enrollment is essentially flat compared to last year, when we would have expected a decline because of the decline in fall and spring. That's typically the pattern. So we're seeing that there is a little bit of an uptick. We're seeing students take a lot more credits than they've been taking traditionally, which is a sign that There is a need and a want to continue their studies. We also saw a lower number of withdrawals in the spring than we typically see in prior years. So we're seeing a trend towards an increase in enrollment in. We're also preparing for it by increasing the number of courses and programs that we offer in high demand areas even while we're in this economic downturn. So areas like IT, business analytics, child care, healthcare, and have created a set of new programs that are funded through private scholarships. Our kickstart programs that allow students to complete college credit certificates in two semesters, provide scholarships as well as stipends to help those students remain enrolled full time and complete those degrees and get out back into the workforce.
You mentioned these high demand programs and I'm kind of curious about that because I'm hearing this a lot from college officials all across the country as they're trying to get a sense of what will the employment market look like when we get to the other side of this pandemic. Are you going, I know it's really hard in these very early days, but are you trying to figure out like what is the, in terms of academic planning, what the, what the particular programs or type of credentials that might be really needed after, after this pandemic?
We are. So we already have a structure whereby we encourage industry to participate with us in curriculum development and the programs that we prop up. We have advisory committees for all of our workforce programs. And so one of the things that we were hearing over the summer is that there was going to be an increased need for folks in the IT area. Absolutely. In health care and of course in some of the childcare areas as well. So the first thing that we did over the summer was actually to prop up a set of non credit course offerings to see what the demand was. And as soon as we opened those up, they filled within a week and realized that there was a lot of demand for those. And so based on that, we developed this kickstart program which are similar programs. But now on the college credit side, another program that sold out the moment that we opened it within 24 hours was a new contact tracing program that we offered. And so of course, based on the current pandemic, as well as knowing that this will recur at some point, even if it's with the, with the flu, that is going to be an important field as well and one that we can easily train folks for. And so we offered one program last week. We're getting ready to offer another set and are translating it as well into Spanish. And Creole to better serve the community as well. So we're in constant contact with community leaders and industry leaders to see what, what is it that our community needs to get back on its feet and what role can we play as an educational institution in that conversation?
Lenore, I just want to ask you very quickly before we close out, you mentioned non credit. I've always heard from other institutions when we talk about noncredit. Well, employers don't want it, so we're not going to offer it. What are you hearing from your employers about noncredit?
So what we hear from the employers is that for individuals who already have a degree or who are trying to retool and retrain and acquire new skills, that the non credit training is important. And that was actually the name of the program was upskill. So how do we help to upskill existing employees in industries and companies who need to get in tune with the latest technology, with the latest trends? And that really has been our focus. The other thing that we've done is create really clear tie ins between those non credit programs to our credit programs, especially where industry certifications are available. We work with our faculty to crosswalk those into the college credit programs and give individuals the opportunity to continue their degree at a later time if that's what they decide to do.
That makes a ton of sense. And Lenore, super appreciate you coming on in these challenging times and joining us today. Thank you again.
Thank you both.
And we'll be right back on Future youe. This episode of Future youe was made
possible with support from the Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership. The Academy is a partnership between Arizona State University and Georgetown University and is the premier training ground for those who aspire to senior leadership positions in higher education and those who want to lead organizational change at colleges and universities in the future.
And welcome back to Future youe. The challenges facing Miami Dade that we just heard about now I think are different than a residential research campus. So let's bring in the president, of course, Carnegie Mellon, to discuss some of those issues in terms of planning. And we're really pleased to welcome to the show Farnam Jaharnian to the broadcast today. Farnam, computer scientist by training, was appointed president in 2018 after serving as interim president and before that as provost at the Pittsburgh Institution. So he knows the institution well, having been there since 2014. Farnam, welcome to the show and it's good to see you again.
Well, thank you very much for inviting me to be with you. It's good to be with you. And Michael, I Hope you and your loved ones are doing well, staying safe and keeping your sanity throughout this unprecedented time.
Yeah, well, the sanity part might be the toughest part, I think, for probably most of us. But so far I've been reading some of your communication to the community. Like I have many other presidents, and there clearly isn't a playbook for a crisis like this among your counterparts. I think some presidents like you are communicating more often than others where you're talking about equal parts patience and cooperation, which I think is a good combination of words, where some other presidents are pushing publicly to get back to campus as quickly as possible. So can you talk a little bit about your approach to this crisis, the range of emotions, the range of scenario planning required, and what has changed and what hasn't since this broke in early March?
Sure, I'll be happy to. It's been a real world few months for all of us. Like many other institutions across the world, Carnegie Mellon is being tested like never before. Universities response to the pandemic has been multifaceted and it's been complex, if you can imagine, throughout the entire process, of course, we've been motivated by three primary goals. Delivering our academic and research missions while protecting health and wellness of our entire community, especially our students, and employing best practices to promote social distancing and limiting in person interaction. Let me give you a little bit of a sort of a framing of the discussion. The way we think about our institution. We can think about the three sort of distinct facets of our university. There is the instruction side that everybody realizes and recognizes, as you mentioned, there's also the research part of it, and finally the residential community and the student experience. In early March, as you probably know, we successfully took 4900 course sections online in a matter of three days. I should also add that in fact we had 400 students who remained in our residential community throughout that period, partially because there were international students from other parts of the country and it were safer to be on our campus than to go home. This transition didn't mean that we just took everybody online and put everybody on zoom and declared success. In fact, the faculty engage in creative pedagogy, transitioning essentially. Our conservatory. As you probably know, CMU is known for its science and technology and business, but also we have a fabulous school of Drama and school of music. So taking our conservatories online, taking our laboratories, especially experiential learning, online, and at the same time we also managed to take most of our support and services for our students online, offering tutoring, coaching, or Disability resources and so on. And finally, I'm sure we'll get to this within a week. After we took our instructions online, we managed to take all of our research. Also at this point in time, we're moving from crisis management to long term planning. The reason I say we're moving from crisis management, part of our goal was to get 5,436 students who were graduating this year, Bachelor's, Master's and PhD, through the entire academic semester. And we succeeded in doing so, plus 14,000 students, many of whom were coming back to our institution next year. As I mentioned, there are three facets to this and I'm happy to elaborate on it. The final thing I want to mention in response to this question is you mentioned communication. I have to tell you during a time of crisis, you have to over communicate. You have to pursue high bandwidth communication with the entire campus community and our stakeholders. And that's the approach we've taken with a lot of transparency about our plans. And as you mentioned, our plan is now moving to a model where we are going to move from an online education to a hybrid model, which I'm happy to elaborate on.
Yeah, so. And just to say it strongly that that emphasis on communication I think is so important, and it's something often overlooked by leaders in these moments, is just the need to hear from people and just that transparency and constant rhythm. There's a number of things there you said that we're going to want to drill down on. But first let's start with the scenario planning because you know, at the time we're, we're talking to you. Many institutions still have not announced their plans for the fall, but Carnegie Mellon has announced plans to begin fall semester classes in Pittsburgh on August 31st. Talk to us a little bit more about what that arrangement is going to look like and what were the various scenarios you were looking at if you zoom back out a little bit? And how did you arrive at the one that you did? Were there certain events or triggers or indicators that you were looking at in particular?
Terrific question, Michael. Throughout our planning, we indeed have been looking at feasibility of various scenarios. From continuing remote online education to a model where we have start the process, the start the semester a couple of months later, for example, changing our calendar dramatically. After looking at a number of different scenarios, we announced, as you mentioned, that we're going to start classes back on August 31st and we're planning to implement what we refer to as a hybrid approach, which is a blend of in person and remote instructions. We know for A fact that some of our students will not be able to travel back to Pittsburgh due to visa delays, for example, our international students, we know, and other travel restrictions potentially. We also know there's some families who are concerned about, for health reasons, about their children coming back to campus. We also know that we have a number of individuals on our campus that potentially come from a vulnerable population. So we understand that also at any point in time, we may have to pivot to other modes of operation if conditions change, for example, regionally or nationally. So let me just be clear. At this point in time, we are planning to have as many students back on campus in the fall semester under this hybrid scenario model. The hybrid model allows us maximum flexibility to deliver both in person instructions and remote instructions. Obviously, it complicates this for us. Let me just highlight a couple of things about the hybrid model. There are many variations across temporal, spatial and educational dimensions to our model. A couple of examples. We may, for example, decide that because we're going to make arrangements to reduce density on our campus, we're going to have to have much smaller classrooms. We may have to decide that, for example, all of our large lectures are going to be remote, whether the students are in Pittsburgh or not. But all of our classrooms that are going to be smaller, say below 25, are going to be in person. We may actually, we are actually working in a model where we are going to have much bigger distance between classes in terms of time. Usually we are allowed 10 to 15 minutes between classes. We're going to allow 30 minutes between classes. It's all about coming with practical ways in addition to doing all the things that you're familiar with, such as, of course, we're going to have to have facial covering, disinfection of surfaces. We're implementing testing protocols and contact tracing protocols on campus. All of that is going to be done. But the ultimate goal is to provide a supportive environment for our students for their academic success, as well as protecting health and wellness of our entire community, including the broader community that sits outside the Pittsburgh campus. The other thing I should mention about the hybrid model is that it will also allow us to bring our research back to campus in a staggered fashion.
So, Farnam, we've talked a lot on this show about the uneven nature of the shift to remote education this spring among institutions and even within institutions. You've talked in some of your communications about how Carnegie Mellon kind of relied on its expertise in the science of learning. Right. You're one of the leading institutions in the world on how people learn Especially in the online environment. Could you describe a little bit about how that shaped your plans for the fall as you talk about some of these courses for this fall, this hybrid model you were just talking about, how might some of these courses look and feel different compared to the spring? In other words, are they going to be substantially different in terms of their look and feel and more. So, since we're always trying to figure out what's going to stick for the long term, what does that mean for teaching and learning at Carnegie Mellon years from now, in your opinion?
Well, as you mentioned, we have a long history of doing research and practice in the science of learning. It harnesses across disciplinary ecosystem that we have and it goes back actually decades. It's bringing data and science into the education business, if you will. The approach that we're taking is based on a continuous cycle in which learning science informs our educational practices. We collect data continuously, we instrument our educational practices and it informs essentially in an adaptive way at a micro scale in terms of progress of a course and progress of a student, and also at a macro scale in terms of how we design our curriculum and so on. I'll be a little bit more concrete about what I'm getting at. Most important thing here is that it's evidence based. It leverages technology when it's appropriate, and it uses an iterative method to improve learning outcome for students. So it's not a simplistic approach such as MOOCs, oh, let's just take everything online and everything is going to be fine. It's adaptive and different students learn at different pace. For example, we know from research that active learning opportunities enhance learning outcomes. Providing students with problems to solve and questions to answer will produce much more robust learning learning than providing students with just passive lectures that are recorded and are available online. So imagine now you're designing the course such that you may use technology to have much more active learning opportunities. Another example, for example, that we brought to bear, this is not technological. It's actually it has to do with our process and the practice of teaching. During the pandemic. We created an organization under our technology Enhanced Learning Group where each academic unit designated a teaching liaison to serve as the bridge to our technology enhanced team support. And there were a number of strategies that allowed each liaison essentially to work directly with faculty within each department to bring some of these best practices to bear. I want to give you another example just to be sort of highlight how the world, how the life is going to change. This didn't happen overnight. We've had a Lot of experience with it and we've been doing a lot of that over time over the last decade or so. And there's also been significant investment in technology itself. We're for example, focusing on incorporating results from the data that we have collected over the last two, three months to in fact improve the learning outcomes and change essentially how we deliver instructions over the next semester. Let me give you a concrete example. We know by incorporating lower stakes assessments instead of, for example, having a single end of the term, high stake exam, by having lower stakes, more frequent assessments and more repeated self paced practices and feedback, we can in fact improve the learning outcomes. There's a lot of data to support that. How do we essentially incorporate that methodology? This is called the testing effect in the way that test students are being tested. And how do we bring technology to bear to support that? The other way that we're using technology is to create communities. We also know from research that students learn a lot better and it's much more effective if you create communities such that the students have a sense of belonging. So the question is, with in person and online instruction, can we create those communities? I want to tell you that many of these lessons and strategies are going to be here forever. I think what it's going to do is it's going to accelerate. In fact, this transformation that I see
happening in higher ed makes a ton of sense. And just to make the point, perhaps for you, your impact in the research hasn't just been as an institution on higher ed, it's also been in the K12 realm as well. I mean, just the amount of research in this area has been, and frankly, productizing and leveraging it to actually put it in action has been phenomenal. I'm curious about another side of the research aspect of Carnegie Mellon's operations, which you've referenced a few times now. And I'd love to dig deep, deeper here, especially given that honestly, a lot of the press coverage of higher ed tends not to focus on this part of higher ed, even though it's an incredibly important part of the American higher education system. And I'm just curious, first, did research mostly shut down on campus, as you know, in early March, and how will it start back up? And does it differ by discipline? And then I guess the last part of this is there's a lot of talk about the financial hit to universities on enrollment, but not as much coverage on the impact financially from changes in research. So what impact, financial or otherwise, is sort of the essential stoppage of research? There's a lot packed in there, but I'd love to just have you wax poetic on it.
You're right. There are many layers to your question, Michael. I'm going to try to answer that in two minutes or less. So you're absolutely right. If you look at academic institutions in this country, especially the research enterprise of the country, it is so important and critical to our economic prosperity. It's so important to the national security of the country. Much of the progress that we have seen over the past 50 to 75 years, the prosperity that we have enjoyed. Jeff has heard me talk about this in the past. The prosperity that we have enjoyed is because of the investments that the taxpayers in this country have made in our education and research enterprise of our nation. So with that in mind, obviously it is just as important to us to bring our research back on campus. Good news here is that we were able to take much of our research and do it remotely. Of course, as you know, we also have access, for example, to various kinds of specimens. We have laboratories that really do require our faculty to be present. So some of those things had to be shut down. But overwhelming fraction of our research portion of our research has been taken online. Actually, a week after I took our instructions online, at the same time we also launched a bunch of research programs, interestingly enough, having to do with COVID 19. I'll highlight a couple of them and then I'll go back and answer the rest of your question. My faculty colleague Po Xian Lo in the mathematics department has created a contact tracing app that doesn't just use Bluetooth, it uses ultrasound technology that is much, much more accurate than just using Bluetooth. By the way. It does it anonymously and it's privacy preserving. That work got started by potion. You brought a bunch of people from around the country to work with them and now it's actually available on Google Play and on App Store and the name of the app is called Novid N O V I D. We, like many other academic institutions, rolled up our sleeves, did a lot of community work, in particular supporting hospitals in Sourcing Productions. PPEs faculty in our engineering college, for example, worked on an alternate design for low cost portable ventilators and so on. I think Jeff, you were already alluding to this, that we have a lot of experience also by taking our technology enhanced learning to high schools and to middle schools. So K through 12 teachers, we started supporting them. Another piece of work that we did is we worked with the governor's office in Pennsylvania and a team of economists, computer scientists and machine learning actually developed a tool that has been used as the tool by the governor's office in terms of informing decisions in bringing Pennsylvania back to work. And the list goes on and on. And the last one that I want to mention is called Covidcast, which is a forecasting tool for Narrowcast now casting and forecasting the propagation of pandemic. And it can be done at the local level. In fact, going back to the research issue that you raised, there is no question that there is cost associated overhead associated with the taking research offline and bringing it back online. We have not seen a significant decline in terms of interaction with the private sector or the current source of our research funding. This is partially because of the areas that we're involved in and partially because repurposing some of our research to address these very, very important issues. Having said that, I want to go back to what I started with. Universities are going to be even more important, not in terms of just bringing people back to work, but in terms of the long term impact on our economic prosperity. In fact, we need to double down on research and investment in research has to grow. My great concern here is that if we now go into a mode that we shut down research and would bring it back, shut down on research, it will do harm to our research enterprise in this country that will be long lasting. So part of it is we have to invest in research, part of it is we have to have a way of, in a stage way, bringing research back online. And the final point on that is that we are, as of this last week, started bringing some of our research back online. And over the next three months we're going to do more and more of that.
So far you've been great in answering these questions. So much so that we had a list of things that we wanted to get to and you've kind of checked off all of them. So this has been a great interview. There's one last question I want to ask and that's about the future of higher ed, which obviously future you our podcast really focuses on. And Michael and I know there's been a lot of hot takes on what this crisis means for the future of higher ed. I think we've been trying to write some of them ourselves. So can you give us a sense of your own take on what's going to happen? Is this crisis something we're going to talk about in a few years as kind of one historical moment in time, much like we talk about the 2008 financial crisis, for example, or is this something more for higher ed? Is this A bigger thing that when we look back on higher ed 100 years from now, we're going to be talking about this like we talk about the GI Bill, for example, in terms of its impact on higher ed or the Higher Education Act. Is it going to be one of those moments, not just a footnote, but a true change in higher ed?
Wow, that's a very profound question, Jeff. You and Michael both have written about this and we should do another podcast because that is itself a 15 minute segment to talk about the future of higher ed. So I promise if you invite me back, I'll come back and and talk to you some more about it. But we'll definitely have you back. This is such an important question. This is definitely more than a blip on the radar. In fact, you have written about this very extensively in the past about the transformation of higher ed that we're seeing. I believe there are two realities that have emerged as a result of this pandemic. First is that COVID 19 is accelerating the trends and challenges facing higher education that we've been seeing it for the past decade. I'll come back to this momentarily. The second reality is that as a result of the pandemic, we are seeing that the transformation of higher ed is happening even faster. If we thought it was going to take a decade, it's going to take two years. If you believed it was going to take two decades, it's going to happen over the next five years. Let me briefly highlight these two realities. Let me start with the trends and challenges that are accelerating. Jeff and Michael, you guys have talked about this in the past. Think about access, affordability and ballooning student debt in this country. Pandemic is just going to make this worse. In fact, people talk about skepticism about the value of a traditional four year degree. All the evidence shows that the college degree is even more important today than ever before. But the pandemic is going to exacerbate this issue. The dependency on our international students, which others have written about and have talked about. We are dependent on international students both for our education and research mission, not to mention expanding the intellectual diversity of our community. And that's going to be exacerbated as a result of this. And of course, the financial exposure to endowment athletics, hospital systems. Good news for Carnegie Mellon at least is that I don't have a hospital system and I don't have a Division 1 athletic. So it's been a blessing during this. But probably more important is the growing role of academic institution in the innovation ecosystem of this country. And its importance of academic institutions to catalyze our economic prosperity. In fact, Jeff, you and Richard Florida just wrote an article in Forbes just a week or two ago which was a terrific article. And in fact, in it you talked about this symbiotic relationship between universities and urban areas. And I was actually surprised to see that half of the college students who live in metro areas, half of the colleges in the United States live in metro areas with a population of 1 million and more. That's it. It's a sobering, essentially piece of data. So all of these trends are going to be accelerated. The second issue that I was raising, it has to do with the reality that we are seeing. What we are seeing today is a transformation of higher edge ed that's going to be accelerated. There's going to be a concentration of influence among top brands, is going to be a flight to quality, and we're beginning to see that today. This is a very, very nuanced topic that I hope that you will address it in the future. But the other thing that I think we can't underestimate is a few weeks into the pandemic, everybody said, oh my God, we can take classes on zoom. Everything is great. Oh, why would we even go back to campus about four, six weeks later, eight weeks later? While the parents couldn't wait to have their kids go back to college, the kids couldn't wait to get back to college. But more seriously, what we have recognized is the increased value of high impact residential and student experience experience. I'm not suggesting that, oh, every good is going to come back and everything is going to be just the same. In fact, the residential experience may change, but the realization is it's actually even more important to a student experience than before. And finally, if you permit me, I'm going to take a minute to talk about technology. For a long time, when we thought about pedagogy, when we thought about curriculum, that art of teaching, we always looked at technology as the accelerator, whatever was the pedagogy. We brought technology in as an afterthought to accelerate the delivery. I think those days are over. I think technology will be deployed in the future to drive pedagogy. That's a fundamental change, fundamental shift in terms of how we're going to approach. Everything I said about science of learning I think is coming to fruition. From active learning to improving learning outcomes to adaptive practices, assessments, all of that, it's going to be accentuated and highlighted as a result of access to technology. The final point I want to make is that just like every business, the pandemic has been a realization that sure, our education and research may change, but think about it. We're now beginning to reimagine and re engineer the business of education, not just instruction and research. I'm talking about every facet of our business from admissions to advancement to student services to alumni relations. Just like other businesses, every sector of the economy is thinking about how has pandemic changed the way workflow in businesses. I think we were beginning to see that in academic institution and I think that's going to be some dramatically positive changes as a result of it. Sorry for the long winded answer.
That was one of my thoughts ideas that I would love to have you we'd love to have you back on to really drill down especially on the idea of technology driving pedagogy I think is something definitely we want to talk about further. But but in the meantime, thank you so much for joining us today and best of luck as you move through these next couple of months at Carnegie Mellon.
Thank you so much. Thanks for giving me the platform. I appreciate it and stay safe and
well, that does it for this episode. Normally, Jeff and I analyze what we just heard in the conversations, but we're planning to actually take themes out of not just these last two great conversations in this show, but also others from the last several episodes that we've been covering of the impact of COVID 19 on higher education so that Jeff and I in our final episode, can really break down what we've learned in the last several months about how higher ed has adjusted and what we should expect to see in the future. Thanks to Lenore and Farnam for joining us. And most importantly, thank you for listening. We love hearing from you, so please drop Jeff and me a line with ideas, comments, questions, or even complaints. And until next time, stay safe and stay strong. Hey folks, Michael Horn here. Hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Future You. And just a reminder to Please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform and if you like the podcast, rate us so that others can find us and find out about the good conversations that we're having here. As always, thanks so much for listening.
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