Early To Go All Remote

Foreign.

So you remember last December when I was visiting you in Boston and we taped that episode with Nick and Sabrina from edmit in that studio that looked a little bit like it was set up for a grunge band in the 1990s?

Yeah, how could I forget, Jeff? It was the last episode I think we might have taped in person. And colleges might feel that way pretty soon as well. I mean, when are we going to be back in person? And that's certainly the case in the 23 campus Cal State system, which has largely been virtual this year. And today we'll have the president of one of its campuses, Judy Sakaki from Sonoma State.

This episode of Future youe is brought to you by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This episode is also brought to you by Liaison partner with the leading provider of strategic enrollment management solutions to leverage the power of community. Learn more@senisonedu.com.

I'm Michael Horn.

And I'm Jeff Salingo. You might recall on our last episode of Future youe, we talked with the president of Boston University, Bob Brown, about why the university decided to reopen this fall and what went into that decision and the logistics about pulling it off. As we discussed, there were institutions that went in the opposite direction and decided not to reopen this fall. And that side of the debate is one we're going to focus on in today's episode with Judy Sakaki, who has been president of sonoma state since 2016. Welcome to future youe. Judy.

It's great to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

Thanks. So let's go back to last spring for a minute because the Cal State system was the first to announce way back in May that it was going to go online for the fall. And perhaps like everything else with this coronavirus, some thought that might have been a bit premature. In hindsight, however, we now know that many other institutions ended up following Cal State. Can you give our listeners a bit of behind the scenes about why the system made the decision so early and specifically for your campus? Do you think it was a good idea and what impact did it have by knowing in May what the fall semester would be like?

Well, you know, Sonoma State University is one of 23 campuses in the California State University system. And we meet the presidents, meet together with the chancellor regularly. And when the pandemic was unfolding, we were having actually daily, even on weekends, we were meeting together and talking about what was going on in each of our respective regions because, of course, our campuses span the whole state of California. And so that helped inform, I think, the system decision that it would be best for our campus communities to know and our faculty and staff to know and students and parents to know what was ahead and they could plan accordingly. It was still a pretty quick pivot, an early announcement, but it allowed us to, I think, be, be more ready. And it was the right decision based on the science. The chancellor was speaking to many scientists about what was unfolding in terms of, for the campus. It really helped us to better prepare our students to talk with parents, to have faculty. We have the range of faculty. Some faculty were very ready to move to a remote sort of online teaching, remote virtual instruction, and others needed to ramp up. So there was time for our faculty center to work with those faculty, for faculty to help other faculty. And it just, I think, allowed us for a smoother transition.

And how do you think it helped with student enrollment in particular, which has been all over the map, of course, across the country in terms of students coming back, not coming back, or starting and not starting. How do you think, again, an early decision helped your students kind of prepare for that decision about whether to enroll or not.

You know, that's been tough. Our campus was one that we've seen an enrollment decline, particularly among first year, first time students. And that's hard as a public university. So much of our budget is really dependent on enrollment. And so with that decline, we've had to adjust, make adjustments. And that is of concern for some of our students now are university has had a series of crises, just as others have, but maybe a little bit more so. Three years ago we had the terrible wildfires in Northern California. And I and many of our students, staff and faculty lost our homes and everything we owned. So we had to close the university then and send students back for their safety. We've since that time have had other fires and smoke and we have power shutdowns. And so this has affected our students. And so some of our students who were coming to us from Southern California, other parts of the state did not choose to join us. Now we still have about 500 students living residentially on our campus this semester. And we will likely have that and maybe a little bit more in the spring, but we will continue to be remote and to really pay attention to the health and safety of not just the students, but our faculty and staff and also our budget. Because to do the kind of cleaning that is required when you open up and you have students on site or living in the residence halls, we have had to ramp up and to buy the protective equipment that we need. That's all costly.

So it's interesting because you raised that impact of not only COVID 19 impact in California, but also the wildfires have been devastating the state once again right now. And I'm curious just how this experiment with remote education, how does it set you up for thinking more broadly about the future of residential education there in your campus? You know, given the predictions that there's going to be more wildfires in the years to come, that we know that this is, you know, with climate change and so forth, these are going to be significant issues that your region in particular grapples with.

You know, it's all about preparing and being ready. Our campus has been three times or more mission tasked by the state as a public university. We became a Covid surge space. We became, we housed two of our residential halls were used to house Covid vulnerable individuals. And during the fires, recent fires, we became a fire evacuation site. It's part of what a regional university does to support the community, but it also is very taxing on a university. We have student concerns and family concerns and faculty and staff concerns as well. But we are a part of, of the community here in Sonoma county and we serve that community.

Yeah, I think that's a really important point that often gets lost in some of these conversations. I'm curious thinking about communities and the higher ed community as a whole. As you know, many other colleges and universities and their presidents in particular came under fire for reopening this fall. And so as an institution that went in a different direction, I'm curious what you make of the criticism of higher ed in general about that reopening question and the fire that those presidents and institutions came under.

You know, each part of the state, each part of the country is a little different with the COVID spread.

And I don't want to second guess

what some of my colleagues have done and how they've done it and how they've rolled out. We know for us it worked to be fully transparent to.

I'm a very open president to talk

with the faculty and staff. I have walk and talks with students and faculty and staff around campus just to one on one hear voices and hear not just from student leaders or faculty leaders or staff leaders, but general folks in our campus community. Now those have turned to remote. I have virtual walk and talks with students. Zoom students used to. They started a thing where they have something called selfie with sakaki.

And I miss that. I can't do that. But we try to lean our heads together on Zoom and take some selfies kind of this way. So it's adjusting. And I think we have to take into consideration that there are different concerns by campus, by type of campus, by region, by state. And all of those things need to be taken into consideration. I think being open and talking through with the different constituents groups about how your thought processes are going leads for no surprises. And we did that. Each president in the CSU did that with our campus constituents. And then the chancellor also for the system, wrote direct letters that we disseminated on each of our campuses to the 480,000 students and the faculty and staff on our institutions.

Judy, you bring up a good point here because obviously Cal State is a huge system, not only in terms of number of campuses, but students and also spread out across this enormous state. And, and these are difficult decisions to make on a single campus. But can you give us a sense of how they're made in a system? Because I'm trying to get a sense of is it better at this moment to be part of the scale of a system of Cal State? Because some people will say, well, systems just move slowly and don't offer flexibility. So is there an option for campuses to have more flexibility or is this an opportunity for systems to have more management? On this issue, can you describe a little bit about, for our listeners who might be part of systems in other states, about how you're managing through the systemness of this all in terms of your campus versus the system?

I think it's been really beneficial to be part of a system. We have these regular zoom calls. In fact, we have another one today at four o'. Clock.

All the presidents get on with the

chancellor and chancellor, senior team, and we talk about issues, we bring issues up, we talk about what's going on in our community. What might be happening in Humboldt State far to the north, may be very different from San Diego State far to the south. Different size campuses, different communities. But we share what's going on in our region and what's happening with our faculty and our staff and our students.

Then together we listen to each other and we come to some agreement, some consensus, if you will, about how we should operate and move forward. And I think it's a very healthy. And we all feel very supported in that way. So I think it's been helpful to be a part of the system and to have thought partners with other presidents.

Yeah, it must be nice to have that thought partner with other presidents who are in similar, not only similar positions, but obviously similar types of institutions where single institutions don't necessarily have that. They obviously have counterparts, but they're not within that system. Let's fast forward a minute here to this fall where again, the system was ahead of everyone else across the country. And announcing the spring would also be online. Why announce it so early and what does that look like in reality? You had mentioned, I think there are 500 students on campus now, though probably be about the same in the spring. Will the spring be any different than the fall?

You know, it will be very similar. We will be primarily remote. But each region, you know, we are in California, we're in the. They have tiers, color tiers. We're in purple right now, which is the most Covid spread.

And so the things are kind of closed down.

Other parts of the state are in other colors and they're more, you know, whether they can have in restaurant dining or other kinds of things, that's different in each region. So we have really announcing early has allowed us to plan.

And our spring is going to be somewhat similar to what it was like in the fall. We will likely have a few more residential. We're shooting instead of 500, maybe 650 students living on campus, we've had students who, you know, the residence halls are their home for many of them. We have an increasing number of foster former foster youth. And so the residence halls are where they live. But we also have students whose families and themselves prefer to live on campus. The Internet is more stable. They have access. We have had each of our students that is living on campus has a private room, a private bathroom access and a kitchen. For some students, they find that it is more helpful to their making academic progress by having a quiet place rather maybe at home they share a bedroom or they have extended family living with them. We found that in that regard it's been very helpful. And we're getting increasing requests to think about students living on campus. For faculty and staff, they like the certainty of knowing, you know, we have faculty and staff who have children at home, who have young people who are zooming their own school, you know, classes and knowing ahead to plan ahead. We promise them we will wouldn't pivot with two weeks notice to say, oh, back in the classroom, back on campus, that we would give adequate notice so that people could plan. And that's part of, I think, what distinguishes Sonoma State. We like to say we're a resilient community, but we're also very caring community. So we are looking out for the health and safety and welfare of everyone, students but faculty and staff as well,

when we think about that welfare and perhaps the more impact on student success, specifically those undergraduates who will have been remote for an entire year, given how the fall and spring will shake out, what do you expect the impact to look like in terms of persistence and learning and so forth? And what are your plans to reengage them whenever it is that you get to welcome them back? Not just, I guess, living on campus in some cases, but actually in a full campus experience.

You know, it is so interesting because some students have really taken to this remote environment and some faculty are saying that students that they were teaching in the spring when we had to change, spoke up more when they went to Zoom. So really, you know, different students perform in different ways. We're making sure that we have a lot of remote sort of services, virtual services, whether it's counseling because we're concerned about mental health and the students wellness, whether it's activities for those students, whether it's exercise classes or things that they would normally do in the rec center. I've had, let's see, I meet with small groups of students that are living in the residence halls and also students who are living off campus. I just make myself available and we just chat. They also have small groups where they can just. Whether it's a student organization, a club, they're meeting remotely. Just as I've told our faculty and staff, take time to listen and give opportunity for people to share. Because normally you would before meeting you chat with someone and you'd say, how's it going? You'd have a cup of coffee. We don't have that. I'm trying to create that space within our meetings even. I'm currently the American Council on Education, chair of the Women's Network. And we have our regular meetings, we have sort of check ins, we have women leaders all across the country and normally we would have this opportunity to interact in meetings, but we don't have that. So virtually we take some time at the either the start or the end of the meeting just sharing how is it going for you professionally and personally in this Covid time? I think we really need to make space for that, that kind of connection.

Yeah, no, that's terrific, Judy, and appreciate your reflections on all these questions right now that are fraught with so much complexity and taking the time out of a busy day to be with us. Really appreciate it.

You know, there's no training for this, whether it was in our doctoral programs or in leadership programs. No one said you're going to face a pandemic. And this is how you should do X, Y and Z. There's no little checkboxes. We're sort of learning as we go. And I found that it really takes both our own personal background and our upbringing, our educational training and then sharing with each other to be the best that we can to continue to lead

in a really healthy way. And that's so, so important.

We haven't really spoken about the racial injustice in the climate that's going on. That is so critical to lead right now too, as well. And I was reminded, I think, of I like using poetry to help bring people together, whether it's in my campus update messages or not. And one that sticks with me that I'd like to close and share with you is Gwendolyn Brooks, a poet who wrote in her poem titled Paul Robeson said, we are each other's harvest, we are each other's business, we are each other's magnitude and bond, and so unquote.

And I just think together we will support each other, we will help each other, and we will continue to help students reach their dreams and their goals. So thank you so much.

Yeah, Judy, that's a great way to end it with a note of compassion and community. Thanks so much for being here and we'll be right back on Future youe.

Support for this podcast is provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, which is committed to preserving and expanding educational opportunity for today's students, now more than ever. Learn more at postsecondary.gatesfoundation.org this episode is also brought to you by Liaison. Any of the 31,000 programs that are members of Liaison's cast community will tell you the challenges of 2020 have proven that you can rely on us to provide uninterrupted admissions services, to streamline your processes, and to fill your pipeline. When you partner with Liaison, you gain access to our technology and our team of devoted customer service representatives, but most importantly, you gain access to the universities and leaders who have been members of Liaison's cast community for over three decades. Learn more at liaisonedu.com.

Welcome back to Future youe and our conversation with Judy Sakaki from Sonoma State. And Jeff, I'd love to get your take on Judy's point that it was actually important to announce early to give students and parents, not to mention faculty and staff, a heads up so that they could plan appropriately for the the school year. Yet as Judy pointed out, their enrollment of first year students still fell, but across the broader system of Cal State, it actually rose. Which is interesting right relative to the rest of higher ed that fell. So I. I'm just curious, because you're so deeply in touch with students right now and guidance counselors and the like, have you seen a correlation between schools that have reopened and those that didn't in their enrollment, or those that announced early? How is this breaking down?

Yeah, I don't think it is that simple to try to figure out. So I don't think there's a simple cause and effect here about whether the schools have reopened. And it's clear that there's something else going on in probably the Cal State system with some campuses that are just more popular than others in terms of their enrollment. Now, that's for the fall. I think the spring might be different. Much like we're starting to see pressure at the K through 12 level for schools to open up, it's clear we're also seeing pressure for the spring semester for colleges to open up. And so for those institutions, including Cal State, which have decided to basically be. Remain online for the spring, I think you're going to see some students who might have only taken off the first semester and then were thinking about coming back now, not coming back at all for the second semester. And I think there were some colleges that were thinking, well, maybe our enrollment would go up for the spring because those students decided to take only the fall semester off. And now if they're not back in person, I think those students are going to be taken off the spring semester as well. I also think that we might start to see more enrollment changes for next fall. I'm hearing rumblings already of a lot more transfer activity expected. In talking to high school counselors in particular, that they're hearing from students from the class of 2020, the high school graduating class of 2020, that there's some institutional shopping going around. In other words, that there's these students who started college this fall who are kind of unhappy with the experience that they're having mostly online, for example. And so they're looking for colleges that have been mostly in person this year, thinking that those are more likely the colleges to be in person next year. And they're looking to transfer to those institutions just as insurance policies, in case next fall is going to be a little bit like this fall, which, of course, we all hope it won't be. The other thing that I think is also going on with that institutional shopping is that students think that colleges, more selective colleges, might actually be more desperate for students next year and so that they can actually trade up and get into more selective colleges as sophomores than they would have gotten as freshmen. So I think it will be interesting to see when we start to see transfer numbers next year, what are the trends that we're seeing in those transfer numbers.

It's incredibly interesting, Jeff, to hear you say that, because I think part of this is that no one really knew for, for those schools that said we're reopening bu, as we discussed last time, is a bit of an exception in this. But a lot of the schools just put out announcements we're reopening, and people sort of, I think, weren't sure whether they really believed them or not. In many cases, they went back right on those announcements either over the summer or once they brought students back, in the case of places like UNC Chapel Hill, and they saw outbreaks and then they reversed course. And so that hesitancy and then maybe more certainty for the students because they have more believability now in the announcements, if you will, for the spring and certainly next fall makes sense. My only pushback, I think, a little bit is that I do think the Cal State system did benefit because if you said you were virtual early on, people believed that message. Right. They didn't think you were all of a sudden going to be in person when you, when you went with that stance, which wasn't necessarily popular with a lot of traditional age college students and folks looking for a campus environment. But I do think that certainty, it certainly did not hurt the system, I think, the way a lot of prognosticators and presidents perhaps thought it would. Jeff. And so I think at the very least that that is an interesting signal that, like, the certainty didn't hurt and it might have helped some of the campuses, even if it didn't directly contribute to an increase Right. At Sonoma State specifically. I, it's just to me that transparency and honesty, though, is, is just really important. And it's going to be maybe even more important a few years hence from now when people sort of look back and say, okay, were they honest with students as we're making our own decisions now a few years ago, or, or did they sort of break this covenant of trust, if you will. And I think that could have really long term damaging impacts on brands for those institutions that maybe cynically said we're going to reopen and then did it?

Yeah. So, Michael, speaking of a few years from now, I mean, do you think that this is kind of a lost class from this year, that the college graduating class of 2024 will just forever be the smallest one of the smallest ever.

Yeah, I think it could be. I'm not sure I would use the phrase lost class. It's almost diminished class. Right. Or something like that. But I'm more interested in the rebalancing that's going to happen in future years. Like, will gap years become a trend that sticks in some measure? Will it fall back to what the United States has generally been where we're not the UK Right. Gap years are not the most popular thing in the world, but we know that colleges are likely to be pretty desperate to fill their classes next year. So there's a ton of seniors right now who are, and their parents who are worried. Right. Is it going to be the most competitive admission cycle ever next year? And what I've been doing telling them is actually, I think it's not what you think, that, that the classes are just going to be larger to make up for these smaller sophomore classes. But it's possible that, you know, maybe not as high as this year, you know, 13 to 16% taking a gap year. It could be more like 5 to 10%, though still higher than, you know, the norm that I think maybe defer a year. And so that rebalancing and then, like, are there new trends that come out of this is something that I'm personally paying very close attention to.

So, Michael, one of the interesting things about both of these interviews with the presidents is they kept talking about the science. Right. And we hear this so often in higher ed, particularly because many of these big research universities, of course, have public health schools. But it's curious if they are listening to the science. How are all these institutions kind of reaching such different conclusions about what to do? Are you a little bit more cynical about how these decisions are getting made on campuses, that maybe it's a bit more about campus survival in some cases?

Yeah, you're reading me correctly, Jeff. You know, I just stepping back one, you know, one step. I do think it's important because. Because of the political environment we're in right now. I do think that there is a reaction to often say, well, the science says X, when in fact science is something that evolves based on our, you know, over time, our understanding. And it's more of a method and process than a statement of fact. Right. Our. Our understanding hundreds of years ago was that the world, excuse me, the universe revolved around the Earth. And then we learned better and, you know, things get updated over time, and that's really what science is. So, so part of. I always say that because I do think as More data comes in and we refine our understanding of COVID 19 and, and prevention and precautions and so forth, you can evolve your response. And so for a campus like BU to build a response off of the latest science, but to be able to marshal a ton of resources to evolve that response responsibly as more information comes in right through the testing that they're doing and the like, you know, makes sense. Whereas Cal State is not quite the funding per pupil that a BU might be. Right in the same level of resources. We know California higher education system has not gotten the public investment right over the last many decades that perhaps they might have sought. And so that has certain implications in my mind about how you can even respond in these times. But to answer your question about the cynicism, part of me is a little sympathetic to it because I do think if these, you know, certain schools close, like there are huge health ramifications and economic ramifications for those who get laid off, particularly the staff and thinking a little bit less about faculty, but they're at risk too. And then the ripple effects into some of these smaller towns where the college are the main economic, you know, center, if you will. But I don't know that colleges were in a lot of cases doing that cost benefit calculation. I think they were looking at their financial statements saying we need students, we need tuition dollars, we have fixed costs. And we think if we say we're reopening, we've got a better chance of getting students to commit and then we can actually figure out what the heck we'll do closer to the fall. And that's, I guess my cynical nature is that, that I think some of that was just driven very narrowly without a careful cost benefit calculation on what's really in the interests of all of the different stakeholders, students, faculty, staff, the communities themselves. That's my take. But I mean, look, you've covered the Cal State system 20 years ago as a reporter for the Chronicle, and I'm curious your take on the cynicism question. I certainly don't think it was present there, but across higher ed. But I'm also curious because Cal State is different, right? It's a system of campuses. It's not, not a standalone campus. So how are these decisions different from your perspective in that sort of a context versus someone like President Brown that is managing one campus, not all of Boston say.

Yeah, and I think there's a double edged sword with being part of a campus, right? It gives you the protection and the resources on one hand that an individual campus wouldn't have on their own. But President Brown can make his decision because he's in Boston. But just imagine, California is a huge state with these urban campuses and more rural campuses, but they kind of have to make the decision as a whole based on kind of the one campus that might have problems opening up, for example. So I think that's the negative part with being part of a campus is that you're kind of going the speed of your slowest member and in some cases, or your slowest campus. And that may have been what happened in this case, where some campuses might have been ready to open up, others were ready to open up. The other advantage, though, an advantage I think, and Judy mentioned this, was her ability to reach out to other presidents in the system and find out what's going on and share stories and help each other. It's a lot less lonely, I think, being part of a campus. When I talk to presidents these days, these are not the jobs they signed up for, of course, and they're under pressure from local officials, from health officials, from campuses, especially those campuses that might be undergoing some cutbacks. They're not the most popular person right now on campus, not that they ever were. It's kind of a lonely job, I think, for most of these presidents. I don't feel too sorry for them. But there's a system, there's an option for more collaboration and help with each other. And I think that's the other issue here, is we know, and we've talked about this many times before on Future youe, that collaboration in many ways is the future of higher ed. Deeper academic collaboration, indeed. Things like course sharing and department sharing and other back office operations beyond the academic side of the house. That's how you achieve the scale that you need to achieve in higher ed to really increase efficiency and reduce costs. Again, that's something the system has the ability to do. Not necessarily that it is doing it or it will do it, but it has an easy, easier ability because of its natural ability to collaborate than a single institution like Boston University. So just the costs of COVID and dealing with COVID are huge on some campuses. It's much easier to spread that out over 23 campuses than it is one in particular. So I think that's the advantage of being in a system right now, which if I had, probably, I would vote probably to be in a system right now.

Yeah, that's helpful. And I think it's a major theme, actually, from the last several podcasts we've done, Jeff, about collaboration. Even President Brown said being able to network with the other presidents of Boston was helpful and right. And then here, obviously in a system even better than that. And even when we had Dan Greenstein on right. You know, Dan talked about how the collaboration within his system of presidents, frankly, as they do this consolidation of campuses has been helpful as well. And so I think collaboration is a big theme that will end our 2020 series of podcasts on we're going to be taking our customary end of the year break, but we will be back with you all in early 2021. And I think I speak for all of us when I say here's hoping that 2021 is much better for all of us than 2020 all. Look forward to seeing you then and happy New Year, everyone. Hey folks, Michael Horn here. Hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Future youe. 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.