For Bucknell, the path was clear, even though there were many thickets to navigate before moving forward. Bucknell’s care and precautions put the University in a select group nationwide. An NPR analysis in October of 1,400 colleges showed that two out of three colleges with in-person classes had no clear testing plan or were testing only students at risk for a positive result. Bucknell was in the minority category.
With few outside resources to rely on, solutions not only had to meet the highest safety standards but also be executed as cost-effectively as possible. Robust testing, signage and PPE for the academic year came with a $12 million price tag, but relying on homegrown talent rather than hiring outside experts to run testing, contact tracing and other programs tamped down expenses and kept the Bucknell labor force intact.
We reported in our summer and fall issues about how the faculty has stepped up heroically to deliver on the Bucknell promise for our students. The following stories demonstrate how Bucknell staff who operate behind the scenes have applied creativity, care and in-house expertise to what Pierre Joanis, vice president for human resources, calls “a multidimensional challenge that has not happened in over 100 years. Our people are rising to the challenge in very strong, very meaningful, very deliberate ways, and they are doing it selflessly, without thinking about how exhausted they are or how little recognition they will get, at a time when there have been no wage increases for folks. Yet here they are, stepping out and learning to work in different ways and doing new things that they’ve never had to do before. Without a playbook.”
— Sherri Kimmel
But then the chief, Steve Barilar, learned something that made it worse: Tomorrow was her birthday. Making things as stress-free as possible is always priority one when Barilar or his officers move students to isolation housing, but in this case, he knew something extra was in order.
The next morning the student awoke to an email from Jackie Cetera, director of residential education, asking her to open the door to her room. Waiting on the doorstep was a gift basket filled with skin-care products (“like a miniature spa day,” Cetera says), along with birthday balloons and a bamboo plant to help the isolation room feel a little more like home.
“Dana Mims [Events Management], Jeff Loss [Facilities] and Steve Barilar [Public Safety] all stepped up to support this,” she says. In a matter of days, “We were able to have a tent set up, tables and a refrigerator — a whole remote testing site.”
Employees were divided into four groups based on contact with the campus community, with all working on campus tested at least once and as frequently as every two weeks for high-contact workers, including faculty.
In late June, after three months of exclusively virtual admissions experiences, Bucknell resumed in-person visits for prospective students and their families.
With the start of the fall semester still two months away, other campus offices had more time to design reopening plans. The Office of Admissions did not.
While most colleges remained closed to visitors, Dean of Admissions Kevin Mathes ’07 led the effort to open Bucknell while keeping visitors and the admissions team safe and healthy.
For Buckell’s Facilities division, however, a few things were absolutely certain: Students, faculty and staff would return, and allowing them to do so safely required preparations on a scale none had encountered before.
“By April, there was already a sense that we were coming back,” says Deb Smith, an operations area manager who oversees nearly 40 custodial staff. “We’re a school that has in-person classes; we’re not an online school, and we don’t necessarily want to be one. That was a really important principle through the whole process.”
during move-in week
Twenty-one years later, on this fall’s move-in day, the rain was absent but so were the helpers. Because of the pandemic, each student could select just one family member to help carry belongings inside.
The changes didn’t end there. Face coverings were mandatory. Move-in day became move-in week with students registering in two-hour windows spread across five days. And before receiving a room key, students were required to provide proof of two successive negative COVID-19 tests.
“You could look at this situation a million different ways, but many of us have chosen to see it as a chance to find exciting, new ideas to keep students engaged and supported,” says Sabrina Shankar, assistant director of student activities.
Shankar oversees Bucknell’s 7th Street Studio & Makerspace, a hub for extracurricular arts that was one of many on-campus spaces challenged to reimagine its events and activities. Rather than sitting shoulder-to-shoulder making crafts with community art supplies, students used individually packaged materials at outdoor pop-up sessions and weekend night events. Crafts ranged from simple pleasures, such as mug painting and bullet journaling, to laser-cutting Bucknell- themed door decor.
But that initial panic didn’t last long. When faced with charting a roadmap through unprecedented territory, Breeding was quick to respond with an unwavering resolve to “make it happen — fast.”
“Since dining locations were going to be some of the only large gathering spaces left, we knew we had to get it exactly right,” he says. “There’d be no days where we could relax, no such thing as ‘close enough.’ Because if we messed up … well, there wasn’t room for messing up.”