 Hey, we're back, we're live. It's Wednesday morning, I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Think Tech. And the lady with me is Helen Turner. She's vice president of Shamanad. And she joins us, of course, by Zoom to talk about what effect COVID has had on Shamanad. Hi, Helen, nice to see you. Good morning, Jay. It's lovely to be here. Thank you for the invitation. Yes. Well, we're checking in to see how things are going up the hills, so to speak. And I wonder if you can give us a broad brush about how COVID has affected life at Shamanad, because we're all affected. And I'm sure that to some significant degree, so does Shamanad. Well, you know, of course. I mean, we've entered into this sort of new, very different world, right? All of us over the last few months. I think the tone here has been to look as much as we can at getting in front of this and not being caught on the back foot, right? And so, you know, our president, Dr. Lynn Babington, who sends her best wishes, by the way, she's... And mine to her. ...right from the start of this, you know, we can come out of this stronger together, but we really have to pay attention to how this is affecting our students, how this is affecting, you know, the anxiety levels among our faculty, you know, all of those kind of social-emotional things that are happening in addition to the kind of collective anxiety about operations and the public health issues and the future of the state. And so I think it's been a time for us, it's been a challenge to our operations, no question, but not so much a challenge to the sort of the value system that we work in. And I think some of those strengths around everyone's sense of mission, everyone's sense of how do we continue to put the students first and central in all of our responses, I think that has enabled us to approach this, you know, what can you say, as well as can be expected, but with this sort of atmosphere of a kind of prayerful optimism and trying to keep the students at the center of everything that we do and all the decisions we make. You know, we've talked to UH about this same issue about the effects of COVID, and we've talked to HPU about it, talking to you, but you know, one thing that occurs to me from talking with you, Ellen, is that shamanah is different from those guys. Shamanah has a special sauce, a special focus, a special, as you say, a sense of mission. And it makes shamanah different and maybe gives shamanah a huge advantage here in dealing with a crisis where people can come together. It's a natural thing for shamanah. Am I right? Do you see it the same way? I mean, the sense of community is obviously in everything that we do, and I think that during this period that's had two main effects. One is that we've sort of doubled down on that and responded to thing as a community, made sure that we're still behaving as a community, even if we have to use technology to do that, making sure that we're not just letting our students go off onto the internet and log on to a remote class. You know, a central challenge has been how do we maintain that shamanah education, that high touch education through a distance education format. But also, I think it's affected us all because we feel the pain of the community we serve. Right? Shamanah is so connected to those in our community who are marginalised through the work that we do in our social justice mission. And of course, the whole sectors of our community, Jay, are just crying out around their economic distress, the anxiety and the mental health issues, the issues around what is the future? What is the future for a young person who is going to go to college this year? What does that look like? And so I think that closeness to community is one of our greatest strengths, but it's also been something that has, you know, really made us aware of what our partners and our stakeholders and our students are going through. And just to give you an example, in one of the, when we moved to, we pivoted to distance education, you know, in during the last semester. And for many of our faculty, that was a big adjustment. For many of them, they were already using online modalities to enrich their classes. You know, so it wasn't such a big adjustment. But one of the things that I was just so impressed by, it's not just the way that they innovated pedagogically and they figured out, how do we use simulation to teach nursing classes? How do we develop lab classes that can be delivered online? There was all of that creativity and I expect nothing less from our faculty. But what I felt they really, where they really came through for their students was to put their own sort of privilege aside and understand what this experience was like for a student who is trying to learn in a home where there might be a patchy internet connection, where there might be three or four other siblings being homeschooled, where devices might need to be shared, where people might be called in to work their other jobs as essential workers. And, you know, I've been on, I think we've all been on a lot of webinars, right? Since this thing started. And I've heard comments from colleagues on the mainland about, you know, how terrible is that the students aren't showing up or whatever. And I just think that our faculty really have thought about what is it like on the other side of this Zoom interface for those students? And they've moved to adapt and change and refine their expectations and to support the students in that really kind of one-on-one way. And that, I think, is one of the big points of pride that I see in the way that we pivoted to the distance education. I give our faculty every credit for being responsive in that way and not just sending it out into the ether and hoping that the students learn, right? Yeah, yeah. Because it's continuing high touch, there's a lot to be said for that. Right. Because you can do it right and maybe not so right and it sounds like if you continue the high touch approach to it, you're gonna do better and they're gonna do better. Yeah, we wanted, you know, to coin a not very popular phrase, but we wanted no students left behind, right? No one should be falling through the gaps because of this move to online. And if that meant that we had to get out there with technology or understand how to work with student schedules, you know, we're small enough that we could be responsive in that way. And I think, so we are returning as is UAH, as is HPU, we're returning to on-ground in-person classes for the fall. But of course, we and everyone have to be prepared to pivot back to distance education if there's ever a need to do so. And I think a lot of what we learned this semester is gonna inform that, the strategy that we have around if we do need to pivot in the future. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, one of the things that our Provost, Dr. Lance Askelson, who is an expert actually in online and distance education. So every faculty member we have is being certified in online education over the summer because it is different. It is a different pedagogy. And I just, I myself just went through the first set of workshops and they're rigorous and they're really interesting. And one of the elements of that whole training that the faculty are going through, you know, to be prepared to pivot if we need to in the future is how to build community in an online class. And so I just signed up for that workshop. And when I saw it, I thought, yeah, that's so shaman-art, right? That's what we want to be able to do is maintain that high-touch environment. However, we're delivering the education. So that makes sense. So it's more than just, are you using Zoom, by the way, or a program like Zoom? Yeah, Zoom, yeah. So it's not just using Zoom. It's not just knowing every button on Zoom or, you know, all the backend settings and all that. It's also an attitudinal thing about how you create a classroom environment using Zoom. And I wonder what the workshops are like on that point. For example, you have these breakout rooms. I don't know if your classes are big enough to warrant breakout rooms, but maybe you're using that. And of course, the way you recognize a student, the way you have a student present, answer questions and the like, the way you have the faculty engage, you know, the kind of a Socratic, you know, communication with the students. That's got to be all involved in the new world of online education, such as at your workshop. Am I right? Yeah, and what I'm seeing is that it's, Zoom is the interface. And then sort of backing that up, we have the whole Google Classroom model. We have our learning management system, Canvas, which is very, it's a very sophisticated and I think a very student-friendly LMS as they go. And so, you know, you're seeing a lot of emphasis in the training, these are what I can see. First of all, on making sure that there is real connection between the faculty and the student. You know, so, you know, recording those videos, helping the students participate in discussion groups in a meaningful way. And then as you said, all of the kind of one-on-one help and, you know, just in time kind of stuff that you need to do in a classroom, that can be done in the breakout rooms and it can be done privately. The group work, I think, is something that I've, I was surprised in my class last semester after we moved it online, just how well the group participation worked. And I felt in my limited just one class experience that our students were, they seemed more willing to engage in the discussions and ask one another questions through the Zoom media than sometimes in class, you know, you can kind of just get that sort of silent treatment, right? Isn't that true? Isn't that true? There's something about the electronic communication that opens you up, that makes you less reserved. You take a student who might be a wallflower now, he's gonna come out. It's the same experience we have, actually, on Think Tech, you know, with a remote connection anywhere in the world, we find that people are so happy to talk to us one-on-one. But I was gonna ask you in that connection, you know, on Zoom, it's so good and you are refining it. I mean, I'm sure you're refining it more than just the workshop, it's every day in the experience of it, both faculty and student that maybe in September, when let's assume that we're all free to go back to school, I mean, physically, you might still use some of the lessons you've learned now on Zoom and maybe some courses, am I right, will continue to be remote? So actually our plan is that every course will be an in-person course for the fall. You know, that is the heart and soul of the Chaminade model. It's why students come up to this, you know, the beautiful campus and have those close interactions with faculty. Now, I think for a number of years now, we've seen faculty, you know, flipping, hybridizing classes where they're using online as an aid to the teaching. And so I think we're gonna see that continue. And I think that we may actually see that develop further, but I'm not sure that we will see unless it's sort of, you know, an imposed need to pivot to online. I'm not sure that we're gonna see kind of a wholesale adoption of that, you know, by our faculty, just because we, you know, we really feel that that on campus experiences is part of who we are and what we're trying to do for our students. You know, one thing that you're doing with Zoom, which I caught as you described it, is you're recording the sessions, the classes with Zoom. And indeed, you know, we have meetings among our hosts on Zoom. And we record it because not all hosts can be there. And we want the hosts who weren't there to take a look later. And so there's a tremendous advantage of that. I mean, you know, I'm one of those people that I miss a certain amount of what's said, and I need to go back and listen to it again and possibly a third time. And I think that's a part of education. Remember the Latin, yeah? Repetitio mater studio. So repetition is the mother of study. So how do you achieve that if you're not doing Zoom in the fall? Yeah, I mean, the reinforcement is obviously of learning is one of the key things that we can bring out of this that will, you know, strengthen us going forward. And I think there's been a couple of places, you know, you hit on a really good point that the recording of the lectures, which a lot of students do anyway, actually in the in-person classes, it does give that ability to go back and check and it helps students. So if you look at a nursing curriculum, it's absolutely critical to be in contact with patients during your clinicals. And when, so then, you know, what do you do when that option is suddenly removed? And of course, we were blessed a few years ago with the ability in our nursing program to set up a really sophisticated simulation center. And so we've been using that, obviously, and that's been a great asset. Doesn't replace the patient experience, but what the literature says and what we're seeing is that it can really, really increase the student's confidence when they do eventually get into that patient setting because they can have a do-over. I mean, that's the beauty of simulation is it is a safe space in which to experiment and test variables and get that kind of, not just the reinforcement of learning, but the ability to fail safely, right, and move forward. And so I think we're seeing that in the nursing simulation labs. I think we're seeing it when we're running simulated labs for the science degrees. I think that that ability to iterate, refine, it's the scientific method in action. But of course, in a normal three-hour in-person lab, you might not really get that opportunity. And so we're seeing that be a really interesting outcome and strength of this approach that we're probably gonna carry forward. That being said, we have other science faculty who are wearing go-pros on their heads and recording their labs as they do them and letting the students see a demonstration, but from that, imagine that kind of first-person point of view. And I watched a couple of those that our faculty have done. And of course, if you've been working in a lab for 20 years, there's a lot of your technique as an experimentalist that is sort of, you might not necessarily speak about when you're doing a normal lab demonstration and the student wouldn't have the point of view to see it. And I've just been so impressed by how the students are actually getting to see how like an old lab hand like me, how do you really move your hands around in an experiment? And what are the sort of nuances of how you organize the space to do something carefully and reproducibly? So again, there are these nuances that are coming out through these new ways of looking at it. That's great, that's great. Well, you know, at the bottom, at the end of the day, Helen, you are a scientist and there's plenty of science in Chaminade. And I really appreciate that point. Probably didn't exist before. It's like you're watching with the GoPro and you're seeing it through the laboratory researchers' eyes and you're learning more than you would have learned if you were a third person watching from the other side of the room in a crowd of students watching it. So I think that's a great advance. And in fact, it strikes me that you could do that even if you had classes in the laboratory. You could have the same kind of, yeah. I think the faculty will. I think the things that they view that's made them stronger through this process, I think they'll carry forward. And I think, again, that deepened understanding of what the circumstances of the students are, through sort of seeing, I don't mean to make this sound sort of odd, but through seeing into their homes through the Zoom and understanding where the students are at and the pressures that they have and the competing priorities. It's not like we didn't know this. Many of our students are low income, they're non-traditional students. We know this, but I think it's been brought home to us through this experience in a way that perhaps it hadn't before. Right, right. The COVID experience is to see things, both strengths and weaknesses that you just weren't looking for before. So in this case, you haven't had to give up laboratory courses in the spring semester. Oh, no, not at all. You've been able to continue right along with it, eh? Yeah, everything's been running. The faculty made a very rapid adaptation. And I would say that's the only thing that will be better in the fall, I think, is that we've had more time to plan out what we're doing. Obviously, during the spring semester, it was a very reactive, very fast moving situation. I'm not the students who don't, I don't recall whether you have dormitories or arrangements for students from neighbor islands or from out of state. How does that work? Are they still here? Is anybody studying from the mainland or from Asia or from the Pacific Islands? How are you communicating? How are you including them in the program? Yeah, well, our vice president for Student Affairs, Dean Alison Jerome, she has done an amazing job of making sure that all of our students, when they were still in the dorms. So obviously it moved very quickly across the semester. Before the students started to leave the dorms to go back to their homes, we made sure that the dorms were safe places to be in terms of social distancing. We supplied the students with meals. Everything was focused on keeping them safe and well-fed in the dorms. And then what emerged, I think, a little later in the semester was the fact that, of course, we have some students from the Pacific Islands who actually couldn't go home. So we kept the dorms open and again provided the food services and for the students who left the dorms and returned to their family homes, either here or on the mainland, we went through the whole process of making sure that it didn't hit them financially. And so I think that we have now just a very small number of students in the dorms over the summer who were from the Pacific Islands. And then as that situation changes, our dorms are gonna be open in the fall. And so there's a lot going on on campus right now with marking up the classrooms for social distancing, figuring out how we're gonna manage the, having rosters for the kitchens in the dorms. I mean, all of these things that we've just not had to think about before, but now we're trying to make sure we use the summer really well to get us prepared. Yeah. What makes it even more challenging is gonna mention this earlier in the context of how do you plan for the semester in the fall? And nobody knows for sure what's gonna happen between then and now. We have surprise events every hour and every day. And certainly how could you even predict all the surprise events we'll have between now the month of, we're still in May, and rather August or September. So it's a moving target, isn't it? And you have to have strategies and then strategies upon the strategies, plan A, plan B, plan C. I'm sure you and Lynn Babbington are working all day and all night and trying to figure out those scenarios, no? Yeah, and so the team, so Dr. Babbington obviously, and then our provost, Dr. Askelson, they've just done an amazing job. And I think probably there are binders in Lance's office that say plan A, plan B, plan C on the spines. But yeah, so what was done early on, maybe even a month or so ago was sort of the laying out of, well, what are all the possible scenarios? I mean, we can't plan for everything, but there are some more and less likely scenarios. And a lot of that was based around at that time, of course, we did not know whether Hawaii was gonna be able to flatten its curve. And so, yes, so there is a plan in existence for I would say three or four major scenarios that could happen. But the way that we are thinking about it currently as is HPU, as is UH Manoa, and the other UH campuses that will be in person with the ability to pivot in a microsecond if we need to. Yes, right, that's how you have to do it. It's a business matter. That's what we're thinking right now. And then the other group that I just wanna give a shout out to that's been really involved in all this is our campus ministry and our Marianist community here because one of the central Marianist educational values is adaptation and change, right? And so I think what they've helped us do is they've been touchstones in how do we do this in a mission-driven way, not just in a reactive way, but also seeing it as part of what Father Shamanard hoped his educational institutions would be, right? It's places where when the world throws you a curveball, you have the resilience and the creativity to not just think your way through it, but to respond to it in a way that keeps you to who you are. What a tremendous education it is for these kids to see it all unfolding and to learn the meaning of Nimble. What about all the other events and programs and you have a lot of things going on and what have you had to give up here in the spring and how will you resume them in the fall? So I think one of the things obviously that's up in the air is it's not exactly clear what the situation will be for our athletes, at least for off-island travel. And our athletics scholars are obviously really motivated, they have a lot of heart and so we're hopeful that they will see some return to being able to live out that identity as both an athlete and a student. I think that some of our summer programs that we were hoping to have in person, we've moved those online. And so I think a little while ago, I talked to you about our, we have a National Science Foundation grant that funds our Summer Data Science Institute and that's called SPICE, which stands for Supporting Pacific Indigenous Computational Excellence. The magic of acronyms, that's a beauty. What we did last year was we bought 22 students on campus and they did this one month Data Science Immersion and it was amazing. And so we had a little bit of a, I was worried for a while, how are we gonna do this? And then with our colleagues in Texas at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, we decided we're just gonna go for it. And so that started a week ago, we have 22 students, it's all being done online with some really innovative sort of virtual classroom environments. But the really cool thing is, of course, a bunch of those students wanna work the COVID data sets, right? So the whole principle is computing for change. It's basically that the students are asked to find a societal problem and address it through data analytics and data visualization and then present the outcomes. And so this year we've formed them into teams. One team is looking at COVID and working with some of the leading modelers of the COVID outbreak. One team is looking at environment, one team is looking at economic diversification and how we think about Hawaii's economy going forward. And then we have another team that's actually being partly led by one of our alums who's a public health graduate, looking at healthcare and how things like healthcare economics access to care, pre-existing conditions health disparities, how we need to be thinking about those and what the data show we need to address. Totally relevant in our time, totally. Yeah. These kids will be well-prepared to deal with a moving target. What about the Hogan entrepreneurial program? We were talking before the show and I guess there were changes there. How has that fared in the context of COVID? So I think the actual Hogan program itself continued in the online realm and over the course of the semester and ending in this wonderful recognition event that we had that kind of had two purposes. One was to honor all the students who'd been through that program and provide them with their certificates. And again, it was all done virtually. But the other thing, of course, was to honor John Webster who retired and he's headed that program for so many years and he's made it into a real launch pad for students into amazing careers and building professional networks here in Hawaii and so on. And so it was kind of bittersweet because John has retired and now Dr. Roy Panzer-Alar has taken over the program. He's gonna take it to the next level, no question about that. I do think that there will be going forward an increased emphasis in that program about the new economy, how we develop economy in Hawaii. And the students have always benefited from the first-hand experience of their mentors, the network of Hogan advisors. And I think it will be wonderful in the fall when we start to have those advisors in and coming in and telling the story of what their businesses have been through in this time. Very, very valuable program. I've attended your annuals at the Mystic Rose, and very impressive students. But beyond that, a very impressive atmosphere of entrepreneurship and that's the kind of thing we need to do to move on to a more diversified economy. Can you talk about that for a moment? Because right now, we're talking about how COVID has revealed the strengths and weaknesses of Hawaii society and institutions. And certainly it makes it clear that we have to enhance our contribution to entrepreneurship. Right, right. And entrepreneurship writ large. I mean, we have, for example, one of the students that I mentor who's an alum of our Hauulu program, she is a nurse, registered nurse. She graduated from our Bachelor's of Science in Nursing program, but she is a healthcare and social entrepreneur. That's the way that she's living out her nursing vocation. And so we are very interested in thinking not just about business development and innovation in that sector, but also in the social sector. I mean, there are a lot of jobs and there's a lot of vulnerability in the nonprofit sector in Hawaii. And I think that's something that we really want to think about how we can support that. So Shyamana, we've been thinking a lot about how we can demonstrate that commitment to be really being part of the recovery. And I think it sort of comes into sort of three main areas that we can make a contribution. You know, the one is, I mean, it sounds kind of a cliché, but education to achieve economic mobility. I mean, so Shyamana, because of the students that we serve who are typically often low income first generation, as you know, we score very highly, if not one of the top universities in the country in indices of economic mobility, of really that kind of generational change in a family that moves a whole family and community into a different echelon economically. And so we've been... In Yiddish, the word for that is mitzvah. It's a good deed. Right, right. And so we've been thinking a lot about that. And the pieces of that are that we need to make sure that we, despite the economic distress that's being felt across our whole community, how do we make sure that we continue to lower those financial barriers so that those students can get this type of education and get that... Very, very important for so many reasons. That we're thinking about all the time. I think that there are direct actions that we can take in terms of workforce development. So we've been very focused, as you know, on the healthcare workforce, which is only going to, I think, increase in terms of need as we move through this kind of COVID period. The other thing that we have done in that area is that we have started in the fall, probably the best timed opening of a program in the history of the university, which is that we are starting a community and public health degree in the fall. It's already on the books before all of this happens. I think they'll be lining up for that one. And, you know, and then it's very exciting. And that was actually, that was a decision we took, you know, over a year ago now to broaden our healthcare portfolio into the community rural health and build off of what we've done in nursing, which is amazing, but really think about, you know, community care, rural care, health education, health promotion and public health. And we are inspired, a couple of our alums who actually came to Shaman are thinking about pre-medical programs, but ended off going into public health, really inspired us, that this is something that the students we really want to be able to think about our career in healthcare, you know, either at the bedside or in a kind of public health epidemiology setting. And so one of our alums, Matau Faiai, she is a biology graduate who went to George Washington University to do a master's in public health. She's now working American Samoa as an epidemiologist and she just got admitted to the Yale School of Public Health. Oh, that's fabulous. That's, that's, that's, that's. He and I have been in contact and she's been saying for years, you know, we need to do something in public health. We need to do something in public health. And another one of our alums who's a Micronesian student, Johnny Aldan from Saipan, he just graduated with his master's in public health from Eastern Washington University. And what he did was, his thesis was actually looking at what he thought was an important data set for looking at pre-existing conditions, looking at metabolic syndrome diabetes. But of course, and he looked at it in a geospatial way. So looking at how it distributes geographically by neighborhood in Saipan. And of course, that's exactly the information you need if you're deciding where you need to do lockdowns for pre-existing conditions. We're living in a world of change. But before we run out of time, Ellen, I want to ask you about the financial aspect to this. Have you, have you had to cut faculty? You know, have you had to change tuition? Have you lost students in the process? Because these things do happen. And you know, how are your funding sources during the time of COVID? Educational institutions like other non-profits, they all have their issues. How have you fared in this difficult period? So not to say that we are not worried, obviously, and taking it very seriously, but Dr. Badminton did make a commitment early on in this that we would not furlough or lay off our workers who could not work from home. Because she felt that that would, you know, strike the most vulnerable people on our campus and she just was not willing to do that. So at this stage, we have not had to make those cuts. We've not had to furlough. We've not had to lay anybody off. And our admissions and enrollment are working, you know, double, triple time. But I think that there's a lot of cautious optimism there because what we, I think, are known for here is a really excellent private education right here at home in Hawaii. And I think there may be a lot of families who are thinking about that right now and considering, you know, the decision to go to the mainland. So we are just working really hard to bring our class in and welcome a good class in the fall and just really deliver them a great shaman art education. In terms of our funding sources, I mean, as you know, we have a lot of grants from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health. Our Title III funding is held steady. We were able to receive CARES Act funding. And so that's been holding really well. Our National Science Foundation has showed great flexibility and great co-operation which you wouldn't necessarily expect from a large federal agency. So they've been really helping us and we have just been pumping out new grant proposals to sort of support our students. We just put in another $1 million NSF scholarship grant in addition to the one that we already have. So we're really thinking that there are a lot of opportunities out there in terms of funding. And so we want to make sure that we're well positioned to explore those. And again, really focus on how do we, where we can drive that funding towards supporting students so that they can get a shaman art education. Last question, Helen, forgive me, it's a little personal but have you been affected by COVID? So very sadly, I had lost my mom. She was 91 and she was in a care home in England and she passed away, which has been an incredibly difficult thing to process from so far away. Because of the situation in the care homes, it was locked down. So it was that situation that so many families have been in where they were not able to be with their loved ones at the end and the funerals were very, very sparse. And so that's been an incredibly difficult thing to deal with from a distance. But our community here on campus has been incredibly supportive and loving and, you know, using things to honor my mother. So there was a mass here for her. I'm so sorry about the loss Helen and sorry that it had to be the way it was, you know, we live in a new time now. I hope we can check back with you. One thing in Hawaii, we have flattened the curve, you know, and but in a lot of places in the world, that's not the case. And I think it's really important for us to understand here what other places in the world are going through. It's been incredible. I think in places like England, New York and so on. Yes, the world has to think together now. And so all the institutions of higher learning have to think together. Thank you so much, Helen Turner, for joining us. We really appreciate your sharing. And we are impressed, I think, with everything that has happened in Shamanad and that will happen. Thank you so much for your efforts, not only for the school, but for the community. It's wonderful to talk to you and hopefully we can touch base again in the fall. Absolutely. Helen Turner, Aloha, thank you so much.