 I've got the top of the hour, so let us begin. Welcome everybody, welcome to the Future Trends Forum. I'm delighted to see you here today. We have a terrific guest on one of the great topics of our time and I'm really looking forward to our conversation. Now today's topic is one of immense importance to us and also to me personally, it turns out. We've been studying, discussing, exploring the implications of COVID-19 since it came out of Wuhan. We've been exploring it in all kinds of dimensions, the impact of COVID on geopolitics, on pedagogy, on faculty, staff, and student mental and physical health and we've got a lot of back sessions on this. Now, for some, we may be entering a post-pandemic phase where the COVID-19 virus is simply endemic. It's a good question right now to the extent that that's true. But we do know that colleges and universities around the world have had quite an experience for nearly three years. Everything from helping develop vaccines, to doing community health, to closing, to moving online, to trying new calendars, all kinds of different changes. How can we put all this together? What have we learned and experienced from the pandemic that we can apply? What does it tell us about the future of higher education? Before I introduce our guest, let me just say the background behind me is unusual. It is a background of my bedroom, which I have not left for a week because in some weird form of method acting, I came down with COVID on Saturday. So I am enjoying the delicious irony of having COVID while leading a session on COVID. So hopefully I'll be fine today. If any of you noticed me falling asleep or coughing or turning into a zombie, please let me know in the chat. Benjamin Renton, though, is someone who knows more than almost anybody on earth about COVID and what it means for higher education. When it started, he was an undergrad at Middlebury College in Vermont. And Benji did an incredible amount of research, cobbling together all kinds of data streams to a wide range of source, rapidly scaling up on public health measures that his tweeting and then his newsletter, which you can see linked from the bottom left and the right of the screen, became incredibly valuable resources. His even-headed responses, his equanimity and response to a great deal of chaos and dynamics just was just remarkable. He graduated from Middlebury, got a job working in public higher ed and is still an incredible analyst in this field. So without any further ado, with a great deal of pride in the liberal arts tradition, let me bring Benji Renton up on stage. Hello, sir. Hi, Benji. Oh, it's really good to see you. Thank you for coming. You as well. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you also for having the bit of subtle Vermont propaganda behind your head. So we can all see. Thank you. Benji, the way we introduce people on this program is we ask, what are you working on for the next year? So I'm curious, what's on tech for you? What are the big topics, the big projects that are gonna be taking up most of your mind and most of your time? Yeah, I think my focus for the next year is twofold. I think number one, a lot of the research that I've been doing in recent weeks, in recent months has been focusing on how to document previous waves of the pandemic and similar to the discussion that we're going to have today, discussing some of the lessons that we have learned. A lot of the research that I've been focusing on is on mortality, disparities in mortality along racial and ethnic lines, as well as states and regions of the U.S. So a fair amount of work on that. And I think there's still a lot more to learn when it comes to learning from the previous waves. And that leads to my next sort of year in the future waves. One of the projects that I've been working on works on hospital capacity and looks at cases and other infected metrics in the community to determine when hospitals could face issues of capacity. For example, in the Oma Crime Act last year, when people were in hospital beds, is there a way to sort of have an early warning system in place for hospitals and for communities? And so that's sort of the two areas that I've been focusing on most recently. And I think what will certainly take up a lot of time in the months to come. Oh, excellent, excellent. That sounds like very, both extremely important work looking ahead, but also building really well on what's been going on for the past three years. Thank you. Friends, if you're new to the forum, I'm gonna ask our guest a few questions just to start him spilling the beans on what he knows and what he's been thinking. But then I wanna yield a floor to you all. I wanna make sure that you have the opportunity to ask your questions and put forth your ideas. So as we go, start thinking of the questions you'd like to ask. I guess on a positive note, what are some of the great achievements that higher education can point to? What are some of the strengths that COVID revealed that we should know about and embrace going forward to higher ed? Yeah, I think I approached this question first as a higher ed and sort of a, I was experienced the higher ed, you know, COVID transition, I was an undergrad, as you've mentioned, at Middlebury during my junior year, I was actually studying abroad in China for the first part of 2020, left China in the end of January of 2020 and returned to the U.S. In February, completed about four to five weeks of education at Middlebury on campus in 2020 and then returned home to New York, you know, when most colleges dismissed on campus at the time. And I think for me that the first thing that comes to mind about what is higher ed in the positive space of what is higher ed learned from COVID is the ability to sort of have more flexible course modules. I think both in terms of timing, we obviously, we talked in previous editions of the forum about high flex and other methods of teaching, virtual, but for me, I think one of the sort of best examples of that was I took a class in Chinese, I was an East Asian studies major and my Chinese class in the fall of 2020 was actually taught remotely by a faculty member from our school in China. And so obviously, you know, that fall, most study abroad programs are suspended, we couldn't go to China. So instead it really lended itself to having the professor from China use his skills and his expertise and teach us remotely, which I thought was really cool and a really innovative mode of teaching that we had really never done before. Because I think obviously students were abroad using the faculty there in China, but it was really interesting to have that experience of being taught not only by someone who was in the country, but the class focused on Chinese social issues and it was really interesting to have that experience virtually. I think the second thing that comes to mind, especially when it comes to student life, the outdoors has been certainly used as a lower risk space for student activities, student events. And I think we really, you know, a lot of students in the higher ed space spent a lot of time outdoors, you know, in the past couple of years, I think more than students have really done before. And so I think using outdoor space and being creative in that way, we just were never really thinking about those issues. And I think the pandemic really prompted us to have discussions and reflect on those different, your ways of use education and space in that way. And that really counts in a campus like Middleburton, which has such a beautiful outdoor campus, but that can really apply around the world. Yeah, no, definitely. I think not only in the global footprint, but even smaller campuses in city spaces having tents, for example, or other different ways for students to have events and activities. I think all those were really important. What did you think of the changes in academic calendars that schools like Beloit did, where they tried to take a long semester and break it up into blocks so they'd be more flexible? Yeah, I think when it comes to that, you know, Colorado College being one that media comes to mind is having a block like system before the pandemic. And then they divide their year into nine or so three week blocks, you take one course. I think breaking up, you know, the semester was really beneficial. I know particularly from my own experience at Middlebury, we had decided, you know, the administration had decided to run the entire fall semester without any breaks. We usually had a four day, it ended up being a long weekend, a four day break in the middle of October, sort of a midterm break. And just for a number of reasons, you know, COVID transmission risks, we didn't really have that break. And that was incredibly tough, I think, for a lot of students, you know, to go an entire fall without breaks. So I think being able to break up the semester, being able to have other different flexible ways of teaching and delivering courses, I think is a huge plus. And I hope that college is really consider implementing some of those changes, maybe on a longer term basis going forward. Well, those are some excellent strengths. And friends, I would love to, you know, anything else that you would like to add to that pile of triumphs would be great. Welcome, Vanessa, I'm glad you could join us. Well, what do we do wrong? Where do we fall down? What are the mistakes that we made that we need to really address for the next crisis? Yeah, I think, you know, when it comes to the pandemic as a whole, we've always heard about, you know, the science changing. And the science has been changing to an extent, but it's also our understanding of the science, you know, coming from the beginning, for example, recognizing that COVID is more likely to be spread as an airborne disease, for example, in the air and seeing that, you know, disinfecting surfaces or washing hands while maybe useful is not the primary method to prevent transmission. And I remember, you know, and in that vein, I think a lot of colleges really went into the fall 2020 semester, just not knowing a huge amount like all of us about how to keep students, faculty and staff and even members in the community safe from COVID infection and COVID illness. And so I think, you know, one of the things I remember on my campus in the fall, you know, people were wearing masks outside, which was our understanding really at the time and was the measures that we had at the time. And I think that's obviously changed in the last couple of years. I think obviously wearing a mask indoors is a great idea, particularly in areas of high transmission or under surges. But those different types of small adjustments, I think, you know, I wouldn't say necessarily we got it wrong at first, but certainly our understanding of that has changed. I think also there was a lot of talk initially in the fall 2020 semester about a concept called harm reduction, which is often used in discussions on HIV and other different viral illnesses that basically you're using multiple layers of preventative strategies to reduce risk broadly defined. And I think one of the primary ways to do that, which I think some colleges may not have done enough is pushing and motivating students to do things outside and to have events outside. And sometimes colleges may have been overly prescriptive in terms of restrictions, of gatherings outside. I think what we know and what we continue to understand is that having events outside to an extent, regardless of the amount of attendees or people on one basis is infinitely safer than having events inside. So, you know, some colleges had patrols or people or other different types of ways to limit sort of gathering broadly defined outside. And I think at least in my opinion, you know, we should be encouraging those outdoor events and outdoor activities because the alternative indoor events would be a much riskier endeavor. Obviously, this was all pre-vaccine. I think the vaccine has certainly changed the calculus of a lot of those different types of planning and methods like that. Well, how did we handle the vaccines, do you think? You know, different campuses, the record seems to be different campuses have had different policies, everything from mandates to requirements to requests to varying depending on which vaccine brand was used and which stage of vaccination was used. What do you think? Yeah, I think that the conversation around vaccine mandates has certainly been politicized in the past couple months and, you know, a year or so. Research from the Davidson Colleges College Crisis Initiative has sort of tracked a lot of those mandates and has found that political drivers have been a huge factor in whether a college has a vaccine mandate or not. And the discussion around vaccine mandates, I think has changed also because our understanding of the limits of these vaccines has changed. You know, these vaccines are incredible. They prevent severe illness, hospitalization and death incredibly well. But particularly in recent months with the Omicron variant and other sub variants, preventing infection was never really a goal to begin with because we never really had discussed that in vaccine trials, but preventing infection is certainly not as attainable, at least fully, from the current vaccines that we have. Vaccines certainly reduce the likelihood of getting infected, but the concept of breakthrough cases and other issues, you know, they're certainly there. And so I think when it comes to vaccine mandates, I personally would support them and the reason would be because I think it provides a baseline layer of protection for colleges and also the surrounding communities. And I'm sure, you know, the town-gown relationship is something that we'll dive into throughout the course of the hour. But thinking about, you know, colleges do not exist in a vacuum and we've seen research in, particularly in the 2020 to 2021 school year where students return to college and people in the community were infected as a result of, you know, of transmission on college cancer. So I think, you know, vaccine mandates are certainly applicable still. When it comes to boosters, I think there's still a lot of open discussions on that. But I think also just as one final point, communication has been key throughout the pandemic, particularly communications from college administrators to their students and to their faculty and really trying to simplify, you know, vaccine requirements or booster requirements, you know, having a real simple explanation, having a real simple, you know, set of requirements. You need to have this, this and this to attend school in many cases, very similar to other vaccines that students take before they go to school. I think, you know, having that laid out simply, I think is a really good strategy. That's a really good point. I'm amazed at how much history you managed to elegantly bring together in just a few sentences, Benji. I have more questions, but already questions are coming in. And again, if you're new to the forum, this is the venue for you to have to share your questions. And we already have one coming up from our dear friend and several times guest, Tom Haymes from Texas. And Tom says, there was already a lot of data on transmission in the fall of 2020. Do you think institutions ignored this because it conflicted with the desire for normality? Yeah, I don't know necessarily if institutions sort of had ignored, you know, the data on transmission. I think it may have been a question of feasibility. You know, I think one of the biggest topics, particularly when I started writing my newsletter and working on research in the late summer was whether schools were going to return. I think a lot of schools attempted an in-person semester for some people and for some institutions that did not go very well, you know, particular institutions that shut down two or three weeks in the start of the year just because they had large COVID outbreaks. You know, I think there was certainly that quest for normality or returning to a normal semester. And it was just that the conditions in particularly in the summer and in the fall of 2020 were just really not conducive to having a restriction-free semester. And I think framing it not necessarily as restrictions, but safety measures and public health measures, you know, masking, for example, you know, having events outdoors, ventilation. I saw someone have posted about ventilation on the chat and that's certainly something that we can discuss in greater detail later. But, you know, ventilation and testing, all those tools can be used. And I think for a lot of schools, you know, my own undergrad institution included at Middlebury, you know, we had a very successful fall 2020 semester. And that could have been achieved, I think, even with the data that we had had, you know, at that present time. Well, good question, Tom. And thank you, Benji, for that really thoughtful answer. And if you're new to the forum, that's an example of a text question. So just hit, you know, the very bottom of the screen, press that question mark button and type in your queue so we can hear from you. Vanessa mentions ventilation. And I've got to just put in a Vermont plug because on the ventilation theme, University of Vermont students did invent the Vermont later, you know, nice open source ventilator, which is pretty cool. But I'm curious, what you think about some of the impacts of ventilation? By that, sorry, it's an ill-formed question. Thinking in part about how we responded to the need for more ventilation, how many across the spectrum, higher education, how many campuses, for example, open the windows or moved interior classrooms to exterior locations. What we did in order to increase ventilation, did we add technology? But then looking ahead too, I wonder, do you think we're gonna see any impact on higher education architecture? That is more building renovations, more building designs that have more doors, more windows, bigger windows, bigger doors, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, I think ventilation has certainly been a very complex topic and particularly at times sort of just a nebulous idea or concept just because it's hard for people to sometimes understand, oh, opening a window that's going to make a huge difference or buying this air purifier or this fan. And I'm not personally an expert in ventilation. I think one person who is is Dr. Joe Allen at Harvard was written extensively on not only colleges and universities but healthy buildings. We spend 90% of our time indoors and how do we make indoor spaces healthy, not just for COVID but for other respiratory diseases and for viral illnesses and even allergies. I think when it comes to sort of those different types of strategies, those can make an impact and they don't have to be that expensive. I think we've often heard of ventilation upgrades, particularly in the K through 12 school space. Less talked about in higher ed but in the K through 12 school, thinking about upgrading HVAC systems or upgrading other types of ventilation systems that schools may have but there are other strategies that may be cheaper. There's a device called a Corsi Rosenthal box which was developed by a scientist at the University of California and it's a homemade sort of ventilation machine that you can construct with a couple of fans and like those air filters that you put in your air conditioning, those like long unit things like a square thing and you put it together and those types of devices are extremely effective and while that may be sort of a cheaper method there are ways for schools and ways for indoor spaces to be upgraded in terms of ventilation. I think one other final point that I was just thinking about when there have been some studies on COVID transmission in colleges, particularly in the fall of 2020 in the spring of 2021 and a lot of the researchers came out and they found that most, the classrooms were not a source of transmission. Most of the infections that were happening among students at the time were happening outside the classroom which was understandable in residence halls, in other events, parties, social gatherings, all of that. So classrooms at least for the first year were incredibly safe. Students were masked, those were controlled spaces. Many classrooms had ventilation that was in place. And so I think when it comes to the next couple of years just thinking about ways that we can upgrade not just classroom spaces but residential spaces. I'm not saying, you know, every college needs to invest in having a full ventilation system in dorms. I know a lot of dorms do not have air conditioning because most students are not there for the summer depending on obviously what part of the country you live in. But thinking beyond the classroom and thinking into other spaces as well I think would be certainly very important. Well, that's fascinating. I'm thinking about that proposal for an enormous single dorm building that's been built once before Michigan. You may have seen this which had no exterior windows. Oh, yeah. And so that would be definitely a death trap in this case unless you had sufficient ventilation through other means. Thank you. Thank you for that question. Thank you for that answer rather. Eileen Frank in the chat shares a really nice how to build of course, the Rosenthal box. So that's a fun exercise for the maker-maker mind. Friends, again, this is the time for you to think about your questions, your comments and your thoughts. I have a few more, but I wanna make sure that I don't get in the way of the rest of you because this is your venue. One question I have, Benji, is thinking about town-gown relations. It seems like famously they can be quite vexed. I know my own alma mater, the University of Michigan twice was basically smacked down once by the state and once by its county for not following enough public health measures sufficiently, at least according to the county and state guidelines. And yet there were cases of universities that would bend over backwards to help their community by providing vaccines or providing tests. I'm curious, looking ahead a bit, what can we learn from this experience? I mean, what does COVID tell us about the future of town-gown relations? Yeah, I think certainly as you had mentioned, particularly in the early days of the pandemic and in the summer of 2020, the relationship I think between many colleges and the surrounding towns was certainly fraught. People were spending time at home in the local towns and they were dreading the possible reopening of schools. And in some cases wrote op-eds or letters in their local newspapers saying why students should not return and why colleges shouldn't go through with their reopening plans. And I think what we had sort of learned over that first pandemic academic year was that colleges can use their places in the town-gown relationship matrix, depending on sort of how the relations were before the pandemic, they can use that place and really approach it from a point of growth and from a point of improving that relationship. I think one of the best examples, there was an article in Politico a couple weeks ago and it was reported in New York Times, I think a year ago too, the University of California at Davis provided COVID testing for not only the students and faculty but for the surrounding community. And that had a huge impact just epidemiologically too. The cases in that area were significantly lower than cases in surrounding areas. There was a paper and a study on that. And so I think that's a really good example of a partnership that may not be that expensive. Obviously testing is costly, particularly at higher volumes but certainly a way that colleges can help the town serving as I remember at Middlebury, there were initial plans to, if needed, turn our hockey arena into sort of field hospital during the early days of the pandemic. They had drained the ice in March 2020 anticipating if there was an influx of patients and they would need more beds, the college volunteer to serve as a field hospital. And I think those types of examples, particularly learning from the past two years, providing vaccines, even some larger schools with medical academic medical centers serving as sites for vaccine trials, serving as also medical sites for the surrounding community, the surrounding community, university hospitals for example. And I think all of those different ways to help the community can certainly be transferred beyond the COVID sphere. And I think one of the ways that I've been thinking about this, maybe not necessarily for the local community but particularly for the college community is thinking now of, there's been a lot of talk of health and wellness over the last decade or so. But thinking of the college as a health hub and thinking about how colleges can provide health care and better supplies and tools for students, faculty, staff and even the surrounding community. Thinking COVID testing for example, COVID vaccines, potentially even there's been discussion particularly in some colleges in states where abortions are less accessible having colleges provide abortion, medication and pills and stuff like that. So really thinking, what can the college provide and what the college has the resources to provide? I think there's a really infinite range of possibilities there that college can continue to serve local communities. Oh, excellent, excellent. Thank you, that's a very positive look. And I love the idea of a health hub. I wanna come back to that later on before we end. In the chat, we've had people sharing different resources about some of the points that you've raised, Benji. And we've also had some, I think some suspicions about universities and colleges not doing enough. One person mentions campus deliberately not listening to data. Tom mentions not wanting to disrupt fall football schedules for example. And looking back on this, I wonder what did we learn about inter-campus collaboration? To what extent did we see colleges and universities team up together and work with each other, both locally but also at a larger scale internationally or nationally? Yeah, I think, I'll start on the local level and sort of within a college. There was certainly a lot, at least from some of my experiences and what I've been working on and reading, I think there was a lot of collaboration when it came to campus reopening. Working, as you have mentioned, between athletics and working with Student Life, working with academic departments, there were a lot of conversations on campus reopening. And I remember attending some forums where attendees really, although they worked at the same institution, they really had never met each other or even sort of worked with each other before. So the pandemic certainly provided a lot of the need for collaboration and just in general for people to work across different disciplines academically and as well at different offices and services on a larger college level. I think when it comes to collaboration globally, virtual, there was a lot of talk initially in the higher ed media and other places about virtual study abroad and seeing if that's a sort of a substitution for study abroad. I think in the short term, certainly, that can be possible. But I think in the longer term, I think, obviously now with a lot of most of the world being open, I think there is, we're going to go back to a sort of a normal study abroad experience where people will travel to places. But I think beyond the traditional study abroad experience, there are other ways that colleges collaborated globally for lectures and for speakers. I remember at least at Middlebury for the first couple of years, I was working on a couple of speaker series academically and through some other student life departments. And I remember every time we had to sign a contract with the speaker, we would fly them in, we would pay for them to fly in, they would have to stay somewhere. And for those who do not know over Vermont, the availability of a lot of different services that you would traditionally find in cities like car services and flights and hotels, certainly there were challenges there. So I think the virtual world when it comes to lectures and guest speakers and all different types of visits, I think there's just now an impetus to continue a lot of that. And I think that's great. I think it really, particularly for people who may not be able to travel, particularly for people who are schools that are located in areas where it may be hard to get to, there's a lot of room, I think, for collaboration when it comes to bringing, giving students a lot of those experiences that they may not have really gotten before in a fully in-person environment. Do you think overall, do you think we are more, the higher education is more digitally immersed than it was in say, January, 2020? I think so. I think for most of the population, I think I remember using Zoom a little bit, but for most people had never really heard of Zoom or Teams or blue jeans or any of those types of platforms. And I think a lot of those will certainly continue beyond the simple reason of holding a Zoom meeting because it may be safer than a fully in-person meeting. But I think a lot of those different technologies will certainly continue in the next couple of years. I think being able to use it for lectures, for guest speakers, for academic events, it is I think a newer version of, for some schools, particularly in the K through 12 space, having like pen pals for people with a exchange with the school across the world or something like that. The new pen pal has now sort of this Zoom entire experience and universe in that way where there's so many possibilities to hear from people, to really get people's stories and get people's experiences and use technology to do that. And I think what Zoom has done particularly is it has a lot of power and a lot of capability, but it's not a technologically hard tool to use. You don't need to have a full video conference room. You can set up a computer somewhere and you can have people join that way. And I think it's certainly lowered the barrier for forms of educational technology in that way because it's so easy to use and so easy to have those experiences without a lot of technology. That's a huge takeaway from this pandemic. That's a historic shift, a nudge forward in digitalization as the Europeans say. Lisa asks a question that relates to that, which is how has this changed pedagogy in higher education? Yeah, I think from my personal experience having, it was pedagogically quite challenging as the recipient of a lot of the teaching. It was pedagogically quite challenging in the spring of 2020 because a lot of faculty had not just, understandably, we had no real knowledge of using Zoom, but I think using Zoom to teach effectively was certainly quite challenging in the first couple weeks. In addition, obviously the just scenario and the situation around the country was quite grim at that time. And so I think it was hard mentally for a lot of students and faculty to have those rich pedagogical experiences in the first part of the pandemic. I think that certainly got better in the past couple of semesters now having into sort of a third pandemic year where in-person learning has resumed to in much of the country and many schools and most courses are in-person. But I think pedagogically it really opens the possibility to have other types of experiences that may not be in a fully lecture-based course. I know a lot of my professors at the time had sort of changed formats or teaching into, we talked a little bit, I think there's been discussion in education about the flipped classroom, having people prepare for a lesson by watching a lecture or watching a video and then having the class be more of a Socratic style discussion on the material. I think a lot of my professors had sort of used that method because it was just easier to have a sort of a video recorded lecture and then we could spend time in discussion. And so I think a lot of those different types of strategies will hopefully continue because I think discussion-based courses, to the extent that they're possible and other real types of teaching, not just discussions but other experiential activities, not just the traditional field trip of going to a place but really having those interactions and those connections leveraging those connections on a university front, I think we'll hopefully stay with us past these couple of years. That's a good call. That's a very good call. Thank you. In the chat, our friend Charles Findlay had made a couple of great responses to some of your notes, Benji. He even wants to add that Northeastern Boston campus just added a contraceptive vending machines, which is one way of using that campus space for community purposes. But he also adds that he thinks the mindset about digital technology has changed. They're more virtual meetings or they are added to in-person events now. I've been thinking for a while that we have a kind of high flex as a baseline, that what we're doing right now entirely online is one pole of that. And the other is, of course, entirely in-person, no digital component. But perhaps what we should be expecting is a kind of centering around that mixed virtual plus in-person environment. Yeah, I think there's certainly a lot of merit to sort of having necessarily a virtual first environment, particularly because it can be more inclusive, it can include a lot more people. But I think one thing that I've also been thinking about is particularly for me, I attended school at a liberal arts institution where 95, I think percent of students lived on campus. And the student life, the academics, everything would really occur in a central location, albeit a very large campus, but it's sort of one place. And I think that, I don't want to say it's in-person first, but I think there's still going to be a lot of anchoring, obviously, around the traditional college. I don't think virtual-only college experience will succeed in that way. But I think using virtual technology, using a lot of the virtual world in that way to have adding on to a centralized experience. But I think nothing can really replace people gathering in one space for an event or a class or something like that. Quite true, quite true. Friends, I'm driving this with far too many of my own questions and comments, which is ridiculous. And I'm going to, right now, ventriloquize a question. This came in actually from a really good friend who couldn't make it today and who is the head of NizerNet, one of our sponsors. And I wanted to thank her for this. Jeannie Casariz asked, looking ahead, the broader question is not simply what we have learned, but what new changes are we willing to undertake? I wonder if you want to wrestle with that question a bit. What have we learned about our ability to make changes? And what are the changes, at least in terms of public health, do you think higher ed has a capacity to undertake? Yeah, I'll start on the public health side and then I'll go on to the more traditional higher ed space. I think when it comes to public health, obviously a lot of the tools that colleges have used, testing, masking, a lot of those different types of tools, our way to use those tools has changed over the two years of the pandemic. Initially, a lot of schools were testing every week and that was a strategy that I certainly supported. We had done some research on what schools were using what testing strategies and testing every week was really, at the time, was a really good way to keep infections lower. I think in the post-vaccine era, and particularly in the last couple months, you certainly don't want everyone being infected at once, but you are going to have infections on a campus now and for the vast majority of people that will result in a mild case. And the threat of severe illness has been significantly reduced because of a vaccine. So I think our way to use the tools, for example, testing now when there are symptoms or having tests widely available, I think it's certainly a great way to use testing now, but not necessarily testing every one every week. So I think there's certainly still a lot of room for investment in those tools, testing, having masking widely available. I know Charles had mentioned having contraceptive tools available in vending machines. I know there was a school in California who was also doing that, having masks and having tests available in vending machines. So ensuring that those tools are widely available and equally accessible to members of the college community, I think is a change that that's a change that I think a lot of colleges have grasped onto and ensuring that students have the tools to be protected. I think when it comes to other sort of changes, COVID had obviously disrupted the traditional academic world and academic calendar in that way, having switched to a virtual method of instruction early on in March of 2020. But I think one of the things that at least at Middlebury and I know a lot of other schools have this before, we have what's known as a FED program where students matriculate in February, midway through the year, and then graduate four years later in February of that year. I know a lot of schools, I think Northeastern, for example, offers incoming first year students the opportunity to study abroad for their first semester and then matriculate on campus. I think there will be a little bit of motion towards sort of that flexible college experience, thinking beyond the four traditional years where you come in in one September and graduate four years later. I've seen a lot of students had taken semesters off because of virtual education. They may not have wanted to have a fully virtual semester. They may have had other plans to travel or spend a semester elsewhere. And I think that flexible college experience, I hope colleges will continue to embrace in the coming years, being able for students to have the opportunity to gain whatever they would like. If that means they take an internship for the fall semester and then come back to school in the spring semester, graduate midway through the year, if that's an option. I think a lot of those changes I think colleges are thinking about. And I think in my opinion should certainly embrace to give students the opportunity to explore their interests, both academically, pre-professionally, around the world, a lot of different areas I think for students to experience beyond the traditional on campus for all four years. Well, this is really good. Thank you. That's a great answer. That's a really, really great answer. Thank you, Jeannie, for the good question. We have time I think for four really quick questions before we run out of time. And one of them comes from Keith Young at CMU. And we just bring his up here on the screen for everyone to see. So will the post COVID ubiquity of virtual teaching lead prospective learners to more regularly consider alternative providers of instruction? That's a side effect of the net increase in digitalization. Yeah, I think in terms of thinking beyond traditional the role of a traditional college professor or instructor in that way, thinking about other ways to receive instruction. I think a lot of that, the availability and not just the availability of virtual technology but also the familiarity that people have with it. Now people are able to use technology in a classroom setting. People are able to use technology in other different, whether it's a guest lecture or something like that. I think there is certainly a motivation to continue having those different types of, at Middlebury at least we call them professors of the practice, which were practitioners who may not have come from a traditional academic PhD carrying background, but for those people who are experts in their relevant fields. I remember one we had was someone who served in state government, another one was a public health practitioner who had spent some time working in the public health sphere. And I think those types of courses, being able to offer those types of courses is certainly creates a really rich experience for students. Thinking beyond at least the traditional liberal arts offering those different types of, not necessarily pre-professional but courses that may be relevant to certain sectors of the workforce, courses that may be relevant to other areas that may not traditionally be covered in a college education. And I think being able to use outside instruction, not necessarily from sort of an outside entity or company but practitioners or people who may not be co-located on the campus, I think the virtual world certainly facilitates the opportunity to have those types of experiences and have those courses. And I hope that will certainly continue. That's a good answer. That's a very good answer. And thank you for the question, Keith. It's only to keep an eye out for. We have a question for our good friend, Ruben, who put the door. And Ruben asks, what do you think about the impact of long COVID? We have some number of faculty, staff and students who are enduring this curse. What kind of impact is that going to be having on college and universities? Yeah, I think long COVID is certainly real and is certainly a serious issue that has impacted many people regardless of whether they had a severe infection. There are people who had a so-called mild infection and even end up having long-term symptoms. I think long COVID just on a national and even global level is not, needs to be further studied and needs to be understood better. We don't know what's necessarily causing that, whether that's a persistent virus that is remaining in the body or whether that's some other, are there triggers, are there sort of things that make individuals predisposed to having long COVID? And a lot of that, hopefully in the next couple of years with more studies and more funding for research will hopefully make a lot of that clear. I think when it comes to the colleges, it's honestly quite challenging to provide support for individuals with long COVID just because we don't necessarily know what resources are needed to support these individuals with longer term symptoms. There are long COVID clinics that have been set up. There is no cure all drug or treatment that currently we know that can treat long COVID. So a lot of these long COVID clinics have focused on managing symptoms with other drugs, maybe repurpose from treating other illnesses. And colleges can certainly play a role in maybe referring people to those resources. But I think it will be very hard for a college to set up that type of support structure just because it's very hard to do even on a national level. But I think in general, being supportive, having flexible work schedules or having flexible teaching schedules, I think a lot of that can be used as not honestly a cure all or strategy, but I think will hopefully help a lot of individuals with longer term symptoms. And I hope our understanding will change in the coming months and years. And hopefully we'll have treatments or whether they're, for example, pan coronavirus vaccine or nasal vaccine will hopefully do a better job preventing infections which will prevent long COVID. I think a lot of those advancements will come in the coming years and we'll certainly have impacts if deployed impacts for college campuses and the community. Thank you. Thank you. Great answer. And Ruben, thank you for the question. Really, really good. Charles comes out of the chat and he asks a question which I wanna share up here. It's possible that the newer digital access that occurred will break up ownership of courses and degrees to create easy movement among all colleges. Yeah. I think there could be some sort of transferability there. I don't know that much when it comes to sort of degree, the intricacies of degree programs. But I think there is, particularly in sort of the model that I've been thinking about and we've discussed a little bit of having a flexible type for years. Where for example, and this has been, we thought a lot about this at Middlebury in particular just because Middlebury has a large global footprint. We own our own study abroad programs in 17 countries. I think it's now 33 or 34 sites around the world. We have a graduate school in Monterey, the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey and California. And so I think at least in Middlebury there's always been this conversation of having flexible academic programs for people. As a student, being able to take your first two years at Middlebury, spend your whole year abroad and your junior year and then your senior year and being able to get a head start on a master's degree program by spending a semester in Monterey and ensuring, because we own all of those programs, ensuring that all of those credits and all of those academic lessons will transfer across all those courses and all those places. I think that can certainly be applied to larger universities too and maybe even in between universities. I don't know necessarily too much about that. But thinking beyond the traditional four-year college and into other academic programs, I know a lot of schools have also done dual degree programs. I know we have one in engineering, the three plus two, you spend three years in undergrad and then two years in engineering school. I think a lot of those collaborations and partnerships I hope will continue and I hope we'll see new ones of those different areas of study and beyond pre-professional, beyond engineering, maybe having something more in the humanities or social sciences. I think we'll see some of that. Very nice, good foresight. Charles, thank you for that terrific question. In the chat, someone mentioned having, being able to take classes at two other institutions, BLI, it's their own College of Record. Now, let me ask, if I can point you a little further ahead of it, the late philosopher of science, Bruno Loutour suggested that we might view the COVID experience as a kind of test run for how humanity responds to climate change, which is of course a far vaster and slower moving crisis. I'm wondering if you could follow that logic a bit. What have we learned from this experience which is still going on of COVID? Might help point the way to how higher education and indeed society will be able to grapple with the Anthropocene. Yeah, I think one of the things I'll start off with, the College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College, which has been a tremendous resource and not only for higher ed research for COVID, but I think it was initially set up by Dr. Marks O'Connell there and the team as a way to study how colleges respond to crises and beyond necessarily a pandemic, they had started I think a year or so before the pandemic and obviously the pandemic being a large crisis pivoted a lot of their resources and their research to COVID. But I think beyond the pandemic, I think humans are resistant to change but somewhat adaptable, I think. And using the college community as an example and thinking about how communication works in times of crisis. As you mentioned, obviously the climate crisis would be a more slower moving crisis. There's not gonna be one Tuesday in March unless the college is under water, I guess, but there's not gonna be a Tuesday in March where instruction's gonna shift and there's gonna be this large change. But I think a lot of the lessons when it comes to communication, a lot of the lessons when it comes to support, one of the examples thinking of like supportive isolation for students who had COVID in the first academic year for colleges to provide those resources for students to isolate safely, to have food delivered for them so they can keep up on their studies. I think a lot of those lessons when it comes to those issues are transferable beyond the pandemic and into future crises. And I think there was no textbook on to handle pandemic. I remember when I was studying abroad in China there was sort of like in the study abroad office, there was a paper with some of the sort of potential issues that may happen. One of them was like security issue or terrorism or stuff like that. And there was one that said pandemic like SARS, which was the first SARS in 2003 and this being the second sort of severe SARS pandemic. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. I'd sort of never really heard of that before fast forward two to three weeks later. And that was certainly applicable. But I think there was no textbook for the pandemic. But I think there are lessons that we discussed on other issues. There are lessons that we can use beyond a public health crisis and into future, whether climate change or change in demographic crises or other different issues. I think colleges can still play a huge role in tackling all of those issues. Well, that's a fantastic point to end on. Benji, I appreciate your timing, your optimism and your ability to have wrangled and addressed a whole series of questions from a wide range of areas, everything from the thermometer to the future of higher education. Thank you so much. What's the best way to keep up with you and your work right now? Is that Twitter or somewhere else? Yeah, I think Twitter has certainly been a form that I've been using. I'm at BH Renton on Twitter. And I tweet about research that I've done, research that I've seen that's interesting. The newsletter, which Brian linked on the bottom left of your screen, is also a way to follow some of my previous work on higher education. I stopped the newsletter in May. It was a weekly endeavor. And I stopped it in May of last year. But depending on the work, I may also use that as a forum. So I think those two ways are certainly a great way to keep up with some of the work that I've been doing. Excellent, excellent. Well, thank you for all of that work, Benji. Congratulations on starting a great career. And we really, really appreciate all of your time here today. Thanks so much. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. And thank you so much for everyone for attending and really asking a lot of those great questions. Our pleasure, our pleasure. Take care. But don't everybody leave. Just pointing you ahead to where we're headed over the next few weeks. If you want to keep talking about this, please hit us up on Twitter using the hashtag FTTE. Or of course, you can find me on my blog, BrianAlexander.org. If you'd like to look into our previous sessions on the pandemic, we have a whole stack of them plus a whole bunch of sessions on other topics. Just go to tinyurl.com slash FTF archive. If you'd like to look ahead to our next sessions, go to forum.futureofeducation.us. You can see those. And if you want to share any of your own work, be it pandemic related or other, please just drop me a line. I'd be glad to share with everybody else. In the meantime, thank you all for coming today. This is a vital topic, although it is very heavy one. I appreciate the chance to meet with all of you and to enjoy your questions. Please everybody, stay away from me, at least for the next few days in person. Everybody take care, be safe, and we'll see you next time online. Bye-bye.