Leading Lipscomb through COVID

President Lowry reflects on managing institution’s response to global pandemic

Kim Chaudoin  |  02/01/2021

Originally posted on Jan. 15.

In the midst of a crisis, strong leadership is more important than ever. At Lipscomb University, President L. Randolph Lowry and his administrative team, along with the determination of faculty and staff and the support of the board of trustees, have navigated these choppy waters in such a way that the institution not only survived the storm but is thriving in the midst of the storm. 

Lipscomb Now editor Kim Chaudoin sat down with President Lowry in November to learn more about his approach to leading the institution during this season and what is on the horizon.

Click here to see Lowry's outlook for spring semester 2021 

 

LN: In your 15 years as Lipscomb University president, you have prepared for and managed through difficult circumstances, but 2020 brought a new challenge with the COVID-19 global pandemic. How has the Lipscomb community responded to this challenge?

RL: A key to effective leadership in these situations is an institution's ability to adapt to its new environment. When you approach a situation from the framework of “change,” that’s a word that people may be resistant to or that may cause fear or anxiety. But thinking about adaptability … that’s a different mindset of how do we adapt to whatever the current situation is.

The adaptability of our people to find their talents and giftedness and then adapting to the new circumstances early on was more than just pivoting to do something a different way. The leadership team adapted. Faculty and staff adapted. Students adapted

LN: Throughout the months of 2020, Lipscomb has managed the ongoing situation in phases. The first phase in February resulted in a decision to first re-locate and then bring home global learning students studying in Europe. The second phase in March resulted in requiring students to remain at home after spring break, and the third phase was to move academic programs to remote learning for the remainder of the spring semester. How did you manage this situation as it unfolded and impacted the Lipscomb community?

RL: At the beginning of a situation such as this, or any number of issues, one of the first steps we take is to quickly assemble the right people around the table to manage the given situation. With the ever-evolving nature of this pandemic, we've had to do that over and over and over again. 

So, our first priority was getting our students home from Europe, where the virus was more advanced. The quickly changing policies of those countries, the danger of the virus and transportation logistics were immediately challenges for us. 

After we brought our global learning students home, we then turned our focus to our students in Nashville around the time of spring break in mid-March. What was going through our minds at the time is that we didn't know how to treat it; we knew it was coming but we didn't know what to do about it; and we were concerned that it could take paths where we couldn't respond appropriately and resources in Nashville might or might not have been available to us. With so many unknowns it made sense for our students to remain home after spring break so they could be in familiar settings with people who love them and take care of them and to be able to use resources that were available to them. 

Like nearly every college and university across the nation, we decided to finish the semester with remote teaching, and we knew we had very, very little time to figure out how to do that. Before this happened, if we had given our community a year to prepare for transitioning to virtual teaching, they would have taken the full year to prepare for it. We gave them two weeks — and they were absolutely wonderful in their response. 

Our goal was to make sure our students were able to make the academic progress that they expected to make during spring semester. That was a real accomplishment. We also went to a remote work format, so most of our employees, except for those who remained on campus to disinfect and care for our campus and to prepare for the time when we could all be back together. It was a very historic moment in the life of our institution.

LN: The fourth phase was the continuation of remote learning through Maymester and summer terms. The next important phase was the decision to open for in-person and virtual instruction for fall semester. The sixth and final phase of 2020, was to successfully sustain ourselves through the fall semester to Thanksgiving break. Making the decision of what to do for the fall semester and then preparing for that had to be a new leadership challenge. 

RL: We had a vibrant summer enrollment that was almost as large as any normal year. So at the same time faculty were teaching during the summer, they were also preparing for their fall courses. 

When making a decision about opening in person or virtually for fall semester was the next important phase of our response, a lot of conversation in the media and higher ed centered on the ethics of opening rather than what the business or strategic impact would be. The ethical questions centered around the potential danger to the lives of students and employees.

Of course we talked deeply about the financial impact of not opening, but the biggest factor in our decision to open was that we heard from students that they wanted to come back to school. After six months of being at home and doing college remotely at the end of spring and then through the summer term, students were weary of not being able to be on campus and to be a part of the Lipscomb community. This was also a major disruption to these students, who are growing into adulthood and moving toward independence, to all of a sudden be thrust back into an environment where one can’t necessarily be as independent as you were at college. 

So the question we considered was whether or not our students would do what they need to do to protect themselves and the rest of the community they're in if we returned to campus. We felt confident that our students would rise to the occasion and they have. There was a substantial contrast early in the academic year between what we were experiencing at Lipscomb in a positive way and what a number of other schools, especially big state universities, were experiencing, where students and their behavior led to significant outbreaks that ultimately resulted in closing campuses for a time. 

Opening the campus for in-person learning was no easy. Every aspect of how we do what we do had to be re-envisioned and then implemented. The Incident Management Team, a group of six people led by Susan Galbreath, senior vice president of strategy, who met every week for months—and continues to meet weekly—to develop a plan for each new piece of the puzzle, played a key role. 

Kathy Hargis, associate vice president of risk management and compliance, scoured the country to make sure we had plenty of the supplies we needed to disinfect our campus and to follow our cleaning protocols across campus. This was done at a time when supplies were scarce—and she made sure we were taken care of then and in the long term. Dr. Kevin Eidson stepped out of his faculty position in the College of Pharmacy into the new role of director of health and wellness to think about the health piece and plan for the resources we need. 

Our residence life team had to be creative in how they moved 1,500 residential students into the dorms in a safe and socially distant way. The tremendous team in the Office of Student Life prepared for everything to be different—and yet still meaningful—from residential life to spiritual formation to campus activities and everything in between. They worked extraordinarily hard all summer to pull that off. Lipscomb Dining Services has been great—and the list goes on and on and on. 

We had to rethink our academic spaces and develop a flexible model that blended virtual with in-person learning to allow students who were sick or had to quarantine to be able to continue their academic progress. Academic and event management leaders were instrumental in measuring classrooms and developing a plan for making more than 100 classrooms and learning spaces safe for students. Our computing and technology teams installed new equipment in these spaces so every class offered could do so virtually as well as in-person in real time if needed. Faculty worked tremendously hard to transform their teaching plans and curriculum to fit into these new formats and to learn new technologies, and the Center for Teaching and Learning provided valuable resources for faculty during this time. 

What is amazing to me is how nobody grumbled or complained. We had a group of people who rolled up their sleeves and did whatever they needed to do. In the Biblical story of Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, you had a whole community coming together and saying, none of us can do all of this, but all of us can do some of it. I think that's a good illustration. With each difficult moment that comes, we at Lipscomb gather a team of brilliant people. Because we react quickly, we assemble the right team, the right team knows how to carry out their piece and we have a community that will follow them and help us get it done, we not only survive in these moments. We thrive.

LN: That decision to return to in-person classes in the fall was not necessarily in the norm, and yet, we did not back down from our decision. 

RL: We did labor a good bit privately in that decision, but there was also a sense of claiming a direction. That had to be done before we could rally people to accomplish a common goal. 

Leaders often find themselves in circumstances where certainty is not something that we are offered, but we still have to move forward. I couldn't see any other option that had any more certainty than the path we were on. In those moments, you gather all the information you can, get input and counsel from other perspectives and then make the wisest decision you can with the information you have.

LN: And now, at the time of this interview, we have passed Thanksgiving break and we have been able to remain open.

RL: It has taken each and every one of us doing our part to protect the Bison herd. This has been one of the toughest stages because there's a weariness that comes from a situation like this that is now in its tenth month. Our students are weary of life not being “normal.” Some are anxious.

But we have tried to be very intentional about caring for the mental health and wellbeing of our students in addition to their physical health. We gave them a break — Bison Break — a day that undergraduate classes were cancelled and our students had time to rest. We have added staff to the University Counseling Center staff, who has been working extremely hard to care for our students. It has also been challenging for our faculty and staff. But I think our community has adapted well, even though they wish this were a typical academic year. 

I am also pleased that through all of this we have been able to continue the employment of almost every one of our faculty and staff except in a few very limited instances. That was not the situation at many institutions across the country, and it was extremely important to me and to our board to take care of our employees. Some employees have been redeployed to other areas during this time. They have adapted well and have helped in important ways in those areas. It was essential for our employees to be able to continue their work during this time so we would be prepared for our students to return.  

LN: While we opened this fall in-person, on-campus, students, faculty and staff had the option to study and work remotely. Was that a difficult decision to offer that option? 

RL: It was important to me to show every member of the Lipscomb community that we care about them. There are so many unknowns with this virus. 

We have a small percentage of our faculty who are not teaching face-to-face and a small number of our traditional students who are completely remote this fall. With the technology that was installed in learning spaces across campus this summer and with the majority of employees working remotely for nearly six months this year, we knew that very engaging and productive activity can take place remotely. I hope when people look back, that people feel Lipscomb took good care of them during a very difficult time in their lives. 

LN: Lipscomb thrived in terms of enrollment this fall. Did that surprise you?

RL: We were very, very blessed with an enrollment increase this fall, but most schools were not. Nationwide, private schools are down about 4% in enrollment on average. We are up about 6% this fall, which is about 10% above other private colleges. That's pretty significant. One of the things we are now deciding is how much of that is due to COVID with people staying in Middle Tennessee who might have gone elsewhere and how much is people loving Lipscomb and coming in greater numbers? Planning for 2021 becomes tricky. 

One also has to recognize that while online education was a product some schools offered six months ago, now, every school in America offers online education, every faculty member has taught online classes and every student has taken an online class. Higher education likely will never return to what it was prior to this pandemic. The last few months have proven that the traditional way education has been delivered for hundreds of years isn’t the only way to do it. But Lipscomb has shown itself to be highly adaptable, innovative and creative. We can take those attributes that we've used over and over again the last 10 to 15 years and now apply them to new and exciting. 

LN: What is the spring semester looking like?

RL: In December, Lipscomb administrators met to review plans for the opening of school for the spring semester.  It is fully recognized that this is an extremely tenuous time because of the dramatic rise in the pandemic, especially in Tennessee. We are fully cognizant of the risks of both opening and not opening as we seek to navigate this unprecedented time. 

As the spring semester begins, we do so knowing that the impact of the virus continues to expand and that, even with the vaccine, we are still months away from containment. We also realize that we now possess the experience of an outstanding fall semester, we have a much better idea of which responses are most effective and we all have learned how to contribute to each other’s safety. We are thankful that our health care personnel have now received the vaccine and that our community continues to be relatively healthy. All will add to our capability of moving forward with our educational promise to students.

Considering all the information, we have prayerfully made the decision to stay on schedule, opening the residence halls and offering the same hybrid format as during the fall. Lipscomb Academy is opening for students as well. 

We are, however, instituting additional health and safety measures. First, we required all university students (undergraduate and graduate) to be tested for the COVID-19 virus prior to returning to campus in January. Second, we increased the staff and supplies in the health center in order to provide surveillance testing of residential students during the semester. This is done three times a week for our athletes in compliance with NCAA regulations and we will implement a plan to do it at least monthly for the residential population of students. 

Third, the Health Center will continue to be available to faculty and staff for testing with sufficient supplies of the Rapid Test (results in 15 minutes and accuracy at about 96%), and aggressive health assessments of students will continue. We have provided the needed facilities and services for those needing either isolation or quarantine. We have the capability of 80 beds in Bison Hall for such purposes and the ability to expand that resource if necessary. 

As we learned in the fall, there is no single, easy answer in dealing with a pandemic and managing it with a community of almost 7,000 students, faculty and staff. In reviewing the fall, we had an infection rate of only 7% for our residential students meaning that 93% of our students did not contract the virus and none who did were hospitalized. We had an infection rate of only 3% for the entire community meaning that 97% did not contract the virus. We are aware of only two employees who were hospitalized and they have recovered. 

While the current surge may make duplicating those numbers unrealistic, we believe that if the community is once again committed to our health and behavior protocols, we can have a successful semester and get to the point in the summer where vaccinations become significant in controlling the virus.

LN: What do you believe will be the future impact of the pandemic on our institution?

RL: We have to take a moment and realize the enormity of what this institution has gone through this year, what this community has done and the cost of it. But then we have to turn to the future, because we can't wait until this pandemic is behind us to get to it. The institutions that can adapt the fastest to this new reality will be the institutions that lead higher education into the next decade. Those that either linger too long or can't adapt will be those that follow the rest of them into the future or that don’t survive. I am confident we will adapt, and with God’s help lead Christian higher education.