What Pivoting Looks Like in a Pandemic

December 3, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has transformed us from a nation that shunned discussions of death to one that receives daily mortality reports. In the face of unimaginable loss — of friends, family, jobs, and freedom — many have adopted a “hospice mentality,” a state of mind where our best days are behind us and the future is bleak.

This is also the case in higher education, where even choosing a college has become a matter of life and death. We have moved from a time when colleges were a community’s lifeblood — providing jobs, culture, and diversity of thought and experience — to a time when many college campuses have become Covid hotspots, bringing rising infection rates and fear to the communities they once enriched.

When I started my presidency at Champlain College in Burlington, VT on July 1, our students had been sent home and the pandemic ravaged the country. Leading a college through a pandemic during a time of economic upheaval, social unrest, racial injustice, a divisive political landscape, and a climate crisis, has been the greatest test of my professional career. Yet I believe the true test of a leader is finding ways to pivot in an uncertain world and meet challenges with innovation and creativity.

We have moved from a time when colleges were a community’s lifeblood — providing jobs, culture, and diversity of thought and experience — to a time when many college campuses have become Covid hotspots, bringing rising infection rates and fear to the communities they once enriched.

Even as we approach a year of the pandemic with no end in sight, I feel optimistic about the future. And, I am not alone. A survey commissioned by Champlain College Online about career prospects, Covid-19, and the election found 66% of responders felt positive about the future. That positivity also translated into action, with two out of three respondents taking steps to improve their career prospects.

There are lessons to be learned for organizations, leaders, and individuals. For Champlain College, all that we learned from the pandemic this fall helps to fuel our optimism about the future. The following lessons are ones we will take forward in defining what 2021 looks like on our campus:

• Rise above differences: The pandemic gave us new opportunities to break down silos and build connections. Our teamwork across our campus, and our collaboration with the state of Vermont, the city of Burlington, and other Vermont colleges have been key components in our safe return-to-campus this fall, resulting in remarkably low infection rates on campus.

• Respect science: Champlain used data and modeling from the CDC, the state of Vermont, and the Open Smart college planning tool to develop its reopening plan. Weekly surveillance testing has allowed us to keep our finger on the pulse of the health of our campus community. A leadership team, including members of the College’s medical facility, staff, and faculty, meets regularly to review current on-campus and external data to inform decision-making.

• Adhere to protocols: We instituted a strict behavior/health pledge for everyone on campus. In addition to committing to wearing masks and socially distancing, students who missed the weekly test twice were asked to leave campus. After more than 15,000 weekly tests for our students, faculty, and staff, we have had just six positive cases since we opened in August. Our positivity rate of .04% is well below that of Vermont’s rate, which is the lowest in the nation.

• Be transparent: A real-time dashboard keeps students, faculty, state, and city officials, parents, and the Burlington community apprised of the school’s Covid status in real time.

• Get buy-in: The entire Champlain community embraced and was involved in executing our plan. The marketing department created a #LetUsCare campaign playing off the school motto “Let Us Dare.” Students worked with local mask makers to design and produce masks that were gifted to first-year students.

• Encourage innovation: Just as the health care sector embraced telemedicine, we experimented with ways to take the distance out of distance learning. As we pivoted to virtual learning last spring, Champlain professors who were dissatisfied with the limitations of technology platforms for their classrooms invented InSpace, an innovative solution enabling students and teachers to interact and collaborate just as they do in physical spaces. Our faculty is now using InSpace for classes and we have incorporated InSpace into our Admissions events for prospective students.

• Be a good neighbor: The pandemic reinforced how much colleges are an integral part of their communities. We have worked to become better neighbors by collaborating with the state of Vermont to help businesses recover, and with the City of Burlington to provide classes to community members looking to acquire the skills to find new jobs. Our students rose to the occasion as well. Education students created Covid learning kits for the local community; and first-year students conducted a safe-distanced food drive that collected 1,200 pounds of food for Feeding Chittenden and the Champlain College Food Pantry.

We know we have a long road ahead, but our lessons create a road map for the future. As we face a rising Covid surge, we all have the opportunity to define what pivoting looks like in a post-pandemic era. We can get through this, and even change the world, if we take this challenge as an opportunity to shake the dust off, embrace change, and rise above limitations to find innovative solutions.

A Fresh Start

December 28, 2020

2020 is finally behind us (cue the cheers). By all accounts, it was a most unusual year — devastating for many, inconvenient for most. Yet now we have a chance for a fresh start, a new year filled with hope and possibilities. The pandemic is certainly not over, but the change of the calendar provides us with an opportunity to turn the page and, hopefully, begin to return to the way we were.

When I think about the future, I am drawn back to lessons learned from my role model — my late father. From him, I learned the meaning of respect, humility, and courage. In his work ethic, I discovered an unrelenting focus on finishing whatever he started. My dad always found a way to rise above pettiness and rancor, something that we need now more than ever. He demonstrated that you can play a meaningful role in life from wherever you are. He encouraged us to rise above the ordinariness of life to strive for success, and then to pursue significance.

My dad also had the uncommon ability to connect with people and make friends, but more importantly, he possessed the talent to keep them close. His secret was that he understood the power of words. For more than 50 years he demonstrated the ability to make words rise from paper; to change lives, motivate the downtrodden, transform organizations, and benefit the Kingdom of God. He was a linguistical craftsman who could smell a splendid style from a respectable distance. If Ronald Reagan was the great communicator, my dad was the greatest communicator. He touched people he met along the way in a tone and tenor that were neither too stilted to scare the audience, nor too banal to dull their thinking or insult their intelligence.

That is a skill that has seemed sorely lacking over the past few years. Too often, our words have tended to be less inspirational and more confrontational. We have spent far more time shouting and arguing than listening and seeking a greater understanding of each other. Were he still with us today, my dad would remind us of the efficacy of telling it like it is; provoking thought, enthusiasm, hope, and maybe even unity. He spoke the truth with power, and felt the indignation of those who were stung by the words of truth. But he never wavered and he refused to put his life in reverse.

I lost my father in 2020, but his words and his example will stay with me forever. He had a sense of constructive impatience, something that all of us should embrace as we embark on this new year. He lived believing that nothing less than salvation was at stake and that God’s multiple blessings are contagious, eternal, and never-ending.

In our final conversation on the day he passed, he bid me “a ma rira” (I will see you later). Dad, I know we shall see each other again, and so I say to you — I will follow your example and urge others to do likewise. I will see you later and make you proud.

Benjamin Ola. Akande

9th President

Champlain College

Burlington, Vermont

Building Bridges

January 17, 2021
As we honor the legacy of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., I know I am not alone in trying to reconcile the soaring optimism of Dr. King’s dream with the disturbing events and images of the last weeks and ongoing and escalating racial injustices in our country.

Even in his own brilliant and poetic articulation of his dream, Dr. King acknowledged the gap between his dream and reality. In his famous speech, Dr. King said, “1963 is not an end, but a beginning.” Sadly, we are still at the starting line and this gap seems even wider today — nearly 60 years later.

There is power in dreaming, but how do we convert dreams into reality? I believe it starts with building bridges. Building bridges is important and difficult work — bridges between those who agree with us and those who don’t, between our ideas and our actions, between our past and a promising future. Building a bridge is one of the most meaningful, impactful skills that we can cultivate, whether in our personal or professional lives, whether on our campuses or in our broader community or beyond. As political activist, academic, and author Angela Davis said: “Walls turned sideways are bridges.”

Especially in this pandemic, when our obstacles now include distances, masks, and fear, building bridges is more critical than ever. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, while our Champlain College community is not yet all together on campus, I have encouraged us to build bridges with our broader community through learning. Our Burlington, VT community has compiled an excellent schedule of programming, including a panel and discussion hosted by the City of Burlington on reparations, as well as events hosted by Dartmouth College, UVM, and the Greater Burlington Multicultural Resource Center.

As MLK Day is also a day of service, the United Way of Northwestern Vermont has a list of suggested options for volunteering safely through acts of kindness or virtual, at-home, or socially distant activities:

• Create cards for patients recovering from COVID-19

• Letter writing to seniors in nursing homes

• Knitting blankets, hats, or mittens for the homeless

• Contactless food or warm coat donations to a nonprofit

• Individual neighborhood clean-up or “snow angel” shoveling

While the pandemic makes it more difficult to gather in person, we welcome these opportunities for community discussion, reflection, and bridge-building.

Our Work Starts at Home

March 17, 2021
I embrace the responsibility I have as a leader to help our community make sense of the world outside of Champlain College and to reflect on events that transpire. Yet it disturbs and saddens me when events rooted in hatred and division occur with disturbing frequency. Events that defy explanation. That are utterly discordant with the values we espouse as an institution and individuals. That raise again and again the question of how to make sense of the senseless.

The recent shootings in Atlanta, resulting in the deaths of eight people at three area spas, mark the latest in these events. The details are still unfolding, and it is unclear whether the shootings were racially motivated, targeting people of Asian descent. What is glaringly clear, however, is the focus on ethnicity as it relates to the impact of the shootings, and the fear caused by the escalation of violence against Asian Americans across the country. We stand with Asian Americans and people of Asian descent and condemn the violence and harassment they have experienced. Our thoughts are with the victims, and also with our own students and community members who are most affected by these events.

What is also clear is that racism comes in different forms. There are horrific acts that make headlines, and remind us that, tragically, there are still people who are bent on hurting others based on ethnicity or skin color. And there are other silent and subtle acts — no less damaging, and perhaps more encompassing — that provide evidence that discrimination exists widely among us.

Our actions in trying to address issues of hate should begin with a focus on what we can do to ensure that the root causes of events we’ve experienced in Atlanta and elsewhere do not take hold in our own community. We must continue to ask what we are doing right here at home to foster inclusion and engage across differences. We must continuously reaffirm and clarify what we stand for — equity, inclusion, social justice, respect, empathy — and what we unequivocally will not stand for — discrimination, marginalization, violence, and hatred. We need to hold up and champion these values, be seekers of truth and ambassadors for what is right.

This is the work we have ahead of us and the steps we must take to create the truly inclusive community we aspire to be — a community that is anti-racist, and where we all live, work, and learn together, harmoniously, in celebration of our distinctive differences and perspectives.

One Step in a Long Journey

April 21, 2021

Many of us listened live yesterday as jurors rendered their verdict on the charges against Derek Chauvin, who was on trial for the killing of George Floyd last May. As I process my own personal reactions to the news, I recognize that the trial and the events leading up to it have provoked a range of emotions and perspectives in our community.

Yesterday’s verdict was an affirmation that Black Lives Matter, yet it was only one step in a very long journey toward equity and social justice for all. This was one decision in one case with one victim, but it delivered a message that went beyond one tragic situation. The message was one of hope; that in America, truth and racial justice are valued, and those who commit such egregious and reprehensible actions will finally be held accountable. The 12 jurors who represent all of us spoke truth to power. That’s what makes yesterday’s rulings a major move forward for this country.

We acknowledge and mark this step, knowing full well that there is a long road ahead of us. Even in the midst of the news following yesterday’s verdict, there was another shooting and loss of life. As painful as that is, it underscores the point that we have many more miles to go.

Let us take this moment to pause, to reflect on the importance of what has happened, to strengthen ourselves for the journey ahead, and to care for each other along the way.