Education Innovation

20_08_15_Education_Innovation_Hour

20.08.15 Education Innovation Hour

Sarah McConnell [00:00:07] It's been a stressful summer for everybody. For students, parents and educators, will they be back in classrooms? Is online instruction worth it? And what if you don't even have a computer?

Donna Henry [00:00:20] So when we surveyed our students, we found that over half, just over half of our students came to college without a laptop, without an iPad. They may have had a phone, so they were using our computer labs.

Sarah McConnell [00:00:35] So that university in Appalachia responded last summer by giving every student, every faculty member, every staff worker an iPad that allowed to Telena Turner to finish her undergraduate program and to help her younger brother through the final stretch of eighth grade.

Telena Turner [00:00:51] I guess the second round of these packets, it got harder for my brother to to keep up with all of this work. He is not as enthusiastic about school as his sister. So I said, you know, like, let's let's try something different. And I said, you know why I'm home? And you can use my iPad. That's what I told my brother. And so that's what we did. We set up a folder and we downloaded Google Classroom and set him up and all the applications he needed right on the app had. And each day through the week that he would do a school work, he could get it and sit down at the kitchen table, log in, complete his work and submit it with just a few clicks.

Sarah McConnell [00:01:28] I'm Sarah McConnell and this is With Good Reason. In a moment, we'll hear how iPads are keeping that rural university operational. But first, when university shut down in March, John Broome made a couple of clicks on his iPhone and created a Facebook support group for some of his fellow professors. But he was stunned to discover hours later that 3000 educators had joined and now there are 30000 from all over the world. John Broome is a professor of education at the University of Mary Washington.

Sarah McConnell [00:02:03] John, you actually saw the pandemic coming when you were teaching your last class on grounds that very Washington. Tell me about that.

John Broome [00:02:11] Yeah, it was it was really a daunting experience. It was the end of February and spring break was about to start. And my wife and I were going to Malaysia a conference. And I remember that Thursday was the last time I physically saw my classes. I had to tell my students what cove it was because, you know, there wasn't a lot of focus in the United States, there was something going on in Asia.

Sarah McConnell [00:02:37] Even in late February?

John Broome [00:02:38] Well, yeah, even early February. You know, I don't really don't think it was on our radar a lot or maybe just our students radar. There was also because I was going to where, you know, our national news amount's told us the Covid was.

Sarah McConnell [00:02:53] You weren't predicting the whole of the universities in America which shut down. You were just thinking you might have to quarantine after Malaysia.

John Broome [00:03:00] Exactly. So, yeah, what I was telling them was when I go back, I may need to be off grounds for a week or two in my class online, but I don't know.

Sarah McConnell [00:03:09] So suddenly every university shut down. So students wouldn't come back from spring break and all the professors had to figure out how to teach online. What gave you the idea to create your little Facebook guide that went viral?

John Broome [00:03:26] What it really was, was thinking about my training. And I'm a teacher education professor. And so I've been trained in face to face and online and in a hybrid learning. And so I you know, I was trying to think of what could we do? What what could we start online to help people? And so I started with a Facebook group originally was called the Spring 2020 Online Learning Collective. And it was a virtual space that, you know, if you were on Facebook, you go log in to an ad. And in this space, we could help each other transition from face to face to online instruction together quite quickly, because a lot of us don't have the training on this. And some of us do. And so how great would it be for us to be able to connect online and teach each other how to transition pretty quickly?

Sarah McConnell [00:04:11] How soon did you realize, oh, my gosh, people are swarming to this place?

John Broome [00:04:16] It took about 24 hours for me to realize that something was happening. The first day, one person I did it now was like, well, what Mahuad so my my professor friends around the country. And then by the end of that day into the next was about 3000.

Sarah McConnell [00:04:32] And how many now?

John Broome [00:04:32] It is approaching 30000.

Sarah McConnell [00:04:34] Wow. What did you have that was attracting people and what was this moment. Was it the very week of spring break or right afterward?

John Broome [00:04:44] I really think it was right around the week after spring break. And so this really was a space for how do I use this hardware and software? How do I teach online remotely, but also what are the universities doing? And so it became quickly a place for people to kind of come together and compare university plans and policies, but also come a place for Kambah. For people to get together within higher education who understand each other, how the systems work, what we have and what we don't. And through that camaraderie came a lot of humor and also solidarity.

Sarah McConnell [00:05:18] Initially, what were the conversations like and how did they change?

John Broome [00:05:22] For many people, it was how many days you get to plan some. Some universities gave their professors and educators the weekend and some extended spring break and gave each other two weeks. And the focus really was how do I finish the spring semester?

Sarah McConnell [00:05:38] And was there a lot of sharing of software and best practices?

John Broome [00:05:41] There was there was a lot. Some people came with examples and templates, other people, again, with questions. A lot of it was sharing on YouTube how to use different software programs. And so it was very much, you know, a space of kind of low tech, high tech experiences. And how do I make sense of this?

Sarah McConnell [00:05:59] And is it still going strong in the sense that are people still very much using it and communicating with one another?

John Broome [00:06:06] There are a lot of people took the summer off. If you can say that. But more recently, there's been an uptick of people adding the site and the questions are starting to come back up of, you know, how do we transition to this? Here's a university's plan. What are you all doing?

Sarah McConnell [00:06:21] So if somebody wants to go there higher ed learning collective, how do you find it? Just typing that in your Facebook search?

John Broome [00:06:27] Yep, you know, just type that in and answer a few questions.

Sarah McConnell [00:06:30] If people go there, what's the one thing they're most likely to want and to get from the site?

John Broome [00:06:37] Honestly, I think it's really how do I be successful in the fall semester? You know, what can people help me with? What questions do I have? A lot of people could pose questions almost like their own. Sorry, but then you have tens of thousands of people in higher education giving them examples, responses.

Sarah McConnell [00:06:55] I saw one question, for instance, where someone said, look, I'm teaching a general education class online and I'm thinking about going with no grades, not assigning grades to students. What do you think? And a lot of very wise people chimed in and said, you know, this particular generation of rising college students pretty much needs and is accustomed to grades and they need them for reinforcement. Probably not a good idea. I thought that was interesting.

John Broome [00:07:23] Yeah, there are a lot of questions like that. You know, do I front load with, you know, here here's how I'm going to grade or not grade. Do I require students, Heather, camera on or off. Do I meet? My students should be reconsidered the way we've been doing this. And for many, it's it's. Are you still as potentially rigid as you've always been? Are you going to give the same assignments or you're going to maybe reconsider your assignments? Then even with that, some people question, you know, each other in terms of it, and we open those discussions and on having good deliberation about how we do things and why we do things in a space like this. But there are a lot of people who are reconsidering how they teach and you know, how they've done things for so long, especially with so many options or opportunities now with technology that the softwares that really can assist the process.

Sarah McConnell [00:08:11] So what do you think the future will bring for higher education? Do you think many colleges and universities are not going to survive this pandemic?

John Broome [00:08:23] I think the future of higher education is uncertain. I think we won't know for many of us until the first day of class with how many students are enrolled, tuition to those of us who are teaching hybrid. How many students to have room and board and are eating on campus as a source of our budgets. We all planned for this in our universities are working very hard planning for this, but we don't know until we know how much money we have. Well, we do know is that we are going to struggle to open and there is going to be budget losses, regardless of what we do know is we're going to have to do more with less. There will be closures there. There is no way there won't be higher education closures. And I think, you know, there is going to be a lot of debate around what is the value of online teaching versus in-person teaching. Do people really need to go to college physically, go to, you know, academic space and that they learn there are fair questions asked? There's definitely maybe a space within online instruction. Maybe the growth of online university is wrong line structures. But one thing I think this really shows is the great inequities among our universities and the amount of resources we have. We don't. One thing it definitely shows is the great inequities of our students and how much they rely on their physical college campuses, how much they rely on the computer labs, how much they rely on the dorms, and what it means for them to be at home or in a living situation off campus, not be in dorms. I think what this will show, if anything, is greater inequities among our students as well.

Sarah McConnell [00:10:02] You mean if they're two students, one rich and one poor and they're both on grounds for four your college experience, they get a more similar equitable learning experience. They do if they're each at home learning online.

John Broome [00:10:16] I would say the inverse on touched on campus. What I'm saying is for, you know, if you have a large number of students who have home insecurities and food insecurities in our country, you a lot of students who don't have, you know, really good Internet access that's consistent for them to dial into a class. Right. To zoom into our class. And so for many students, you know, university settings are more of a safe space. You're about to provide food and housing, but also provide those technological needs on campus with broadband's and libraries and computer labs so they don't have it on.

Sarah McConnell [00:10:50] You know, the U.S. college system is famous and flaunted for that full immersion experience with dorms and college sports and clubs. Do you think our system is much less COVID, friendly than the way they do it in Europe and Asia?

John Broome [00:11:06] I think potentially, you know, the way the way we frame the college experience, the way we sell the college experience, the way we say, you know, college starts in kindergarten. It requires students to be on campus and in classrooms and in clubs and activities and attending sports events or playing in those events and being in clubs. And so we do have this really traditional mentality of what college is and what it's not. Also, and, you know, how we grade our universities are ranked our universities comparison. It's what it means to go to a good college and what it means to have a good college experience. And so I do think, you know, that that does play a role in this. And it obviously plays a role in this with the budgets, with, you know, a lot of our budgets relying on on tuition and room and board and food. If you're not on campus and in dorms and eating, even though there is tuition, you know, what does it do to our budget systems? And so we have to reconsider and reimagine what budgets are for universities and how they're run.

Sarah McConnell [00:12:08] What do you think is going to happen to jobs for professors?

John Broome [00:12:14] I think I really don't know what's going to happen for jobs to investors overall. What I see and what many see now are slow trends of adjunct forces not being rehired. We see small numbers of university and tenured professors being let go. We see departments being eliminated and a program is being eliminated. I think it's a really volatile time to be in higher education than to be an educator. You know, we've always had this growing adjunct force, which is easily not renewable and not reliable. But even with what we're going through right now, the job job insecurity is facing tenured faculty. And I think that's something that is really on everyone's mind. And I think for many faculty members, whether they are they're a tenured tenure track or their adjunct current structure lecturer. Many of us are watching to see what happens to our budgets when we start the semester and in just a few weeks, how much money do we have? And what is sustainable, even from the fall semester to the spring semesters, is what decisions have to be made based on how many students are coming to campus this year online or in person.

Sarah McConnell [00:13:23] Does your school know that answer yet?

John Broome [00:13:25] I don't think any school knows an answer yet. I think we're all trying. I think we all make plans. My university has been very supportive in terms of how we're approaching this. They're trying to provide, you know, budget numbers and projections where people don't lose their jobs, where we have openings. You know, we won't have open calls for jobs. We will we will close those positions. Some universities, which is scary. Some universities just cut positions. Other universities try to make sense of what what they can do, what they have and are trying really hard not to have everyone fired or let go. And so there's this really interesting and really anxious interplay of the next few weeks or what's going to happen, because, you know, if anyone tells you they know, they don't know.

Sarah McConnell [00:14:12] You know, about a month ago, colleges said we're gonna have a hybrid model in the fall. Students will come back. Beyond grounds, we're going to have all kinds of measures to try to protect them from getting covered in social distancing. And professors will probably teach big courses online and small classes in person or they can be online. The reality, which you say is that almost every professor is going to be teaching online whether students are on grounds or not.

John Broome [00:14:44] Not entirely. There are a lot of universities still trying to approach from a hybrid model. And while there's a been a growing number, universities going completely online or the number of online classes rising problem the last few weeks, there are still some who are who are approaching teaching in a hybrid model.

Sarah McConnell [00:15:02] You have colleagues who know they're going to be face to face with students in the fall.

John Broome [00:15:06] Yes, that's true. I have colleagues across across the country who'll be teaching Face-To-Face in the fall.

Sarah McConnell [00:15:10] Indoors?

John Broome [00:15:12] Indoors by choice.

Sarah McConnell [00:15:14] And masked?

John Broome [00:15:15] They'll be masked and students be masked. Yes.

Sarah McConnell [00:15:18] Interesting, will you?

John Broome [00:15:19] I'll be teaching online in the fall and that's just to structure our programs. The hard thing about all of this is for it even the best plan. It's not entirely predictable. And so, I mean, I've seen universities make incredibly detailed, very thorough plant spending hundreds of hours of their summer on this stuff and just go online. That's the trend that's been happening and so it's going to be interesting to see. But it's it's scary. I mean, this whole thing is very scary.

Sarah McConnell [00:15:51] John Broome, thank you for talking with me on With Good Reason.

John Broome [00:15:55] Thanks for having me.

Sarah McConnell [00:16:01] John Broome is a professor of education at the University of Mary Washington. To go to his Facebook group, visit our web site. Coming up next, how do you do online learning without a computer? Donna Henry never dreamed last summer when her college in Appalachia sent students home with free new iPads that those same iPads would save the day when the pandemic struck.

Sarah McConnell [00:16:35] Donna Henry is the chancellor of the University of Virginia College at Wise. Donna, last summer, you sent students, faculty, staff, everybody home with iPads. This was long before you could have known the pandemic would close all the schools down in the spring. How much of a difference have the iPads made? Once everything collapsed into the digital realm.

Donna Henry [00:17:02] The iPads for us really gave our faculty a platform so that they could be connected to students with a true understanding of the technology on hand. So, you know, imagine, you know, you're teaching your class face to face and all of the sudden the students aren't there any longer by having an iPad and that framework, they could then know what they were sharing, how the students would receive it, how they could communicate with students. So that platform really enabled some creative work from our faculty.

Sarah McConnell [00:17:38] But why iPads, wouldn't it have been easier for faculty to just do this on laptop computers? Every student would have a laptop. Every faculty member has one.

Donna Henry [00:17:48] So affordability was part of the reason for going with the iPads. They all have keyboards. They have smart pencils. So students can draw. They can take notes. One of the things that the faculty were so excited about is that, you know, with the iPad, you can sit with a pencil, the smart pencil and take notes. And there's a lot of studies that say using the hand to take notes versus typing actually helps to increase your memory of what it is you're taking notes on. So that was part of it. And then, you know, whatever you're doing on your iPad, you can basically through the Apple TV app, push it up onto a screen so that everyone can see what's going on. So if you have a you know, if you're face to face with a class full of students, you could ask anyone in the classroom to share that project or what they're working on with a full class.

Sarah McConnell [00:18:43] What was the original motivation? This project started two or three years ago. What started it off? Was it thinking your students don't have iPads or laptops or wanting everyone to have the same digital platform?

Donna Henry [00:18:59] It really was focused on our students and access. So at UVA wise, our students, many of them are first generation. Many of our students are Pell eligible. So they come from families who don't have the resources to really, you know, provide access to technology. So when we surveyed our students, we found that over half, just over half of our students came to college without a laptop, without an iPad. They may have had a phone, so they were using our computer labs. And, you know, while that's okay, you know, that gave them access. We really wanted to try and level the playing field for those students and thought that, you know, using a technology that everyone could have would make it better. So our work was to to pull all of those pieces together and really get access to our students of the technology.

Sarah McConnell [00:19:57] What did you notice was happening? The student? I mean, coming to college without an iPad or laptop of their own? Some not even with smart cell phones. It's just astonishing. Right? Right. How do you do college level work without that basic equipment these days?

Donna Henry [00:20:15] Right. It's a very difficult thing. And faculty, you know, had to really tailor their instruction differently because of that and to ensure that students had time to get to labs to to do their research and their work. Once the faculty knew that students would have access to technology that everyone had. They were able to think differently about what they assigned, how they assigned even faculty, you know, in traditional disciplines that are not so technology reliant like, you know, history or English have said that it's really changed the way they work with their students, because if a student submits a paper to them, they can actually edit it with their smart pen, mark it up and send it back before the next class period so that there's a lot more feedback going on between the faculty and the students as well, which improves the writing process.

Sarah McConnell [00:21:13] Just to be clear, if somebody had waved their wand and said, you can have all MacBook airs laptops from Apple, the latest or all iPads, would you have chosen the laptop?

Donna Henry [00:21:26] You know, knowing what I know now, I may have. I was actually biased toward the laptop before getting the iPad with the the technology, but it has even changed the way I work and going to meetings. I'm not printing. Out as much as I used to. You can open documents right on them, so if I have an agenda for a meeting, I just pull it up on my pad and I can take notes on it and write on it. If someone you know, as we're doing our magazine and I get a draft of the magazine to edit, it used to come into my office. Someone would print it for me. I would mark it up. We would then SCANA and send it back. Now it comes directly to me. I open it on my pad. I can mark it up and send it back pretty quickly. So it's really changed, you know. There are small things that just change the way you work.

Sarah McConnell [00:22:15] So before you actually distributed the iPads or procured them, you actually flew out to California, to Apple headquarters to see how to operate them and what was possible.

Donna Henry [00:22:27] Yes, we did. So we took a team of faculty out to Cupertino and spent a couple of days in Apple headquarters really getting a sense of, you know, well, what does the iPod do for you? That takes you beyond just a typical laptop or computer. The one thing that helped me think about the iPod differently was that you can do coding on my parents. And, you know, as you think about the future of work, trying to get everyone to understand at some level how to code, I think is an important thing. And with the iPads, we've been able to develop some classes where students can learn some basic coding and then if they have an interest, they can move on and do some other coding classes, you know, up to a minor in digital coding. So, you know, that's opened up that whole area for us as well.

Sarah McConnell [00:23:27] So in that first semester after everyone was given an iPad, what sorts of transformations did faculty members report to you?

Donna Henry [00:23:35] That's right. So last fall, we asked faculty to volunteer to take an iPad and work with it in their classroom. And, you know, had gotten, you know, good feedback from those faculty. As a matter of fact, when the call went out, the progress that I you know, I don't think anybody's really going to want to do this within 45 minutes. The 30 iPads were gone. So there was some excitement around trying something different. One of our science professors sent me an email this spring and said this has really revolutionized the way she teaches her labs. She said that the students use the iPad to collect data. She said if they're doing an experiment and they get results, they can actually draw the graph real time and see if the experiment worked. And she said she never thought that would be possible.

Sarah McConnell [00:24:27] How many students and faculty do we have?

Donna Henry [00:24:30] Just over 2000 students. And we have 350 faculty and staff.

Sarah McConnell [00:24:37] Do you advocate that this be implemented by universities elsewhere that are similar in size and circumstance, do you?

Donna Henry [00:24:45] I think so. I believe that this has been life changing for our students. Another example just occurred to me, and that's from our athletics program. So all of our coaches have iPads. And what they were initially excited about was that once students are on the road traveling to competition, all of the student athletes would have access to technology so that they could keep up with their work from campus and do their work while they're on the road. But I don't think any of the coaches realized there's an app that you can set the iPad up. And as you're shooting baskets, it will measure your arc and we'll give you feedback on your shots so that you can improve your shooting. So I noticed last year that we've gotten much better at doing free throws. The coaches said that it's because the students are using the app. They think it gives them better feedback than the coaches did the free throws.

Sarah McConnell [00:25:48] I think that's phenomenal. Right?

Donna Henry [00:25:50] Right.

Sarah McConnell [00:25:51] I want to try that! You don't want to tell the competition.

Donna Henry [00:25:55] That's right.

Sarah McConnell [00:25:59] In all honesty, what are your plans for the fall? Are you opening with caution? And what trepidation do you have about what we're really going to face come September?

Donna Henry [00:26:11] Yeah. You know, we we are opening with caution. So we have students planning to move in. Our enrollments are doing well. So we actually have a larger incoming freshman class than we did last fall, which is kind of amazing in and of itself. We're prepared with housing. I think, you know, we've done as much Covid planning as we can do. But one thing that I found with this pandemic is. Every time you think you have the plan fully in place, another wrench kind of comes in and you have to tweak the plans. So I'm trying to keep all my fingers and toes crossed.

Sarah McConnell [00:26:53] In all honesty, let's say colleges open up and professors are protected. They're teaching online, but students are in dorms. Sammie's safely and told not to congregate. What happens to the families when they all go home at Thanksgiving? That, to me, is a little bit scary, right?

Donna Henry [00:27:11] As a matter of fact, some of our colleagues across the Commonwealth and we're beginning to think about this. But what they've decided to do is a week before finals and during finals week, they're planning to require that the students actually stay in an almost self quarantine. Right. For those two weeks, because knowing that at the end they are going to be traveling home.

Sarah McConnell [00:27:38] Well, Donna Henry, thank you for sharing your insights with me on With Good Reason.

Donna Henry [00:27:43] You're very welcome. It was a pleasure speaking with you.

Sarah McConnell [00:27:48] Donna Henry is the chancellor of the University of Virginia College at Wise. This is With Good Reason. We'll be right back.

Sarah McConnell [00:28:06] We'll come back to you With Good Reason. I'm Sarah McConnell. We all miss being out and about. But some other species are glad we humans have toned it down. In fact, in some ways, quarantine has been a boon for conservationists and animals.

Anneke DeLuycker [00:28:22] There is some indication that our reduced human activity, you know, our reduction in flying in planes or driving may have changed animal behavior as well.

Sarah McConnell [00:28:37] We'll hear more about animals during quarantine in a moment. But first, a look at restaurants during the pandemic. Many restaurant owners have been crushed under the weight of the shutdown. And my next guest says those who survive will have to get creative to lure people back. David Barrish is the dean of the School of Business at J. Sargeant at Reynolds Community College and specializes in culinary arts. David, do you remember the shock you felt when we first started going through this? How complete and utter it was?

David Barrish [00:29:11] Yes. And I was very empathetic, having grown up as a restaurant operator. The first thing I thought about is all the perishable inventory that's in refrigerators and what's going to happen to that. And then the cash flow that's going to impact the operators. And then just the fact that a major social element of our community is on hold for right now. So not only are operators being impacted, but just my neighbors and myself, very hard to envision what it would be like until we get to the other side.

Sarah McConnell [00:29:43] Are you somebody who used to frequent a lot of restaurants nightly, weekly, or do you prefer to stay home and care?

David Barrish [00:29:50] I certainly love to go out with with my wife. And we we like to go out socially with groups of friends in particular. However, growing up as I did, I love cooking and my wife was cooking. I've got a mature wine cellar, so we find ourselves eating at home more often than we used to. Sarah, one of the restaurants that we recently discovered, we decided we wanted to go to Williamsburg, Virginia. There was great fresh air to be had. A pleasant surprise was that a pedestrian area was now equipped with umbrella tables and one of our favorite restaurants was repurposed into a southern Italian Sicilian style restaurant. Some people know that address as the Trellis restaurant, which had a just a wonderful run, a great impact on Virginia as well as national cuisine. And now it's found a rebirth as well. Piazza and lo and behold, we had these great sandwiches made on Spadina Bread even after having been on vacation in Italy last year. For weeks, we had never stumbled across Pier Dino bread. And what happened is we walked out of that impromptu lunch having a great new recipe to try at home. So I think good things can come about.

Sarah McConnell [00:31:02] And is that a thought you have that amidst the great tragedy taking place on many levels, including across the restaurant industry, we're also seeing a lot of innovation and growth?

David Barrish [00:31:15] Sara, I've always been a believer that out of adversity comes opportunity. It's compelled us to really think hard about what kind of competitive assets and skill sets we bring to the restaurant industry and how to capitalize on it. A real good example of the ghost kitchens that are showing up where the kitchens opened up with no intention of opening up the dining rooms. And they're operating independently, either as a commissary or for curbside or takeout service. Another good example in Richmond, Virginia, is a restaurant called Notable, any Italian restaurant. And the operator made the wise decision when we just convert my dining room to a market. So if people are cooking at home and they're distancing more so with them, come see me for these great traditional imported Italian ingredients. And they can have the same kind of great food that they would have at nota bene for right now.

Sarah McConnell [00:32:08] What are some other changes that you think will have legs going forward that you're seeing emerge in restaurants?

David Barrish [00:32:16] Well, first of all, I've got to say that I empathize completely with those people that were brave enough to put their their life savings at risk or to or to acquire venture capital. I think it's heartbreaking for these people. But I also think that for the longest time, we've had way too many restaurant seats. I think to answer your question, we're going to see a reduction in the number of seats in the area. So there's going to be restaurants closing and it's somewhat Darwinian. I think that this is survival of the fittest. And some people that we're just speaking by and some tiny margins have probably had to do some soul searching and think, is this something that I'm still willing to do? So I think that's going to be a megatrend nationwide, not just regionally. I think you're going to see stronger restaurants, but fewer restaurants. I think now that people have been at home, they're thinking, you know, I get by without that 30 hour appetizer or that 70 dollars seafood tower.

David Barrish [00:33:15] So I think it's going to be harder for operators on the other side of this to be putting out some of these price points, that custom. Have learned to live without. Now that people know how to make their own pizzas or how to make a reduction and make a pan sauce or any of these other corner things that they used to count on chefs to do for them. Now that they've demystified it and they know how to do it. I think restaurant operators are going to have to take it to the next level and say, well, what can I do to attract new customers or bring back my old customers that they just haven't seen before and haven't tried and haven't mastered?

Sarah McConnell [00:33:51] So, if the restaurant industry has revolutionized, what is it doing to culinary education schools? Right?

David Barrish [00:33:59] Well, we and I'll speak directly to the culinary school at J. Sergeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond, Virginia.

Sarah McConnell [00:34:05] Yeah.

[00:34:06] We have a thriving culinary program that's about to move to the next level. We were taken by surprise in mid-March because prior to that, students would come to our downtown campus in their chef uniforms with their with their tools, come upstairs, and then they would learn how to cook and learn how to assemble meals. And they had great instruction from our chef instructors. Mid-March came and we made the wise decision to protect our students and faculty. So we shut down our campuses for instruction and we had to move to a online mode using using zun technology. What we opted for and as the dean, I've really pushed this with all of my professors. Let's go ahead and do a hybrid delivery method. So as much as possible, students can learn independently on their own time so they could you know, somebody might be studying how to bake bread at four in the morning. And what would happen is that hybrid portion of the class they would do prior to the demonstration. And then what would happen is one day a week they would go to the curbside at her downtown campus and pick up their ingredient kit. And my professors all assembled, we call it Meson Plus. And it's all those little bits of ingredients that are used to make a recipe. So you would come by, pick up your bag of meals, and plus for this week's lessons, go back home. Now, what you've done is you've read and you and you've studied in advance. Now you've got the ingredients in in your home kitchen. You would turn on your computer, you would go to the zoom link. You would see your instructor in the campus kitchen doing the recipe and you can cook along with her, along with him. And we just found it. It was amazing. The students were having the time of their life and they could share that with their family. It was great.

Sarah McConnell [00:35:52] What's the plan at J. Sergeant Reynold's for the fall? Are you going to be in person fully or hybrid?

David Barrish [00:35:59] We are going to be doing a hybrid. We are going to make sure that students come to campus ready to cook. So when they come to class, they can go right into the kitchens. And as I mentioned, we're opening up in the east end of Richmond. These are people on the margins. And these are people that are really in need of a career. And we want to be able to help them become self-sufficient.

Sarah McConnell [00:36:22] You know, there's some big names in the industry like the DC based chef Jose Andres, who've been calling loudly for restaurants and the industry to change things up, support immigrants more, pay more, offer extended leave to employees. Do you think we'll see other chefs and other restaurant industry leaders following suit in making those calls for a better life for the workers?

David Barrish [00:36:50] I will say almost every operator that I know and I know, quite a few of them are very big hearted and they love their employees and they're wrestling with that in the end in the very lean margins, profit margins. And as much as they want to be able to provide for health care and benefits and some safety net. It's a challenge. But I think this has really been a call to action. And they realize that if they want to have employees that that build a career, not just a job, but build a career with them, they're going to have to offer some motivation and do something for their employees. So that insecurity was taken out of the mix. So I'd like to believe that this is an opportunity to enrich, enrich the packages that are offered to employees. So we'll see what happens there.

Sarah McConnell [00:37:41] I just read a piece in The New Yorker by a New Orleans chef with very progressive ideas who's calling for restaurant owners to abandon pursuit of the bailout money and instead loudly advocate for policies and government programs that provide the safety net that the employees need.

David Barrish [00:38:04] Well, as a as a capitalist, I do want to see the market turned to itself. I think we have to be a little bit careful about how much we call upon the government. But I think that in times like this, that's for the safety net has to be available. But once we're on the other side of the virus. The operators need to figure out how the capital market can can go ahead and provide those kinds of solutions. And there's wise things that happen. I mean, what a lot of employees are highly compensated through gratuities and tips that come directly from the employee or from the customers. And then there's other employees or employers like those AndrÈ's that just dig deep and say, I'm going to carve this out of my own profit just to make sure that you've got the security and the confidence that if you stay with me, you'll be taken care of. Don't want to become too dependent on the government for that solution, because I think that it affects the market too much.

Sarah McConnell [00:39:02] David Barrish, thank you for talking with me today on With Good Reason.

David Barrish [00:39:06] Sarah, It's always a pleasure. I love your show.

Sarah McConnell [00:39:13] David Barrish is the dean of J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College School of Business. Coming up next, animals are moving differently now that we're out of their way. Humans can be such ecological disaster sometimes in the absence of people is changing the behavior and movement of many species. Anneke DeLuycker is an assistant professor of conservation studies at George Mason University. And during the pandemic, she has her students using everything from drones to camera traps to remotely study the ways we can support animal migrations.

Sarah McConnell [00:39:55] Anneke How did you first become interested in conservation? What caught fire?

Anneke DeLuycker [00:40:02] So I first started getting interested in conservation during my doctoral studies. I wanted to look at primates not only giving some insight into our own human evolution, but as this kind of intrinsically interesting group of animals with very diverse adaptations. So I went to Peru and studied the species of Titi monkey in the wild on the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains, really a rugged area, conditions and. Nothing was known about this species before.

Sarah McConnell [00:40:45] And so that was also very fascinating. How long were you in Peru?

Anneke DeLuycker [00:40:49] A little over a year.

Sarah McConnell [00:40:50] How much direct contact did you have with the monkeys?

Anneke DeLuycker [00:40:56] Well, yeah, unfortunately, they don't come and sit on your shoulders. Dr do little or anything, but they say there's a certain amount of time that you have to follow the group. It's all observation through binoculars.

Sarah McConnell [00:41:15] As you're doing this was there a point at which you thought there really us. They're so like us in a primate or other animal that we share so much in terms of social behaviors?

Anneke DeLuycker [00:41:29] Yeah. Very interesting social behavior. The TDE monkeys in particular, they have what's called a pair bonded social structure. So one male and one female living together with their offspring in one group, which is not very common actually in primates or mammals in general. And another interesting aspect about TDE monkeys is that the male, the adult male takes care of the infant. Most of the time. So he will be the dad will be the one carrying around the event on his back and protecting it, perhaps sharing food with the retrieving it if it falls off the branch. What not one event that really was amazing to see was that I was fortunate enough to witness the birth of a baby monkey in the wild. And it was so wonderful and so exciting. I just happened to have my video recorder with me that day. And so I was able to record this event. What struck me the most was when I knew that the mom was going into labor. She was kind of grasping the branches and doing this breathing, this belabored breathing. And you could tell immediately what was going on there. There wasn't any question after that. I knew exactly what was going on. And it was just fascinating that this tiny monkey, which is the size of a cottontail rabbit, is up there in the tree and giving birth at it was such a privilege to be able to peek into their window of their existence for that short period of time.

Sarah McConnell [00:43:29] Were there others around her helping her?

Anneke DeLuycker [00:43:32] Well, the other fascinating part of it was that the male stayed by her side during this entire episode. He he was he was really close to her during this entire time. And after she gave birth, he immediately he didn't grab the baby away from her or anything, but he immediately touched the infant, kind of cradled its head, felt it and sniffed it, investigating. And so it was really a neat kind of I would I would call a symbol of this immediate bond that was made between the father and the offspring.

Sarah McConnell [00:44:15] Is there any chance you could share that video with us on our Web site?

Anneke DeLuycker [00:44:19] Yeah, sure. I'd be happy to. I published an article about it, and I also posted it on a Facebook page. I could definitely share that with you.

Sarah McConnell [00:44:29] So stepping back to our current times, if you were doing that work now, what would have changed? Could you still be in Peru observing from a distance these monkeys?

Anneke DeLuycker [00:44:42] Yeah. So now there are a lot more considerations that we have to make as as biological anthropologist, as field researchers, as conservationists doing fieldwork. You know, primates are related to us very closely. So there's a chance that they could get whatever disease we have.

Sarah McConnell [00:45:05] And then there's just international travel.

Anneke DeLuycker [00:45:07] Yeah, exactly. And most field research is being paused because of it. It's a very hard situation because a lot of communities rely on either the presence of the researchers to make sure that nothing is going on, no poaching is going on or what not, or they rely on the presence of, say, tourists. Right? Coming into the region for income or for money or for the protection of the species themselves.

Sarah McConnell [00:45:34] I understand the students that you are teaching in conservation at George Mason University are doing. Checks that contribute to the understanding of the Smithsonian Institute's Movement of Life Initiative. What's movement of life?

Anneke DeLuycker [00:45:50] Yes. So the movement of life was established by a few researchers at the Smithsonian Institution and their Conservation Ecology Center. And they study the ways in which animals move and migrate across our planet. So some of the animals they're tracking are elephants tapirs, doles and coyotes. So looking at movements will help us understand how animals move across landscapes which are continually changing and being affected by human activity. And that's important to maintain and sustain. A more biodiverse planet.

Sarah McConnell [00:46:36] Has the coronavirus, has the pandemic actually had the unintended consequence of helping these migrations and movements? Because people aren't impeding them?

Anneke DeLuycker [00:46:48] So there's some indication that our reduced human activity, you know, our reduction in flying in planes or driving may have changed animal behavior as well. To what extent or scale is unknown? Researchers are still looking at that. The pandemic has also reduced the amount of shipping that's been going on along our coast. So researchers have been looking at the impact on mammals that rely on acoustics underwater and seeing if their behavior is changed because of that as well. So there's a whole suite of interesting questions that need to be understood and addressed.

Sarah McConnell [00:47:33] Do you think the field of conservation is shifting because of the pandemic? There are some advantages for conservationists and new methods that may be adopted even beyond.

Anneke DeLuycker [00:47:47] Yeah, I think conservation can use that and jump on it to develop new innovative tools and technologies that can be anywhere from using satellite images or using drones or looking at camera trap images of animals.

Sarah McConnell [00:48:10] What are some of the projects your students are working on now that relate to analyzing digital data for the benefit of conservation issues?

Anneke DeLuycker [00:48:20] So one of the projects that a student is currently working on is looking at the best places to put wildlife corridors in Virginia using Google Earth engine, classifying different types of land, forests, fields, urban areas. And they're relating that to the presence of roads and the amount of traffic on those roads. And the end goal is to look at those places that could be used as potential corridors where animals could travel through. And it's a really neat project. Some animals need larger areas to move. And so we need to make sure that they are not prevented from moving and that they're able to utilize their habitat amid so much bad news these days.

Sarah McConnell [00:49:09] Has there been recent success in the world of conservation?

Anneke DeLuycker [00:49:14] There's a lot of successes in conservation. What I was teaching the students in my summer course was to find and acknowledge these conservation success stories. So there was going to be the construction of the Atlantic Coast pipeline and this big pipeline project was denied, which is a huge conservation win. And that in conjunction with the stopping of two other pipeline projects, the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Keystone Pipeline project as well, really just kind of goes to show that this is conservation, right, when people are working collaboratively. There's a collective push for a common goal. It involves these multiple stakeholders of locals, homeowners, farmers, tribal members, all of these different diverse voices coming together, pushing for a common goal and succeeding. And this is that's conservation. And that's you know, that's the buzz stuff that we teach students as well, that that people are ultimately intertwined with nature and we rely on nature. And so nature must rely on us on it.

Sarah McConnell [00:50:38] Thank you for talking with me on With Good Reason.

Anneke DeLuycker [00:50:41] Oh, thank you very much for having me. I enjoyed talking with you.

Sarah McConnell [00:50:48] Anneke DeLuycker is an assistant professor of conservation studies at George Mason University, Smithsonian Mason School of Conservation. Support for With Good Reason, as provided by the University of Virginia health system, using advanced cardiac imaging to better diagnose conditions before they become serious health issues. UVAHealth.com. With Good Reason is produced in Charlottesville by Virginia Humanities, which acknowledges the Monacan Nation, the original people of the land and waters of our home in Charlottesville, Virginia. Our production team is Allison Quantz, Matt Darroch, Lauren Francis and Jamal Millner. Aiden Carroll is our intern. Some of the music is by Blue Dot Sessions. For the podcast go to WithGoodReasonRadio.org. I'm Sara McConnell. Thanks for listening.