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Pandemic Long Term Effects

October 6, 2023

Today finishes week seven, so next week we will be halfway through the fall semester!  I want to thank everyone who has responded to my teaching tips (by email and in person) and who has participated in the CNS MTI workshops this fall.  Some noted that the pandemic may be considered over by the CDC and WHO, but many students and faculty retain well-founded concerns about COVID 19 infection and reinfection.  Many instructors have noted significant decreases in class attendance and engagement.  I began this fall semester encouraged by the large numbers of students in various spaces around campus.  However, I am hearing reports of similar or worse class attendance and engagement.  Faculty are implementing more active learning activities and frustrated by the lack of participation.  In my own course 16% of the student elected not to complete the take home portion of the first exam.  Clearly we are not back to “normal”.

In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education Advice article (9/18/2023) Melinda S. Zook describes how current college students have changed in just the past five years due in part to impacts from the recent pandemic.  Beckie Supiano summarized Zook’s article in her 9/28/2023 newsletter: I was struck by the description of entering students — whose high-school years were contorted by the pandemic “Their horizons were just opening when they were forced back into their childhood bedrooms, their world shrunk to pixels and bytes,” writes Melinda S. Zook. “They have been challenged — psychologically, socially, academically — and many have suffered.

“Now out and about, they often find the world demanding and frightening. They may have missed certain milestones of adolescence, from getting a driver’s license and holding a summer job to opening a bank account. They date less than previous generations (reportedly 30% do not date), giving them less opportunity to have their hearts broken, but also less chance to know the sweet sadness of love. Going somewhere, anywhere, without their parents knowing is often not part of their reality.

“Given less responsibility and independence, their coming of age has been delayed.”

What these students need, writes Zook, a professor of history at Purdue University, are “role models and mentors. They need social interaction and connection but, above all, they need nourishment for the mind.”

Purdue is providing that, Zook writes, through its Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts program, which she directs (and describes in more detail in her essay).

The idea that the liberal arts could help students make meaning and find connection may feel obvious, but this has not usually been the tool colleges have reached for in their efforts to reintegrate students.

Clearly, many of our current students (and faculty) have not moved on from the pandemic and are dealing with long term effects.  We need to consider means to address these effects to help them to engage in their learning.  Our new Provost is coming from Purdue University and may bring some elements of this Cornerstone program with her.  I am interested in any ideas you may have.

Paul Laybourn (he/him/his)
Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Director, W2R S-STEM Program
Director, NoCo B2B Program
Director, REU Site in Molecular Biosciences
paul.laybourn@colostate.edu