ON MARCH 9, 2020, The Ohio State University announced a two-week suspension of in-person classes to prevent the spread of COVID-19, at that time an unknown virus spreading over the globe with alarming speed. Two weeks turned into the rest of the semester, then half of the next, followed by a year of masked and socially distanced hybrid instruction. We are now accustomed to many practices born of necessity during the pandemic lockdown. Online teaching, virtual meetings, and working from home have all become common practice (even if we still haven't totally mastered the art of a glitch-free Zoom call!) Initially though, these and many more changes unfolded with remarkable swiftness during a stressful and deeply uncertain time. What is certain though, is that the History Department made it through that period due to the devotion, hard work, and perseverance of the many people—faculty, staff, students, and friends—who came together, virtually and/or a careful six feet apart, to help each other through the complexities of living, learning, and working through the pandemic.
Four years later, we are taking a moment to reflect upon the lived experiences of this historic event. What was it really like at the department during those first weeks and months as the university navigated the scary and unpredictable terrain of a pandemic lockdown? We asked some of our faculty and staff to share their memories and stories from this chapter in our history.
Written by Jen Getson, Academic Program Coordinator of History
What Our Contributors Were Doing In 2020
When lockdown hit, what were the initial challenges for your position? What were your priorities and the priorities of the department?
We had to get everyone up and running with courses online in a very short period of time. The lockdown was announced over spring break. And while spring break was extended by an extra week to help us in the transition, most faculty members (and students) had no experience with online teaching and really didn’t even know where to start. The priority was helping faculty members, the best we could, with learning Zoom, better understanding Canvas, and carrying out informal conversations on a one-to-one basis about the best approach to transitioning courses to an online delivery. – Sara Butler
I wish I had a clear memory of all of it, but I think there was so much chaos at the time that remembering the precise steps we took is particularly tough. I remember so many virtual meetings and lots of emails back and forth between faculty to try and figure out what to do next. What I know for certain is that all of us were thinking about the students: How do we get back to instruction safely? How do we make sure that we’re making sure ALL students can get the high quality of instruction we had come to expect during normal times? – Bart Elmore
In the early days of the lockdown, I was tasked with contacting all members of the College of Arts and Sciences who were overseas and see if they needed any assistance in getting home. There were more than 100 people out there, including students on Spring Break study abroad tours as well as faculty on individual research trips. Fortunately, little help was needed and everyone made it home. – Peter Hahn
The biggest challenges for me were having enough time to help everyone and also calming people's fears and concerns. We already had the technology everyone needed, but teaching online for the first time is stressful enough even when there isn’t a pandemic. – Laura Seeger
How was the process of getting all the courses approved to go online in such a tight window of time?
Whew. It was a bit wild. Nobody really knew at first whether we were going to have to go through a complicated process to get the classes approved for online teaching or whether it would be streamlined. To the credit of all involved, including all the instructors in the department, the process ended up being relatively smooth. Sure, there were bumps along the way, but to be honest, I was struck by the can-do attitude of the faculty in our department. That was obviously a tough time for all of us, but the swiftness with which my colleagues adapted to the new normal was one of those moments that made me feel lucky to be in this department. – Bart Elmore
What fears did you have? For example, did you have a fear of pulling off the switch in time/successfully?
Yes. The most important thing that prevented a complete meltdown was when administrators outside the department made the decision to allow for emergency approval of online instruction instead of demanding a more complicated, paperwork-heavy process of class conversion. It’s a case, among many others I observed as UTC chair, where trusting faculty to do what they do best, trusting that they’ll be creative and innovative, produced stellar results. We have hired great people over the years in this department, and if there’s one very important lesson I learned in the pandemic it’s not to micromanage top talent. – Bart Elmore
What changes needed to happen/what needed to be developed in order to make the transition to going fully online?
Luckily we already had some experience with online teaching in our department . . . I quickly put together video about how to use Zoom, as it was fairly new software for Ohio State at the time, and tried to calm people’s concerns about shifting their classes online. I met with several faculty individually to advise them. Scott Levi put out a video to students reassuring them and was instrumental in holding us all together. Nick Breyfogle devised a special Carmen master course shell where "how to" info was shared and Q&As and other info was posted. He and Bart also arranged live discussions via Zoom where everyone could ask questions and share concerns. It was truly a team effort in supporting the transition to online teaching. – Laura Seeger
What were the greatest challenges of advising virtually?
The most immediate and obvious challenge of academic advising by means of applications like Zoom or Teams—and perhaps also the most profound—was the lack of face-to-face interaction. Important visual and audio cues simply are more difficult to pick up on screens than they are in person. Establishing rapport and trust is crucial to advising, but also extremely challenging virtually. I get the sense that persons are less likely to linger on Zoom than they might be in an office, and that lengthened time is often when students ask important questions that might only be tangential to progress on the degree, but nonetheless vital to enrichment of the undergraduate experience (e.g., global education, research, etc.). – Ray Irwin
What was it like to balance the extreme pandemic challenges you may have been facing in your personal life while at the same time needing to lead classes and support students?
Like many of the employees here at OSU, I did not have a home office. I have always appreciated the separation between home and work by coming into work. Suddenly, I faced myself working from the dining room table….I was lucky enough to have kids old enough to supervise themselves in online school. My greatest challenge was that I was supposed to be teaching one of my classes online at the same time that my youngest daughter had band class online, and she plays the drums. Sigh. I ended up coming into campus and teaching class from my office in an empty Dulles Hall so that I could hear myself well enough to lecture. – Sara Butler
What do you think the History Department did well to adapt to the pandemic in comparison to other departments?
Like in all units in the division, the History faculty heroically figured out how to convert instruction to online format under very tight time constraints, and at a time when people had a lot to worry about in general. While there were bumps and snags, we were able to maintain continuity of instruction despite the sudden closure of campus. When one thinks about it, that was truly a remarkable accomplishment.” – Peter Hahn
What was the experience for undergrads that were not allowed to graduate in person?
Ohio State offered a virtual commencement in Spring 2020, complete with speakers (including Apple’s own Tim Cook) and a congratulatory video, but the main event—the awarding of diplomas—came in the form of couriers dropping off plain white envelopes to front porches and apartment doorsteps all over the country. My daughter was graduated that term and I’ll never forget a gold Toyota pulling up and someone plopping a package near our front door. I get the sense that most of our students were still in shock because everyone had made a hasty retreat from campus scarcely six weeks earlier. – Ray Irwin
What were the difficulties that grad students specifically faced?
I think at first the biggest difficulty was battling the uncertainty of the whole thing …. there were several months in the spring of 2020 when no one knew what the future was going to look like. . . . Thanks to the hard and creative work of Mytheli Sreenivas, who was then in charge of Awards and Prizes (the department committee that awards research funding to students), we were able to distribute some money to all eligible students to conduct research here in Columbus. It wasn't a lot, but it probably helped a few keep going. Ashley Bowerman, our Graduate Program Coordinator, was also truly heroic in her commitment to the job, and to the students, during this time. She spent so much extra time on Zoom calls with me and on fielding dozens and dozens (I can probably say hundreds) of emails from anxious students during this time. And while it was not pandemic-related, I should also point out that the pandemic overlapped with the murder of George Floyd and the resurgence of the BLM movement. This was a tough time for a lot of grad students. – Kristina Sessa
How did the pandemic affect things like students pursuing research or defending dissertations?
Next to funding concerns, conducting research was the next biggest issue. Most of our graduate students need to travel across the country, and some around the world, to conduct their research and write their dissertations. These trips are not for tourism; they are essential for producing novel work through access to primary sources located in archives and libraries. The temporary closure of these institutions across the world, in conjunction with the university travel ban (all university faculty and students were forbidden from traveling anywhere in the U.S. or abroad using OSU funds during much of the pandemic), was a huge issue. The OSU library was closed too for months and for much of the pandemic, checking out books was essentially impossible. Our students had to adapt, quickly. Many demonstrated extraordinary grit and ingenuity by figuring out ways to revamp their dissertation projects so that they could make do with what was available to them here in Columbus, and especially what was available digitally over the internet. I think there were a lot of shorter-than-planned dissertations, but faculty advisors were in the main supportive of making changes in order to complete projects. Dissertation defenses were not a problem at all - they were simply conducted via Zoom. In some ways, the fact that we were all stuck in Columbus at home made scheduling them a lot easier! – Kristina Sessa
What did you miss the most about the in-person work experience during lockdown?
Conversations with other human beings. When you work with other people, you have chance meetings in the hallway, by the mailroom, walking around on campus – all of this meant lots of short conversations with a wide variety of people. Lockdown meant you had to plan your social life. Want to talk to someone? Plan an awkward wine-Zoom. This narrowed everyone’s circles of friends and acquaintances dramatically. I didn’t see some of my colleagues for three years. – Sara Butler
What did it feel like to come back to classes on campus when they resumed?
It was joyous to see my students! I had students in my class that fall that I had originally taught in an online course, so even though I had taught them before, I was meeting them in person for the first time. And – I couldn’t see their faces. I had one student that fall whose name sounded so familiar, and her voice was familiar, but I just couldn’t place her. After chatting with her in class, a month and a half into the course, we both realized that we were in fact neighbors – she lives five houses down the street from me, I just never knew her last name, and with a mask on, I simply did not recognize her. When we came back to class, everyone was SO EXCITED TO BE THERE that I had better class discussions than I’ve ever had before. To me, students seemed so grateful to be back at school. I certainly was! I had forgotten how much easier it is to lecture when I can make eye contact with students, when I see how they are taking in the material that we are discussing and they can ask spontaneous questions. Quite frankly: I finally had my groove back. – Sara Butler
How do you think the university/department has changed since the pandemic?
I think so many of us that might not have taught online have now found ways to use new digital tools in the classroom that we might not have found had we not been forced to teach online during the pandemic. I also know that many of us have tried to find ways to increase the accessibility of readings and resources associated with our class so that students that might need to take care of an ailing family member or who may need to be away from campus for a short time to deal with a personal matter can keep up with a course. These strike me as positive outcomes of an otherwise dark time. – Bart Elmore
The psychological effects have been devastating. Dozens of our majors have stopped out as a result of the pandemic and many of those who have been able to continue struggled greatly during those two-plus years. We are not, I fear, back to where we were in autumn 2019, in terms of learning, expectations/standards, and community. I wonder if we really ever will be …. However, the undergraduate major became even more accessible to students learning remotely, as we received more and more online approvals, including those to offer 4000-level seminars by means of distance learning. A “COVID bonus” was that several students living out-of-state returned to complete the major and their degrees. – Ray Irwin
Insight from donor Carey Gordon
1. Tell us about your relationship with the Department of History.
I was a history major at OSU during 1968-72 and thus took many courses in the department. I was privileged to be taught by outstanding teachers and scholars during those years. To this day, fifty years later, I still recall many of the ideas and themes emphasized by my professors which are relevant to public issues of today.
2. What inspired you to give to the Department of History during the pandemic?
I have been very pleased to make donations to OSU over the years and continuing that giving during the pandemic was a natural thing for me to do. The subject of history remains critically important to understand our world today. I am glad to see that the university continues to support excellence in the teaching of history, and I am very happy to provide my support to that endeavor.
3. Did giving during the pandemic feel different to you?
Obviously, the pandemic created unusual stresses for the university along with faculty and students. This made it all the more important to continue supporting OSU and the History Department in particular.
4. Of all the things you could support, why did you choose the Department of History?
I feel a strong connection to the History Department because of the wonderful education it provided to me as a young man. That education provided a strong foundation for my later graduate studies, law school, legal practice and my work as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer for nearly 30 years. Moreover, I have had the opportunity to meet some members of the History Department faculty in recent years, all of whom impressed me greatly, which has further cemented my ties with my old department. I never forget those who helped me in my past, and the Ohio State History Department was singularly responsible for helping me become the person and thinker I am today. My support is to help, in a small way, the History Department continue its important training of students who will inherit our world.
