Our guest today on PopHealth Week is Nancy Brickhouse, PhD, Provost and Chief Academic Officer of Baylor University a tenured Professor of education and a nationally recognized scholar.
We discuss one major University’s experience re-opening in the COVID-19 pandemic and how University leaderhip leveraged their own resources to adapt and thrive under challenging circumstances.
Transcript
Gregg Masters 00:06
This episode of PopHealth Week is sponsored by Health Innovation Media. Health Innovation Media brings your brand narrative alive both on the ground and in the virtual space for major trade show conference and innovation summits by our signature pop up studio connect with us at www.popupstudio.productions. And welcome everyone I’m Gregg Masters, Managing Director of health innovation media and the producer and co host of PopHealth Week. And joining me in the virtual studio is my colleague, co founder and principal co host of PopHealth Week Fred Goldstein, President of Accountable Health, LLC. Our guest today is Nancy Brickhouse, PhD provost and Chief Academic Officer of Baylor University, a tenured professor of education and a nationally recognized scholar. Dr. Brickhouse oversees the university’s 12 colleges and schools, research enterprise, University Libraries and centers and institutes. She previously served as provost at St. Louis University, a Jesuit research university with 8000 undergraduate students and 6000 graduate students at its main campus in St. Louis. During her tenure, she played a key role in repositioning. St. Louis University’s finance operations and academic endeavors to meet a rapidly changing higher education landscape. Her time at St. Louis University included the development of university wide undergraduate learning outcomes and strengthen support for teaching quality. Dr. Brickhouse also initiated a robust portfolio of faculty development programs, including those designed to support female faculty and others historically underrepresented at the full professor rank and in academic leadership positions. And with that introduction, Fred over to you help us get to know Provost Brickhouse.
Fred Goldstein 02:05
Thanks so much, Greg. And Nancy, welcome to PopHealth Week.
Nancy Brickhouse 02:07
It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Fred Goldstein 02:10
Yeah, it’s really a pleasure. It’s been great to get the opportunity to obviously, work a little bit with you and get to learn some of your experience and stuff. But why don’t we start today with a bit of an introduction of yourself and a bit about Baylor?
Nancy Brickhouse 02:21
So I am that provost at Baylor University and what that means I’m the Chief Academic Officer, and I basically oversee the work of the faculty. So whatever it is faculty do, whether it’s teaching, whether it’s research, whether it’s service, I’m kind of one who oversees all that I’m in my second year as as provost at Baylor University, and prior to that I was at St. Louis University. And prior to that, I was at the University of Delaware, but I’m a native Texan. So I’m returning home. It’s really great to be back home
Fred Goldstein 02:50
and understand you went to Baylor’s undergrad,
Nancy Brickhouse 02:52
I did. I am a proud alum of Baylor University. So I’ve come full circle, although I will say the undergraduate class is probably twice as large as it was when I was a student here. So while there are a lot of things that are the same, there are also a lot of things that are different.
Fred Goldstein 03:08
Obviously, things move forward. And and it’s it’s great to see it and your background, though, you actually did undergraduate understanding chemistry and got a master’s in chemistry as well. Is that right?
Nancy Brickhouse 03:17
That’s right. That’s right. I was a chemistry major here at at Baylor. And then I did my graduate work, graduate work at Purdue.
Fred Goldstein 03:24
And that was in
Nancy Brickhouse 03:26
My Ph.D is in science education. And so you know, it’s been very interesting working in a pandemic. Because so much of managing a pandemic, is about managing behavior. And the way that you manage behavior is very much an educational effort. And I’ve always been kind of a science for the people kind of person, all my research is really about, you know, how do we create a more educated populace, particularly educated in the sciences? And so in a way, the pandemics been fascinating from a purely intellectual point of view, if only the stakes weren’t so high?
Fred Goldstein 04:05
Exactly, exactly. And so, Baylor early on did a really good job bringing the students back. And it’s always been, as I’ve noticed it really student focused, faculty focused employee focused, what are some of the things that you’ve seen the work you’ve done at Baylor to one get the input from the faculty and two make make decisions that allow them to feel comfortable coming back to work?
Nancy Brickhouse 04:27
So first of all, let me give you a little bit of context. In terms of Baylor we have about 15,000 undergrads, which is almost entirely residential. Prior to the pandemic, only 8% of our faculty had ever taught online. We then have another 5,000 graduate students, many of whom are also residential, but we do have a growing presence of online students as well. That gives you kind of a sense of the scale in terms of the students with Faculty we have about 1,000 faculty, you know, getting faculty buy in was incredibly important. In the spring, when we moved to online, when we made that shift from fully face to face to purely online, we literally had a week to do that. And again, the faculty, the vast majority had no experience with it. And so our faculty that were so dedicated to the students, they really just kind of buckled down and just tried to figure it out, we provided resources for them, we had a lot of resources within our library in particular, as well as within professional and continuing education in our teaching center. That was a big learning curve, but the faculty really stepped up to the plate. And then in the summer, we provided even more resources to help them learn how to teach well, in this new environment, faculty they like to teach. I mean, they’re so committed to our students, they want to do a good job. And so that was a big hurdle to overcome. And so, again, we just continue to really focus on providing the resources to the faculty, so they would be successful.
Fred Goldstein 06:14
And you made the decision sort of in the summer that you were going to try to get to this hybrid approach with both in person classes, as well as online, while many other places were doing either strictly online classes. And I think we’ve seen some of the issues associated with that. And the benefits to having some sort of face to face classes. How did that go? And what were some of the issues and thoughts from the faculty there?
Nancy Brickhouse 06:37
Well, keep in mind that, again, Baylor is a highly residential undergraduate program, the expectations of our students and their families is for a residential experience. And so the idea that we were going to go fully online, like some of our university friends did, there’s just no way to sell that to the community. And the faculty know that, you know, what we did was we let faculty who really had conditions that really put them at risk for the virus, we in the spring gave them the opportunity to raise their hand and say, you know, look, I’m not, I’m not the person to be standing in the classroom with kids who might be sick. And so we got them online teaching opportunities, and then faculty who could teach face to face, we provided them with a safe environment, you know, six foot social distancing, a masking mandate, you know, ongoing testing, so that they could get comfortable with the fact that the classroom was actually a very safe place to be. And all in all, I would think it, I think it went very well, and that I think the faculty did feel safe. It took them a little while to get there.
Fred Goldstein 07:56
Yeah. And were there certain classes that I know, again, thinking University classes, boy, you’ve got everything from, you know, a typical classroom to a lab to other things like that, particularly as you get into some of the STEM classes or things like that. Were there certain ways you handle that, or the faculty dealt with that?
Nancy Brickhouse 08:15
Oh, absolutely. I’ll have to say, probably the most interesting ones, were our Performing Arts, we have a music school, we have a theater program. But I will say that they learned more about this pandemic than just about any other unit. I mean, they really studied the science, and figured out what it was they could do what it was I couldn’t do. And so a lot of our musicians met outside, for example, in tents in the open air, you know, spaced and masked. They took their big ensembles, and they split it up into smaller ones. And the thing that was really interesting about this was that the students were getting an experience that they probably wouldn’t have gotten without the pandemic, because they’re learning a whole new literature that’s focused much more on small ensembles than then they may otherwise have if they were playing only in a large Symphony.
Fred Goldstein 09:11
Yes, I recall, Baylor set up these tents outside, some of them just the covers. And then there was the opportunity for groups like your music groups and others dance groups to use those as spaces to conduct their classes or their rehearsals and things like that.
Nancy Brickhouse 09:26
That’s exactly right. We also had theater performances that were done entirely outside.
Fred Goldstein 09:31
That sounds great. How was the Were there any differences in terms of how people had to teach or things like that? I know that that’s been something that’s been discussed at other places, different approaches to teaching indoors versus outdoors. Did you see any of that,
Nancy Brickhouse 09:45
you know, people largely taught outside only if they really needed to and it was intended to be for these very special kinds of groups like you know, like the performing arts. You know, we do we were fortunate enough to have enough inside space to be able to and manage most of those, most of the classrooms that really needed to be inside, we were able to keep those inside. I should also say, we also use local churches. So we actually spanned out into the community, particularly the music school and the law school. And law school had to do a mock court, for example, they do a lot of practice court mock court stuff, which really takes a large space. And they didn’t have a large enough space at the law school for people to be able to do the six foot social distancing. And so they did it at local sanctuaries, church sanctuaries. And, you know, that seemed to, you know, fit the need,
Fred Goldstein 10:38
right, grab a bigger space, you’re able to spread out, get the people in it, that’s fantastic. That’s just a great idea. And as you think about those, what percentage of your classes were actually conducted in person,
Nancy Brickhouse 10:50
about a third were entirely in person. And then another third was mostly in person, but had some online components, or there or students might be cycling in and out between online and face to face. And then one third, fully online, we don’t have enough space, and no University has enough space, to have full a face to face and have the six foot distancing requirements.
Fred Goldstein 11:17
Yeah, that’s really been an interesting issue. And we see that all the way from k to 12, up through the universities, etc. Because you think about the standard classroom. And I remember my days way back when going to college, you know, some of those classrooms were small, and you had 20 30 students in that place. So and then, of course, you had the big 500 room, ones as well, that were interesting. So did the, for those hybrid classes, where they did you schedule where some people came in on certain days and others days other students came in? Or was it some people were just hybrid, and some were in class or a little both?
Nancy Brickhouse 11:52
It was a little of both. And wait, hybrid is actually a very broad category. But it basically means that you have some students online and some face to face. And yes, some would say, okay, this group of students comes in on Tuesday, and this group of student comes in on Thursday. So about half of your time is spent face to face, I will also say, of the three modes of teaching that was the least popular for both students and faculty, they found it much easier to commit one way or the other than to try to straddle that world. And so one of the things that we saw this spring, was the number of sections that were offered in that hybrid mode went down, because most students and faculty really ended up choosing one or the other.
Fred Goldstein 12:40
And so you went through the first or fall semester, successfully got through that classes. And then you come up on the spring semester, obviously, we had this big bump that everyone was concerned about post Christmas holidays, and the and the new year and stuff. So were there any changes that you made in terms that you say, obviously, your hybrid classes went down? Or those that were done both ways? So how’s it looking now?
Nancy Brickhouse 13:02
Well, you know, it was funny, I was one of those you might recall, that was pretty uptight about the start of the spring, I was really concerned because cases were so high. And I, you know, we didn’t really change much. And we didn’t change anything in the way that classrooms were set up. Again, our number of hybrid courses went down. For more face to face, we had more face to face, and more online, the big thing we changed was we went to a more frequent testing of everybody. We partnered with a lab so that it could be located on campus. And we invested in some instrumentation for that lab managed to bring down the cost of the testing. And by bringing down the cost of the testing, we moved from testing 10% of the students every week, to basically testing everybody weekly. And that’s students and what about faculty and staff? Yeah, faculty and staff were also tested weekly, I will tell you the difference there is that I think, for the most part, faculty and staff have been very grateful. For weekly testing, they consider it really a benefit. Whereas most of the students, you know, have come to terms with it, but not all of them love testing every week.
Fred Goldstein 14:22
The few groups that say, not so sure about this idea, but certainly that allowed the university to keep itself operating by by really closely monitoring that and obviously then getting into contact tracing and quarantine isolation where appropriate.
Nancy Brickhouse 14:38
Oh our contact tracing came has been fabulous. I mean, they’re there, they’re on em, almost as soon as they’re identified. I should also say with our testing lab on campus, we get results back in 24 hours, the contact tracing teams right on and we get them isolated. And that made a big difference and that’s being able to control our cases this spring.
Fred Goldstein 15:01
Yeah, I think you know, to date you’ve really done a fantastic job because you actually there are so many universities today that are still wondering, at what point do we stop out online and try to have some classes. And you’ve shown essentially, that there’s a way to do this. It’s not risk of zero. But it definitely can be done. And, and it’s so important, as we’re seeing with the mental health of students and others who are being isolated and not having classes, etc. So it’s been great to see that.
Nancy Brickhouse 15:25
I mean, I would say that we don’t know of any cases in which someone has caught COVID-19 in a classroom. And I do believe that the faculty also feel safe in our classrooms, because of the way that we’ve distanced and got everybody masked, it is a safe environment.
Fred Goldstein 15:45
Right. Right. And as you look out into the next semester, next year, how do you see that what sort of things are being considered? Obviously, it’s still really early, and things can change, as we know, we will see where the numbers progress over the next couple of months. But what is the thinking, you know, in terms of school for next year, I am hearing others talk about, hey, we’re gonna try to really be open. So Oh
Nancy Brickhouse 16:08
I I really anticipate that we will be as well that I expect that we will have a largely vaccinated Baylor community that will be able to meet in classrooms with regular distancing in the fall, that it will be much more the residential experience that Baylor has always been known for, you know, the big questions are, you know, how are we going to be sure that everybody who can take the vaccine does take the vaccine? You know, how do we encourage that behavior, because that’s going to make a big difference in terms of what the campus experience is like in the fall, you know, also will be questions that we’ll need to address around what kind of testing we’re going to do, what kind of masking we’re going to expect some of those details. I just don’t think we know enough about what the conditions are going to be in the fall to know what the answers to those questions are right now.
Fred Goldstein 17:01
Right. It’s still an open issue, the whole group of them in a sense. And I know, you’ve been the university has been really in close communications with the county and others around trying to get access to vaccines. And I think that’s been a really forward thinking approach. That I’m not sure everybody out there is doing that.
Gregg Masters 17:21
And if you’re just tuning in, you’re listening to PopHealth Week. Our guest is Nancy Brickhouse, PhD provost and Chief Academic Officer of Baylor University, a tenured professor of education, and a nationally recognized scholar.
Nancy Brickhouse 17:36
Well I will say that one of the things that was really important to us as a university when this pandemic hit, was to make sure that the that the university’s impact on the community was either zero or positive. There are a lot of communities around Baylor University that are very vulnerable, and in this pandemic, and we recognize that and we wanted to make sure that there was not spill out from, you know, young people having a negative impact on surrounding communities. And I have to say, I feel really pleased with what we’ve done there, that there’s the county has been very complimentary at everything that the university has done. And we work closely with them to keep them informed in terms of what our thinking was, in terms of how we’re going to mitigate the disease on campus, how we were going to prevent spillover into the community, we’ve sought their advice, and they have continued to be very supportive of all the measures that we’ve taken. We’ve worked with the county as well in terms of getting the vaccine and helping to distribute the vaccine. Actually, at McLean, stadium our Football Stadium, we’ve had drive up vaccines , where you can get a shot in the arm without getting out of your car. It’s a great use of a big parking lot that’s not being used when it’s not football season, we intend to continue to be a good resource for the community in that regard.
Fred Goldstein 19:10
One of the other things that clearly came up early on who worked with you is is your, you know, at one of these top notch universities, so within your faculty, you have incredible expertise across much of what we’re trying to deal with. And that’s been incredible to watch that kind of rise up and come together from the different groups as well.
Nancy Brickhouse 19:29
Well, you know, being new to Baylor, I didn’t know that we had these individuals. And I have to say when when this first happened, I felt a little concerned because we don’t have a medical school.
Fred Goldstein 19:44
Right.
Nancy Brickhouse 19:45
You know, my my friends who who have a medical school right there on campus, I thought, man I’ve got thank got resources. Well, actually, we had more resources than I need. I just didn’t know who these people were. And so we’ve had tremendous help from faculty who, whose research is actually in in the area of managing pandemics. I mean, who would have thought that the chair of anthropology, for example, I mean, I might have looked at environmental science, we also had fabulous expertise there, that might have been a little bit predictable. But anthropology really,
Fred Goldstein 20:24
right,
Nancy Brickhouse 20:24
we have a lot of experience there. And they have been so generous with their time and their expertise and have provided invaluable advice to help us manage this pandemic.
Fred Goldstein 20:37
And I would assume that that advice from those individuals at those various departments is something that the other faculty obviously would look to and say, Wow, you know, that’s a big help for you as you try to bring the others along that right.
Nancy Brickhouse 20:48
Absolutely. I know the language of Baylor, I’ve got friends if either by help explain the crazy things that the administration is doing. And I will also say one of the things that I think is interesting about this group of faculty is they’re actually not they don’t think alike. And so when you’re trying to make difficult decisions, that’s a particular asset. Because you’re not just getting a point of view, you’re getting multiple points of view. And that’s really helpful as well.
Fred Goldstein 21:19
Right to get those diverging opinions or disparate opinions, so you can then come to some sort of a conclusion. And make sure you’ve thought through all of the possible different scenarios. It’s been fascinating to watch that
Nancy Brickhouse 21:31
oh listen when, when Michael Muhlenbein and and Ben Ryan agree, you know its the right thing.
Fred Goldstein 21:38
Right? Very true, very true. And you may want to let our audience know who Michael and Ben are, although we did have a show with Ben a couple weeks ago.
Nancy Brickhouse 21:47
So Ben Ryan is in the Environmental Science Department. And he works. He’s in public health, he does a lot of work with disaster preparedness, including pandemics, Michael Muhlenbein is chair of the anthropology department. And he’s a medical anthropologist. And so he studies this disease much more at the molecular level.
Fred Goldstein 22:07
Yeah, I know, there were some educational programs or not, maybe question and answer sessions you did with your faculty and things like that, and brought in those folks as well.
Nancy Brickhouse 22:16
Absolutely.
Fred Goldstein 22:17
And so, is faculty fairly comfortable now where things are,
Nancy Brickhouse 22:22
you know, I think they are the, there’s been, of course, a little bit of a kerfuffle in Texas, with the governor, lifting the masking mandate and going to 100% open. So a lot of people have worried about the position that that would put universities and, and faculty in particular have reached out to me, they were concerned, because I think the agreement that the faculty had was that, hey, we’ll teach you in person. Okay, that’s what we’ll do. But the administration’s job is to keep in place these health management techniques that we know prevent, prevent the spread of the disease that will keep me safe. So I can be in the classroom. And that was the deal. And we can’t really change that deal mid semester.
Fred Goldstein 23:16
And my understanding is having actually read that executive order that, yes, he said, you can’t mandate that there’s not gonna be a state mandate, but individual organizations or companies can, but obviously, then you’re dealing with somebody who just says, Well, I don’t care. Right. And that gets really tough.
Nancy Brickhouse 23:33
Yeah.
Fred Goldstein 23:35
And my understanding is, I mean, to date, the mask wearing has been pretty good at Baylor, as I understand from other folks.
Nancy Brickhouse 23:42
Yeah I think for the most part, yes. I mean, that’s not to say that there aren’t times when students let their guard down. But, you know, I think we’ve seen compliance increase over time, it’s gotten better over time, in spite of the fact that they’re more exhausted. I think it’s become more accepted. I think people have gotten used to it. I’ll have to say the other thing in Texas, you know, wearing a mask when it’s 40 degrees outside isn’t so bad. The problem is really when it’s 100 degrees.
Fred Goldstein 24:11
Yeah, I can imagine.
Nancy Brickhouse 24:13
That’s not pleasant.
Fred Goldstein 24:15
Yeah, we haven’t gone through that yet. In Florida. It’s coming up. So I’m waiting to see what the summer is going to be like with our humidity. Yeah. So let me ask you one of the questions. I hadn’t really thought about what’s been the impact of this on some of the university’s research and the faculty’s ability to do research. Obviously, we’ve hindered travel and things like that.
Nancy Brickhouse 24:35
Yeah, it has certainly cut down on travel. That actually our research has continued to grow.
Fred Goldstein 24:44
Wow.
Nancy Brickhouse 24:45
Baylor’s research is currently growing at about 30% a year at least in terms of research expenditures, and the pandemic did not have much impact on that. So you know, and there have been opportunities for some indivdiuals, to reorient their research in ways that address the pandemic and actually take this as an opportunity to do research that they might not otherwise have been able to do. For example, we have a big program through our Baylor collaborative on on hunger and poverty, that sends out meals to young children. Because when schools are closed in rural areas, that means students don’t eat. With the pandemic, that’s become a particularly serious concern. And so our efforts to really ramp up that whole initiative, and to not only you know, provide the meals, but to also understand food distribution systems. You know, those kinds of research questions. There’s been a lot of opportunity to really ramp up in that area.
Fred Goldstein 25:53
Well, that’s a fantastic initiative. And I want to thank you so much, Nancy, for coming on PopHealth Week. It’s been a pleasure having you.
Nancy Brickhouse 25:59
It’s great to see you. It’s so great. It’s been fun to talk.
Fred Goldstein 26:03
Thanks so much. Back to you, Greg.
Gregg Masters 26:05
That is the last word in today’s broadcast. I want to thank Nancy Brickhouse, PhD provost and Chief Academic Officer, at Baylor University for her time today. Do follow Dr. Brickhouse and Baylor’s work on Twitter via @Baylor and on the web@www.baylor.edu and finally, if you’re enjoying our work at PopHealth Week, please like the show on the podcast platform of your choice and do consider subscribing. Keep up with episodes as they become available. For PopHealth Week, my colleague Fred Goldstein and Health Innovation Media. This is Gregg Masters saying please stay safe everyone we are in this together and we will get through this together. If we toe the line on social distancing. proper hygiene and by all means. wear those masks when in public in Texas. Bye now.