Duke’s pandemic response required constant tweaking

By Sri Majmudar (Interviewer)

A group of Duke University seniors in the Science and Society certificate program’s capstone course spent the spring 2022 semester delving into how a range of artists, administrators, students and musicians created and found community during the pandemic.

With instruction from Rose Hoban and Anne Blythe of NC Health News and their instructor Misha Angrist, a professor of practice at Duke’s Social Science Research Institute and a senior fellow in the Science and Society Initiative, the students collected oral histories that provide a panoramic view of this how people have lost and found fellowship amid COVID-19 and what impact this will have post-pandemic.

Shrey Majmudar (Duke University, Class of 2022) focused her oral history interviews around the following theme: “How students and administrators helped the student body find community and care during the pandemic while doing so themselves as leaders of students/staff? “

To gather perspectives on this chosen topic, Sri met with Duke’s two most senior leaders responsible for the undergraduate experience, Dr. Gary Bennett: Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education and Mary Pat McMahon: Vice Chancellor/Vice President for student issues. He also interviewed Amy Powell, the associate dean of students who led Duke’s mental health services, and senior Ysanne Spence, former president of Duke’s Community Programming and Building Organization (Duke University Union).

Sri explored the challenges facing those charged with helping Duke students create and maintain community. Sometimes these officials achieved success, but they also faced hardships and tragedies

Gary Bennett and Mary Pat McMahon

Gary and Mary Pat described their enormous roles along with some surreal and indelible memories of the early days of the pandemic, in particular the fact that they had both returned from Duke Kunshan University in China just weeks before March 2020. They also described many of the monumental actions they had to take during that time, for example making decisions about international student placements, pass/fail assessment of all students, etc.

“I realized that things were going to be very different [when] we were writing the message that said, “Hey, spring break is going to last another week and you’re not coming back,” Mary Pat said. “Really the first phase was providing MiFis (wireless hotspots) to students in wireless spaces, sending people’s cellos home, returning them, and taking fidget spinners out of people’s rooms.”

Gary and Mary Pat spent some time reflecting on the emotional and mental health of students in light of the two back-to-back suicides and provided intimate details about their responses to these tragedies and how they helped support the student community and both students’ families. They each pull back the curtain on their home and personal lives during the first half of the pandemic, describing how it was impossible to escape their duties at Duke and the apparent lack of work-life balance.

“There were times when it was exciting to be able to progress on some of them, there were times when it was deeply inspiring, and there were times when it was just completely emotionally draining,” Gary said. “It was just painful at times.”

Listen to Gary and Mary Pat’s interview here:

Read the transcript of Gary and Mary Pat’s interview here.

Amy Powell

Amy is a social worker who came to the Dean of Students Office in 2008 after working at Duke University Medical Center; she served as Associate Dean of Students until April 2022.

Amy recounted the early days of the pandemic in the spring of 2020 — in the middle of the semester — when she and her team had to move quickly to support students who remained on campus, as well as the thousands who were asked to stay home. She shared details like pulling all-nighters to get everything done.

She also delves into a sensitive topic: how she and her Student Affairs colleagues responded to two back-to-back student suicides at the start of the pandemic, using strategies to bring people together — both virtually and physically — despite concerns about COVID-19.

In her interview, Amy shared some personal reflections on how she has led through this challenging time and how she has kept herself mentally healthy with the constant work and changes caused by the pandemic. She described the first two years of the pandemic as a “fog,” something that was omnipresent in her mind and yet difficult to analyze.

To wrap up the interview, Amy finished with reflections on the pandemic and her work-life balance, as well as what she thinks is next for Duke’s Wellness Units.

Amy had announced her departure from Duke at the end of the 2021-22 academic year during her spring 2022 semester interview.

Listen to Amy’s full interview here:

Read the transcript of Amy’s interview here.

Isan Spence

Ysanne Spence was a senior at Duke University studying cultural anthropology and public policy with a certificate in children’s policy research at the time of her interview in spring 2020. She was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica before graduating high school in Florida. At Duke, she participated in the BUILD pre-orientation program as a participant and crew leader, the FOCUS program, DukeEngage, Duke University’s first-year intern program and served as their VP of Administration, VP of External Affairs, and finally the President.

Ysanne began her oral history by providing information about her many involvements at Duke, particularly with the Duke University Union (DUU), the university’s primary programming and community-building organization. She shared anecdotes from the early days of the pandemic, when she was uprooted from the student community and thrust into a home environment that was not conducive to balancing all her university commitments and completing schoolwork.

“I remember just losing it. And I was just like, ‘I can’t handle this, like there’s too much going on, I don’t know how to navigate this new space,'” she recounted. She sought support from her Duke University Student Union advisor, Francesca Santos.

“And I remember what she said to me, her first response was just like, ‘breathe like you need to breathe, like you’re not giving yourself grace and like, understand that this is hard for everybody and everybody goes through it and you just have to understand how to navigate this space.’ And I don’t think I ever did. That’s the job. I don’t think I ever figured out how to navigate working at home.”

After returning to campus, Ysanne helped Duke lead the response to COVID-19 by meeting with numerous students and providing feedback to staff. She also shared how she felt discouraged because she felt that much of this work was swept away by university authorities.

She spoke about students’ needs for community as they continue to weather the pandemic, and also some of the ways DUU is implementing programming using various tips and tricks, such as “to-go” events that are socially distanced . Ysanne shared some lessons from the pandemic that DUU hopes to carry forward, such as meeting students where they are, creating a better work-life balance, and partnering with administration.

Listen to Ysanne’s full interview here:

Read the transcript of Ysanne’s interview here.