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Lafayette College employees are as committed as ever to providing smooth, safe operations. Here’s a sampling of what some are doing to keep our campus humming along.
“In May and June, I organized the residence hall move-out process to permit students to safely return to campus to pick up their belongings. It wasn’t the traditional move out we were used to, but I felt proud to see some seniors put on their caps and gowns to pose for pictures when retrieving their belongings.
“I was fortunate to spend a moment or two with some families during move out and shared some great memories from their child’s Lafayette experience. Over the summer, as a live-in staff member, I often walked the campus waving and saying hello to students, staff, and faculty who were around (from a distance, of course).
“To prepare for the fall, I worked closely with the move-in COVID testing team consisting of colleagues from Health Services, Campus Life, and Sports Medicine.
“Residence Life is always a presence on campus so I wanted students to know I was around.”
“In May, we were asked to evaluate areas where we could improve services using lessons learned during the end of the spring semester when the College first went to remote learning.
“My task was to look into creating virtual labs using Amazon’s AppStream service. The goal was to alleviate the pain of not having access to College-licensed applications while learning remotely and make the same applications more accessible once everyone returns to campus.
“This was accomplished using the new technology available from AppStream and current infrastructure used to maintain physical lab software updates. This great undertaking involved a lot of help from colleagues in the Digital Infrastructure, Learning and Research Technologies, and User Services teams.
“I greatly appreciate the effort and patience it took from all of them to help with this giant endeavor from concept to production. Many of our faculty have had positive comments on AppStream’s availability, and some have stated that they were impressed with the performance of some of the applications.”
“As an essential food-producing farm, LaFarm has had the honor of continuing our work relatively normally throughout the pandemic. After creating an initial COVID Preparedness Assessment, detailing safety policies and protocols, and reassessing how we would distribute food to customers, we dug right into the season of growing food for our Easton and campus communities, Pard Pantry, and for our campus dining halls.
“Throughout COVID, we have had our (masked) summer crew working at LaFarm—which allowed me the rare pleasure of continuing daily work with our student interns and staff to seed, plant, tend, and harvest over 25 different crops.”
“What I do as a photographer boils down to visual storytelling. So when we pivoted to a remote environment, I knew that we would need to develop creative ways to continue to tell the story of what life on Lafayette’s campus is like.
After analyzing our process, we realized that some things would be possible and some things wouldn’t. Some shoots could be done outdoors in a safe, socially distant manner using telephoto lenses. In other cases, especially with video, we had to really be diligent. It’s hard to capture audio while people are wearing masks. So we got creative and used voiceover to simulate live audio. Every lav mic was wiped down after each and every use. Early on, like everyone else, we produced a lot of “Zoom” content and had to scramble to figure out the nuances of producing content remotely.
There were so many events and traditions that had to be postponed or canceled. It was really important to me to figure out ways in which we could still honor those milestones in a way that was safe for everyone.”
“The week before classes started, we ran COVID-19 testing for students returning to campus and had a tent set up outside Bailey Health Center for two days; the last three days the testing was down at Kirby.
“We probably had 100-plus students each day come in. They completed a COVID screening online and let us know if they had any symptoms, if they had any contact with anyone who tested positive, and what state or country they were arriving from.
“Students were given a code of conduct to follow for 24 hours until test results came back, and those arriving from a high-prevalence state were instructed to quarantine until a second test was performed. Bailey Health Center was very well organized to handle the testing and had a great deal of support from other departments such as Athletic Training and Residence Life.
“I think what we’re doing makes students, staff, and faculty feel safe with the amount of testing we’re doing.”
“The engineering staff has been hard at work supporting campus safety efforts and supporting our students studying remotely. Soon after we went remote last semester, we leveraged our 3D printers to produce PPE and other medical equipment for Lehigh Valley hospitals and local first-responders.
“Since then we have worked to manufacture physical barriers for Facilities Operations to install around campus. We have also manufactured and assembled portable personal workstations used in control systems hands-on learning, designing, and testing.
“It has been a big group effort here, and I am grateful to be a part of it.”