Transcript

Derek Smith:

Hello and welcome to Baylor Connections, a conversation series with the people shaping our future. Each week we go in depth with Baylor leaders, professors and more, discussing important topics in higher education, research, and student life. I'm Derek Smith, and our guest today is Baylor University president, Dr. Linda Livingstone. Today we'll talk with President Livingstone about navigating Baylor University through COVID-19, resources that Baylor rapidly created or adjusted to serve Baylor students remotely, the challenges of uncertainty, and the fun of creative ways to stay in touch with the Baylor family planning for summer and fall and more certainly no shortages of topics to discuss today. President Livingstone, I know it's been a very busy time. Thank you so much for making time to be with us and the Baylor family today.

President Livingstone:

Oh, I'm happy to do it, Derek. Always good to have conversations with you about the good things going on at Baylor.

Derek Smith:

Well, lots of exciting things amidst so many of the changes. First off though, I want to wish you a belated happy birthday last week and now early Happy Mother's Day as well as we head into Mother's Day weekend. I want to ask you, what was most special to you about this particular birthday or moment you'll most take away celebrating amidst social distancing?

President Livingstone:

Well, it was different being kind of isolated for a birthday. Couldn't go out to dinner or anything, but I have to say our daughter Shelby's a special young woman, and so she actually blocked me from her social media accounts on Instagram and Twitter, and proceeded to invite people to do video clips wishing me a happy birthday. The funny thing is I asked her several times, "Shelby, I can't see your Twitter stuff or your Instagram stuff. What's going on?" And she kept coming up with excuses and blaming it on the providers, the platforms. But she put together this wonderful video for me of all these different people from the Baylor family wishing me happy birthday and even some people from our former lives and other places, and it was really cool and special and something she wouldn't have done probably if we'd had a more normal situation. So it was a great birthday. I appreciate everybody that contributed to that, and blessed to have a fun child that thinks of interesting things like that to do.

Derek Smith:

Well. That's great. And as a cross promotion, I understand that you and her were on the Baylor Athletics Podcast with John Morris and Brooke Bednarz. So if people visit Baylorbears.com they could hear both of you interact and more. So a couple of ways to hear you. So again, a belated happy birthday and also want to ask you on this Mother's Day weekend, as we've got to know Shelby and of course your family, we've also got to know your mother a little bit. We've seen her at Baylor sporting events and other Baylor events pretty regularly. Tell us a little bit about her. What would you like us to know about her and the impact that she had on you and your family?

President Livingstone:

Well, thank you for asking. My mom is a really amazing and special woman. She just celebrated her 90th birthday.

Derek Smith:

Wow.

President Livingstone:

Her birthday is April 18th. So we got to celebrate that in a distance way as well. But I am so blessed to have an amazing mom. She is still unbelievably active. Lives by herself, drives herself. She's on the library board in her community. She helps pack meals at the church. She's on the board for their childcare center. I think the whole community of Perkins where I grew up wouldn't know what to do if she wasn't there to help run the place. But she's been a wonderful example for me. And I think probably that the quality in my mom that I value the most and that almost anybody that knows her would say is that she is truly a servant at heart in everything she does and just the way she lives her life and always has. She's always looking for how she can help others and support others and do things for others. And so I appreciate that model that she's been. And we've missed seeing her in the last several months because of this isolation. So I can't wait for us to get past this and be able to have her down here in Waco. And she loves our students. She loves Baylor and I've even gotten her out of her or OSU orange a lot to wear a lot of Baylor green. So she's a great fan and a great friend of Baylor.

Derek Smith:

Well that's great. You can always tell what a great lady she is but nice to learn more about her. And you mentioned you hadn't been able to see her during this. I know you have likely seen Shelby more as you've all sheltered in place, worked from home. And that's one thing you share with Baylor parents listening is that you yourself are a Baylor parent. What has that been like balancing work and Shelby continuing her studies, and what have you kind of taken away from that aspect of this experience?

President Livingstone:

I think it's been a good thing to watch. Brad's teaching some for Vanguard High School and Shelby's taking her graduate classes at Truett Seminary online. And so for me to see both a teacher and a student going through this and sort of understanding on a very personal level the challenges that's been for them as they've worked to adapt, as their students and faculty have worked to adapt. And so I think it makes me more sensitive to what our faculty and students more broadly are going through and frankly gives me such a deep appreciation for all the tremendous work our faculty and staff have done to transition so quickly. And really our students have been unbelievably resilient through this. And so seeing them adapt has been helpful to me understand what our faculty and students broadly are doing, and they're both doing really well though and that. But she'll be really glad she's almost done with the semester.

Derek Smith:

I'm sure everyone's probably ready for a little bit of a mental break as we visit with President Linda Livingstone here on Baylor Connections. And President Livingstone, talking about leadership during this on a broad level, when we think about the impact of COVID-19, as you begin to deal with this and move further into it, what are some of the foundational aspects of Baylor of leadership and of Baylor itself that you fall back on when you're navigating uncertainty? And are there areas that really guide you amidst that uncertainty?

President Livingstone:

I think foundationally one of the things that you are reminded of that I certainly knew but I'm reminded of is just how strong and resilient Baylor is. And even as we go through this really challenging and difficult time with so much uncertainty that everybody rallies together to support our students, our faculty staff and the institution. And of course an institution is only strong and resilient if the people in it are. And so I think it says a lot for the Baylor family and all that we've done together to support the institution. I think another piece of it is it just we have great leadership, whether it's my leadership team, our deans and their teams, our board of regents that have been really critical in this and helped us manage through this. But then I also think it foundationally, anytime you're going through a crisis, a challenging time, you really have to fall back on your mission. And what is our core mission as an institution? What are our core values? And making sure that as we make decisions, even in times like this, that we keep our mission at the forefront, that we're preparing men and women for worldwide leadership and service and we're focusing on academic excellence and doing that within a caring community that's grounded in our Christian values. And at the end of the day, those things have to remain a priority even as we make difficult choices in how we're doing education, what we're doing with our budget and other things. And everybody's really stepped up to the plate and done all that so well in the last couple of months.

Derek Smith:

You mentioned, President Livingstone, some different groups and different people who have been a part of some of those decisions. What's that decision making process look like and how do different groups on campus play a role in shaping those?

President Livingstone:

Well, this is having such a comprehensive impact on the institution that we have lots of different folks working in different ways. We set up a COVID-19 task force back in January that really began monitoring this early, early on with the local public health folks following the CDC issues and partly because we had a lot of students traveling internationally and of course this impacted international world sooner than it did within the United States. And so that group has been really instrumental in helping us get the right information we need to make decisions early in this process. And of course my leadership team, President's Council, has been critical in this. Our provost has worked closely with our deans, worked closely with our faculty senate leadership and the faculty senate as we've worked through some issues that impact our faculty and staff. Our vice president of human resources has worked with our staff council on issues. And of course we've worked with our board on a regular basis as we move through this and get their insights and keep them informed and engage them in what we're doing. And then we've just recently set up a group we're calling Project 8-24. School starts on August 24th. So we've just set up a new task force that is really digging deep into what we've got to do to be ready to have students back on our campus in the fall. So it's a very comprehensive decision making process engaging many, many people across our campus and even in the broader community since we're such an important part of the Waco and McLennan County communities.

Derek Smith:

You mentioned, President Livingstone, Project 8-24. I'll ask you more specifically about that here in a little bit, but you mentioned that to the Baylor family in your email last week presidential perspectives, and there's been a lot of communication from you and from your office in the a month and a half, two months now since this issue really began taking more and more shape as it impacted the Baylor family. What have been your priorities in communicating and some of your goals as I think you've been very open about some of the challenges that higher ed is facing and about some of the ways that Baylor is addressing that?

President Livingstone:

Well, I think in a time like this where there's so much uncertainty, people need as much information as they can get even if you don't have all the answers. Because when there's a void, people just get really anxious and it's unbelievably stressful. So we have really focused on being as consistent as we possibly can and providing as much information as we can. But we've also sought to be very honest because there is so much uncertainty and there is a lack of information and things are changing almost daily in terms of what we know. And so we've also tried to be very honest with folks and tell them what we do know, what we can be pretty confident about, but then if we don't have an answer or if we haven't been able to make a decision yet because of the timing, we want to be really authentic and genuine about that as well. And then I think the other piece of it as you go through a difficult time like this is to really give people a sense of hope for the future that we are going to get through this. We are going to be stronger on the other side of it. We're going to be better position on the other side. We're going to thrive as we get through this and not just seek to survive as we go through it. And so giving people a sense of hope that Baylor is going to be successful in getting through this. It may be a different place in some ways, but in the end we're a strong and resilient university. We've been around for 175 years and we're going to continue to provide a really high quality learning experience for our students through this and then after we get through it on the other side.

Derek Smith:

This is Baylor Connections. We are visiting today with Baylor University president, Dr. Linda Livingstone. And you mentioned Project 8-24. There's a planned phased return of faculty and staff to campus culminating with students returning for the fall semester on that date. What should people know more broadly about the project and how you're putting that together to navigate what that return looks like?

President Livingstone:

So Project 8-24 is really pulling together key leaders across our campus, whether that's in academic, student life, in regard to facilities issues, regard to procurement issues, in regard to human resource issues, any area of campus, really all areas of campus that we need to be paying attention to to make sure that we're preparing our campus physically and in other ways educationally for a return to campus and in an environment that's going to be very different that will likely require different kinds of health and safety mechanisms, potentially social distancing and other things. And so this group is charged with identifying all the various issues we might need to consider doing in the fall to prepare the campus and to provide the right learning environment and then to help us implement those decisions as we have to make them. And we have some advisors on that that are from our faculty that are public health experts or experts in recovering from pandemics or crisis situations. We're coordinating with the county and the city and the state. We follow the CDC guidelines. NCAA has provided some guidelines. We certainly are in touch with the state of Texas. So it's a complex process and there are probably hundreds of tasks that we're going to end up having to focus on. So we're in the early stages of that, but great people working on it and feel really confident that we will have a very good plan in place and be ready for students as we approach August 24th.

Derek Smith:

You mentioned that when students are back on campus, there will be some elements of the "new normal" and I know a lot can change in three plus months. And you are communicating like you said with a whole number of groups and analyzing the situation locally and beyond. Are there elements that right now you can envision with maybe some degree of certainty that maybe people should anticipate once they're back?

President Livingstone:

Well, again it can change a lot between now and August. That's an eternity in the pandemic we're in. But we are looking at how we might have to do social distancing in the classroom, how we might have to do events differently on our campus, whether those are student life events or athletic events. We're looking at cleaning protocols that might be quite different. We're looking at testing and contact tracing kinds of protocols that might be important to ensure safety. We're looking at whether masks might be important to expect people to wear on our campus, and the list goes on and on. So it's a lot of different issues. Some of those are going to be probably more likely than others. But a lot of that's going to depend on what happens with the virus over the course of the summer and what we see happening with the numbers of cases. And of course we're very attentive to the healthcare capacity in our community and ensuring that we're working with them to make sure their capacity is going to be supportive of any cases that might arise. We're looking at the ability to quarantine students if they test positive on our campus. So many, many different issues that come into play. But, we'll be prepared and we'll have a good plan as I said. It will feel different and look different. But I have great confidence in our community that they will adapt just as they did this spring in a way that will help us to have a very successful fall.

Derek Smith:

As you talk with leaders from other universities or in the medical field or any other broader public agencies, are there areas of concern that everyone across higher ed will be keeping their eye on as we head towards the fall?

President Livingstone:

Well, absolutely. I mean we do so many things on university campuses that bring large numbers of people together in close quarters because we're very much about engagement and community, and that's an important part of the college experience. So any of those large events, whether they're athletic events or concerts you might have or student life activities, those are ones you really have to pay a lot of attention to and raise concerns about. Can you do those in a different way? Do you need to restructure them? Do you need to create different kinds of experiences that help accomplish that but might not do it in the same way where you have so many people together? And then residential living the way that's done. We have a lot of people together in a residence hall. There are certainly ways to make that safer. How you do food service in large cafeterias where we typically do a lot of buffet serving. And so those kinds of things you've really got to pay a lot of attention to and make sure that we're putting the right safety protocols in place to address those issues.

Derek Smith:

Visiting with President Livingstone here on Baylor Connections. You talk about community and you talk about the Baylor family being there even as we're socially distanced. Certainly a lot of families have experienced this in different ways and some unexpected financial need. One area we've seen the Baylor family step up in is in the President's Excellence Fund. How has that come together in this way to help alleviate some of the burden that families are feeling?

President Livingstone:

Well, very early on as we sent students home and as this pandemic began to be more serious across the country, we began to have students that had very significant financial needs. Many of them had lost part time jobs, that had family members that had lost jobs, and they had issues when it was technology needs they had in particular as they weren't able to be on campus anymore. They might have food insecurity needs. Some of them had health care issues, even being able to pay their rent or something. And so we felt like we needed to do everything we could to be helpful to these students to help bridge in this kind of emergency situations, particularly before some of the federal aid that some of these students will have access to comes through from the CARES Act. And so we decided to utilize the President's Excellence Fund to provide support for these students. And we've given out about $1.5, $1.6 million to about 800 students. And it's been really critical for them to be able to continue their education, to continue to be healthy and safe as we go through all of this. So it's been a wonderful thing to do. We've had some amazing stories from students with great need, but certainly deep appreciation when we're able to help them out. We are so appreciative of the members of the Baylor family that have contributed to the President's Excellence Fund and have made it possible for us to do that. We certainly want to encourage people to continue to give to that fund. Students will continue to have need over the summer and into the fall until we begin to see the economy get back to a bit more of a normal functioning and their financial situations might change. So thanks to everyone that's contributed and certainly continue to pray for our students and share as you can with the President's Excellence Fund so we can continue to provide that need to some of our students with significant needs.

Derek Smith:

Absolutely. And if people want to see more about that or hear some of their stories, Baylor Proud, Baylor's social media number of ways that they can click on that donate and find out more about that as we visit with President Livingstone here on Baylor Connections. And President Livingstone, you've talked about the financial realities for people, and the unfortunate fact is for some people at universities all across the country for some difficult decisions. And certainly there are projections about declines in enrollment throughout higher education. And Baylor's had to be proactive about that. How has Baylor worked to be proactive budget wise and being ready for what's ahead going forward knowing that we may have to navigate some of this just like other institutions are?

President Livingstone:

Well, there are kind of two aspects of this, Derek. So in the current fiscal year, which ends at the end of May, we had to make some adjustments to our budget because we made the decision to reimburse our students for the residence hall and dining payments that they no longer used after they did not return to campus. And so I have to give tremendous credit to our leaders across our units on campus for really coming to the table and really cutting some expenses at the end of the year that are going to allow us to end this current budget year in a positive way and balance that budget in spite of some very significant expenses that weren't anticipated as we moved into this pandemic. And then of course we've been planning for next year. Our new budget year starts June 1st. We have a board meeting next week where we'll present a budget for their consideration and approval. And that budget is really being developed around some of the predictions that you mentioned that most of the predictions we see suggest that on average higher education institutions will see a 10% to 20% decline in their enrollment and then that has impacts on your housing, your meal plans and so on. And so we've tried to be very prudent and proactive to build a budget for next year that could sustain the high quality experience for our students both in the learning experience and outside the classroom while taking into consideration that we could have a reasonable decline in our enrollment in that 10%, 15%, 20% range. And so that's what we've put together. Again, tremendous credit to our leadership across campus, administrative, academic leadership for really rolling up their sleeves and making some hard decisions that will allow us to go into the year in a good position that we believe will help us be prepared if that happens. It will give us flexibility if enrollment is is better than that, that we can kind of take our foot off some of those levers and push some resources back into the system. And then frankly, if it's more challenging than we anticipate, we know that there are levers we can pull that will allow us to continue to protect the core of the university while ensuring that we manage the budget appropriately.

Derek Smith:

Visiting with President Livingstone. And President Livingstone, certainly amidst challenges, we see creativity, innovation and new programs step up, one of which we've learned about recently, Summer of Discovery. And as we head into the summer months, what should people know about Summer of Discovery and what are some of the things that might be exciting for to look into taking advantage of?

President Livingstone:

I'm so excited about the Summer of Discovery and give so much credit to our faculty and staff that have worked on that. We hadn't ever spent a lot of time on summer school and thinking about how you might do it differently. And when you're in a crisis, you kind of put your mind to these things. And so this program actually bundles classes in a way that gives you some benefits on tuition and certainly for our current students, our returning students to give them some flexibility and some options they might not have had in the past. And then what's really new and innovative about it is we are offering classes this summer for students who are going to be incoming freshmen. So we have bundles of classes that they can take. We had great response to that. And then even moving sort of further down that pipeline, we also have bundles of courses for juniors, for rising seniors in high school who could take these courses. And then that will be sort of part of their record as they apply to Baylor for the fall of 2021. And we again had tremendous response to that. And I don't think either of those two pieces of it for our rising seniors in high school or the students that are going to be at freshman next year we would have even thought about if it weren't for what's going on with the pandemic. And so a credit to our folks for being creative. We're going to have really great attendance at summer school. It's going to be online of course, which provides tremendous flexibility for people all over the country. And I believe we've learned some things from this that will make summer school in the future more robust, more accessible to a broader set of folks no matter where they are. And so it's been great to see.

Derek Smith:

As we talk about summer school, certainly a more traditional element of that continues. And one thing that hasn't changed really since Baylor moved to remote learning and after spring break is a lot of services have remained available. They've changed in form. They've been available over the computer. It hasn't been able to be face to face, but those services have continued. What services continue into the summer for students to take advantage of in different ways?

President Livingstone:

Well, we've worked very hard to continue to provide really all the services to our students that we would if they were on our campus. And so for instance, our health center continuing to provide some telehealth opportunities for our students so that they can continue to get medical insight and advice as they need it. Our counseling center has moved to doing remote counseling, telecounseling, and that's been extremely critical because this is such a stressful time for our students and one that they need that support from counselors at times certainly to continue support they were getting or for students that are experiencing new stresses in this time. And then a program I'm really thrilled about is a new program. We call it the Bear Care program and that was really designed as a way to provide more direct contact on a regular basis with our students beyond just the context they were getting with their faculty in their classes. So we have about 330 faculty and staff, each of which has maybe about 30 or so students in their Bear Care program. And so about 9,000 of our students are in this program and they get contacted each week by these Bear Care counselors to see if they need anything, find out how they're doing in classes, if there's any other support they need, is their technology working. And it's been really valuable. We've been able to identify some needs of some of our students that we could address very quickly. We've been able to encourage students and it helps us understand what kind of experience they're having in this sort of remote learning environment. So I just can't say enough about our faculty and staff really going above and beyond what you might expect at a time like this to do everything they can to support our students, ensure they're ending this semester well and that they'll be back with us in the summer or fall to continue their education if they're not graduating.

Derek Smith:

So many great stories from students, faculty and the Baylor family that we could fill a whole nother program if we have time to tell those. But the Bear Care program, certainly a great example of that. And as we head into the final couple of minutes on the program, President Livingstone, I want to ask it. You just talked about, and some of the praise is deservedly so of our students and faculty, but they're just all winding down a semester like no other. Seniors, their last couple of months as a college student looked very different than what they expected it to. For students, they've had to adjust on the fly just like professors have. Is there anything that, if we could all have a big convocation in the Ferrell Center right now like we normally would, that you would say to them in a setting like that?

President Livingstone:

Well, I would tell them how proud I am of them for being so strong and resilient through a very, very difficult semester. And I would tell them that I love them and that we are so excited that they will get to come back and be on our campus at some point, and that no matter where you are, whether you're physically on our campus or whether you're at distance somewhere, you're going to always be a part of the Baylor family, always a part of that good old Baylor line, and that we're just thrilled about the way they've managed through this really difficult circumstance.

Derek Smith:

Absolutely. Well, President Livingstone, thank you so much for your time today and know that you're in our prayers and the prayers of so many as you and other leaders at Baylor navigate the university through this time. Thank you so much.

President Livingstone:

Thank you, Derek. It's a pleasure to be with you.

Derek Smith:

Baylor University president, Dr. Linda Livingstone, our guest today on Baylor Connections. I'm Derek Smith. A reminder, you could hear this and other programs online, baylor.edu/connections. Thanks for joining us here on Baylor Connections.