education

Returning to Campus with ‘Renewed Enthusiasm for Our Mission’

For the first time since March 2020, all SPH faculty, staff, and students will return to campus this fall. Ira Lazic, associate dean for administration & finance, discusses the factors that shaped the school’s plan to resume in-person teaching, learning, and working.

For the first time in 17 months, the School of Public Health welcomed the entire school community back to campus this week, ahead of a new semester that will mark a full return to in-person teaching, learning, and working.

After the COVID-19 pandemic forced an abrupt shift to remote work in March 2020, many SPH faculty and students resumed on-campus teaching and learning last fall under BU’s Learn from Anywhere hybrid teaching model, but the majority of staff continued to work fully remotely until this week.

The decision for SPH to return to 100-percent occupancy on campus was carefully informed by a number of factors, including federal, state, and local public health data, requirements set by the university, and continuous feedback from faculty, staff, and students through SPH and BU-wide surveys and conversations over the past several months, says Ira Lazic, associate dean for administration and finance.

Lazic convened the SAFER (Safe Action for Employees’ Return) Working Group at SPH in May 2020, and currently chairs the SPH Task Force on Work After COVID-19. She also served on the university-wide Committee on the Future of Staff Work at BU. Based on copious feedback, SPH adopted a hybrid work schedule for staff earlier this year, and that plan helped inform the flexible work arrangements that BU announced this summer for staff. New and existing safety protocols remain in place throughout the Medical Campus, including university-mandated vaccinations, weekly PCR testing, and mask-wearing in shared offices and most common spaces.

“We are continuing to do everything we can to make sure that our campus is safe,” says Lazic. “Many staff have expressed how appreciative and excited they are to be returning to campus, where they get to see each other face-to-face and balance our responsibilities to our mission with a new way of working and learning from the past year-and-a-half.

“The respect and admiration for one another, and a renewed enthusiasm for our mission are what inspire me every day,” Lazic says. “I am hopeful that as we return to campus this fall semester, we shall be ever more productive and truly be there for each other and the students who join us in pursuit of an outstanding SPH education.”

Lazic spoke further about the factors that shaped SPH’s plan to welcome everyone back to campus for the upcoming semester.

What were the main factors that informed SPH’s return to campus plan?

The plan to return to campus builds on a wide range of input, including staff and faculty surveys, data from our experience during the 2020-2021 academic year, and data and guidance from state, local and federal governments. Our plan as a school builds on the University’s plan, is informed by our own Returning to Campus SPH sessions and school-wide survey, and incorporates input from SPH staff, faculty, and students. We have used the summer to slowly phase in our return to campus, engaging in regular conversations with each department and unit at SPH and hosting a series of town halls to create opportunity for school-wide conversations about how to best shape our return to campus. Our goal is to come back to campus to best ensure we can fulfill our mission, while making sure everyone is safe, and incorporating lessons about new ways of operating that emerged over the past year.

What is your message to anyone who may be apprehensive about the return for safety or logistical reasons, or social anxiety?

We have done and are doing everything possible to ensure a safe campus, and we continue to monitor evolving data. If data change in a way that suggests we should change what we do, we will do so, as we have done during the pandemic. Come the fall, all members of our community—staff, faculty, and students—will be fully vaccinated. All measures discussed in previous reports of the SAFER group (Safe Actions for Employees Returns) remain in effect. That includes HEPA filtration, face covering protocols, regular cleaning and disinfection of areas, disinfection supplies rendered available to each department etc. Testing and daily attestation requirements remain in effect until further notice, and flexible work arrangements have been made available to all employees. Any employee with any questions about these can feel free to reach out to their unit administrator or to me directly.

How did the school ensure that the return to campus was equitable and fair within and across departments?

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What are the best lessons that we’ve learned and tools that we’ve gained in the past year?

I can think of countless lessons we have learned, but perhaps the most important one is that working as a community in a supportive and collaborative manner can make all the difference.  Communicating regularly, each of us listening to one another, is key to ensuring that we navigate challenging moments effectively. In the past year alone, the Dean and Associate Deans held 192 community meetings, all fora for the community to engage around aspects of our work together during a challenging year. I am convinced that making sure that members of the community were engaged, was pivotal to the success of decisions made. We are fortunate to have a terrific community at SPH. Sometimes we disagree, but it is only so because we all want the best for our school and are invested in making the best decisions we can possibly make, in a manner that supports the backbone of our school—our people.

What has impressed you most about the work of the SPH community over the past year, and what are you most hopeful about for the fall semester? 

Two key attributes of our SPH community have truly impressed me: resilience and perseverance. In the past year and a half our community has proven to be resilient and willing to adapt. We have all persevered through some challenging times and despite Zoom fatigue, some team members experiencing the impact of the pandemic within their own families or themselves directly, the juggling of personal and professional responsibilities and more, we are still here! We are stronger, smarter and hopefully more patient and ready to tackle the fall semester with enthusiasm and excitement to be working with and alongside each other.