Can Campuses Safely Reopen This Fall?

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Transcript

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0:00:13.6 Matt Pellish: From EAB, I’m Matt Pellish, and this is Office Hours, a weekly podcast sharing insight into higher education. For the past several months of the Covid pandemic, colleges, universities, they’ve all been trying to wrangle with these countless challenges of what it means to open in the fall. Well, we’ve seen some schools, like the Cal State system, they decided to move mostly online. The majority of schools believe the campus experience, it is so core of who they are and what they do, their intent must be to have something on campus for students come August and September. To help us understand what this will entail, we’ve actually welcomed two of my absolute favorite minds from EAB, the familiar voice of Kaitlyn Maloney, joined by newcomer to Office Hours Ann Forman Lippens. On today’s episode, they’re gonna discuss how universities are doing things like shrinking class sizes, de-densifying dorms and dining halls, and even how do you plan spaces for isolation and quarantine? Not only for the students that test positive for Covid, but also all those with whom they’ve come in close contact. Thanks for listening and welcome to Office Hours with EAB.

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0:01:23.5 Kaitlyn Maloney: Hi everyone, this is Kaitlyn Maloney from EAB on the line. I think it’s been a good month or two since I last joined you on the podcast, so happy to be back, coming at you live from my Washington, D.C. apartment where the big update for me is I finally upgraded to a home office. So my podcast station has moved away from my kitchen table to a real desk and desk chair. So, a comfortable setup. I am excited to be joined by my colleague and friend Ann Lippens today. Ann, how are you?

0:01:52.4 Ann Forman Lippens: Hi, Kaitlyn, I’m doing pretty well. I can’t complain because as you know, a couple of weeks ago, I was able to send my toddler back to daycare, which was very exciting. I shared this photo with you, so I’ll do my best to do justice to some of the cuteness in terms of the pictures our daycare is sending us, but it’s pretty hot in Alexandria where we are based, and we got a great photo of five toddlers at a splash table just loving life from their diapers. And that is the vibe I am trying to channel as we are three months into this pandemic, but it’s great to join you here.

0:02:30.9 KM: Yeah, well, we would be happy to have Elise on future pods, but I’m happy to hear that she is keeping nice and cool and happy back at her daycare in Alexandria. Ann, I know for the past few weeks, our work and much of the higher ed community’s has really been all consumed by one question, How do we safely bring our students, our faculty and our staff back to campus? I know there’s a lot of elements to that that we could discuss, really we could probably spend all day discussing it, but today I’d like to focus on one question that I find particularly fascinating, one facet of this conversation, how the physical campus spaces will need to change to accommodate social distancing, isolation, quarantine, and all of the other measures needed to prevent the spread of Covid-19 on campuses this fall. I’ve been thinking about this a lot myself and in talking to business officers about this, but I’m eager to hear your perspectives ’cause you are one of EAB’s leading space and facilities experts.

0:03:31.1 KM: Before I jump in, I’ve got a number of questions for you, but I do wanna emphasize to our listeners that Ann and I are not public health experts, so please don’t interpret our commentary as such. Instead, I wanna hear some of your observations on the challenges and opportunities that universities are facing as they’re incorporating the guidance that they’re receiving from public health officials and other state and local legislatures.

0:03:55.2 AL: Yeah, this is such an important question and it’s so tricky because what this moment has demanded of university leaders is that, to a certain extent, they become public health experts because they have to make really tough decisions about what they are going to do to repopulate campus when they welcome a large number of students and faculty back to their campuses. And what’s slightly worrisome as we reflect on some of the coronavirus trends we’ve seen in the past week, is that this is a constantly evolving situation, not just from the standpoint of what do the public health recommendations look like, but how is it spreading? The case growth for the past couple of weeks has really been driven by the demographic that is so critical to higher ed: People in their 20s and 30s. So in Texas, in Florida, in Arizona, it is the average age of the… Someone being diagnosed with coronavirus is much younger, it’s in the 20s, 30s, than it was at the beginning of this crisis. So a really important conversation. I do also wanna recognize though, that as our partners and university leaders are deep in these planning conversations, they recognize that the ink is not dry.

0:05:21.1 AL: We are still in the planning phase, which means constantly iterating on what we should do, how we can best bring students, faculty, staff back to campus. But even once people return to campus, it’s not necessarily… The plan still won’t be done. We are going to be monitoring the local public health guidelines, the case rate should an institution see a surge in infections and other metrics all as signals for what we should be doing with our campus population.

0:06:00.8 KM: Yeah, that’s a great point. And we’re seeing so much work here, but some of this, it’s even out of institutions’ hands. Here in D.C., I know institutions have to submit their plans to the mayor’s office, and even if they go through all these motions, things can change and the local government might say that they have to modify their plans or can’t re-open anyway. So, a really important point about how these are living documents that are constantly evolving. And I’ve seen a lot of them, we’ve talked to hundreds of our university partners about their plans, and they’re really wide-ranging. We’ve seen, I think, the Cal State system pretty early on, said they will be almost exclusively online. Some institutions now coming out with more innovative, novel plans to either only bring back first-year students or transfers or only bring back students whose coursework doesn’t translate very well to remote instruction, certain lab or performing art classes.

0:06:53.1 KM: All the way through some campuses that are saying, “You know, we are going to accommodate every student on campus that wants a place on campus. We will be back to face-to-face instruction.” So there’s a lot of variation, but at least in the plans that I’ve seen, there’s at least three big physical spaces that are being addressed in every single plan: Classrooms, academic spaces, residence halls and dining spaces. Three of the places that undergraduate students arguably spend the most of their time. So I’d love to get your thoughts on what the trends that we’re seeing in each of these three spaces in these plans. Let’s start with classrooms. What are the major trends that you’re seeing in academic spaces in the re-population plans?

0:07:37.0 AL: Yeah, absolutely. I think the first major trend is one that we all feel acutely, which is that the max capacity for our classrooms is down significantly. It’s typically a quarter or a third of what it was prior to this pandemic. So for example, a 100-person lecture hall, you can safely now accommodate maybe 25, 30 students if you want to honor social distancing recommendations. What that means is that institutions are having to repurpose spaces that weren’t necessarily designed to be classrooms so they can accommodate as much face-to-face instruction as possible. But to complement that, in addition to recognizing we need to restrict the number of students that are in a classroom at any given time, institutions are saying, “There needs to be a cap in terms of the size of a course that we will allow to meet in-person.” And so for most universities and colleges, that’s 40 or 50 students max. We are seeing some more recent guidelines that say it would be safer if we could restrict it to 30, but I know for a lot of institutions, that’s just not possible. That’s the physical requirements of classrooms, but every decision that we make for classrooms, it’s got a lot of ripple effects across campus.

0:09:07.5 AL: The one that I think is interesting and makes a lot of sense is on scheduling. And what a lot of institutions have done here has said, “We’re gonna introduce a 30-minute passing period essentially. So rather than stacking courses back to back in the schedule, we will leave a buffer of 30 minutes prior and after a course so that you don’t see students clumping or really risk any of the interaction that might normally have taken place.” Now, I think early on, there were some conversations of, “Can we use that 30-minute period to do a deep clean of the classroom between every use?” And that’s just not feasible. I work a lot with facilities leaders, and even before the coronavirus hit, custodians were truly put upon in terms of the service levels they were being asked to achieve and the amount of coverage, gross square footage, anyone custodian needed to cover. If you add enhanced disinfection requirements to that conversation, you would need a lot more custodians than you have.

0:10:18.4 AL: We did a survey of about 73 university leaders and we asked the question, “Even if you could stop doing non-essential cleaning activities, would you need more custodians than you have right now to meet higher cleaning standards, and by what percentage?” 85% of university leaders said, “Yes, we would need more than we had, then we have. 25%, we need 30% more custodians or more than we currently have.” So we think that what is gonna happen in those classes between the courses that are being offered is gonna be a little bit more of a DIY cleaning, maybe a student or faculty member does it for their own particular space. Now, stepping back and thinking about the schedule writ large, it’s well-documented documented that you’ve got a number of institutions that are trying to adjust the full academic schedule, the start and end of term, so that you are starting a little bit early and wrapping up by Thanksgiving so you are not doing any major breaks where students or others might be traveling away from campus and potentially bringing an infection back with them.

0:11:31.1 KM: These are really good points. I’m glad that you raised that point about custodial capacity, because I think… I’ve been thinking, and there’s been a lot of talk about faculty capacity and faculty’s willingness to come back to campus, and for good reason, that’s a very large bottleneck or very large barrier to making these plans work if you don’t have faculty, enough faculty to teach these face-to-face classes. So all these unforeseen consequences. I know that you have been spending a lot of the past decade really at EAB working with leaders on improving space utilization and some of the behind the scenes elements that go into making the course schedule work from a physical perspective. What are some of these other next level decision points that leaders will have to be making after they’ve decided, “Okay, we’re going to do classes at this capacity, at these hours”?

0:12:21.7 AL: Yeah, you know, it’s occurring to me that there is an interesting academic angle that we could also introduce before we touch on some of the logistical considerations, but I’ve been really fascinated to see in the press recently, Inside Higher Ed has a couple of articles about this, we’ve seen some blog posts from faculty members that just the experimentation that people are doing now, trying to see how could you actually teach in physically distant class, whether it’s just for that particular group of students in the room or doing a simulcast where you’re trying to monitor not just the room, but also feedback coming from remote locations. It’s incredibly tricky. So I think it’s really interesting or will be interesting to see, given early feedback from the experiments and tests that faculty members are conducting. What does that mean from a scheduling standpoint? How is this all going to work? But there’s absolutely other logistical, more operational considerations here that I think are worth documenting. First and foremost, just extending the academic day.

0:13:28.9 AL: A normal academic day might go from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, but now we’re seeing universities take up an approach of… Courses may actually start at 8:00 AM. I don’t think anyone wants to be rolling out of bed at that time, but starting at 8:00 AM and going maybe as late as 9:00 PM, and in some cases even coming to campus for classes on the weekends. That is the only way we’re going to be able to accommodate all of this face-to-face instruction in a more restricted capacity. And if you talk to the COO or a CIO, the registrar, there’s a number of leaders who probably three or four weeks ago had bigger concerns around, “How are we going to un-enroll all of the students from the classes they are already signed up for and re-enroll them in totally new courses?”

0:14:22.7 AL: I think the good news here, a small silver lining is that has been tricky, but they’re making it work, they’re figuring it out. So I don’t think that’s going to be a bottleneck for most institutions. Now, as you said, I’ve be thinking about utilization for a long time, so the thing that I’m most excited about is I’m hearing a lot of facilities operations leaders say, “You know, this is kind of our moment to centralize classroom ownership and management.” You know, as well as anyone, that there’s a pretty large culture of decentralized space ownership that a department or a college is the “owner” of their seminar rooms, their classrooms. And we’ve got data that shows those rooms are just used less frequently, they have fewer courses, they have less efficient space use. And a lot of leaders are saying, “This is the time where we have a case to make that all of those classrooms need to be on a central scheduling software. That’s the only way that we are going to accommodate our demand for face-to-face instruction.” Now, I think we’re absolutely gonna see that play out across the next academic year, open question, whether we can carry that forward beyond the next academic year and maintain ownership, but I’m eager to keep an eye on that trend.

0:15:52.6 KM: Wow. My head’s spending just trying to process this. It seems like the biggest jigsaw puzzle that a lot of these university leaders may ever have to put together in their tenure, but big hat tip to the registrars, the IT staff, the custodial staff, the space managers, a lot of unsung heroes in making these plans work. So, big changes for classrooms. Thank you so much for that explanation. I’m really curious to talk about on-campus housing. I think there’s been a lot of buzz around this. What are the occupancy reductions that schools are already starting to plan for this fall, and how successful do you think that they’ll be in enforcing social distancing protocols in on-campus housing?

0:16:33.8 AL: This is a trickier one, Kaitlyn, and I mean, I think we should proceed with caution here and acknowledge a couple of things. The CDC has recommendations that says the safest thing for us to do would be to not bring anyone back for on-campus residency. That’s just not the reality of a residential experience. You have students that live out of state, or they’re coming from international destinations. Where are they going to live if they’re seeking an education at your institution? And so I think the sort of most aggressive approach here is not going to be an option for nearly anyone. And then even next best thing of, Let’s get all of our students into single occupancy, low density residence halls, that’s gonna be really tricky too. And certainly, there are public health reasons why we should consider that an option, but if you think about the number of students we hope to bring back for face-to-face instruction, at the end of the day, those students are going to need a place to live. So there’s other considerations that drive the res hall capacity question.

0:17:43.0 AL: So I want to acknowledge this is really tricky, and while institutions don’t necessarily see themselves as in a position to move to complete single occupancy, given that many of the rooms are designed for double, triple, maybe even quadruple occupancy, they are absolutely taking steps to de-densify. So at the very least, no quads, no triples, maxing out at double occupancy, and thinking about the ratio of how many students could use a single shared restroom. We’ve seen a lot of ratios out there, 4 to one, 6 to one. Unfortunately, there’s no one source of information we can turn to here on what is the right number of students to use a shared bathroom, but we certainly recognize that we should limit that number because there is absolutely an enhanced risk of transmission in bathrooms. And I’m sure our supervisors didn’t think we’d talk about bathrooms so much on a podcast.

0:18:48.2 KM: Right, absolutely. But bathrooms are one of the things that I’ve been thinking about most, ironically. When you’re hearing about stay-at-home orders and social distancing, how is it possible to social distance when you share a restroom with 40, 50 other students? I did read today at least one institution is assigning students to specific shower times, which first read is, “Oh, that makes total sense.” But I think undergirding this whole conversation is, “Okay, but how do you reconcile that with student behavior? Will that actually work if a student over-sleeps or isn’t feeling well, or goes to the gym and feels like they need a shower?” It’s a really tricky situation in here, and I know that for a lot of institutions, fortunately, they’re seeing demand for on-campus residency, whether for the reasons that you already explained or just because they want that old-fashioned residential experience, but at the same time these do feel like minefields for universities.

0:19:46.2 KM: I’m remembering really early on in this outbreak, I know it was early on because I remember doing the conversation from our EAB offices, which haven’t been open for about three months now, over three months, talking to one epidemiologist who compared residence halls to cruise ships, and this was back in early March when a lot of the bad press was in the cruise line industry, so keeping those things in mind as you’re expecting, “Okay, realistically, we will see some cases on campus.” What are institutions planning to do with students who test positive? Are they going to be allowed to stay in their residence hall’s rooms? Will they have to leave campus with… What are the plans you’re seeing?

0:20:27.8 AL: It’s such an important question, and I think it’s critical to start with the distinction here, because I unfortunately don’t always hear institutions make this distinction. So we wanna talk about isolation space and then quarantine space. So we see those terms sometimes used interchangeably, but they do ultimately reflect different needs. We need to isolate individuals, probably students, who have confirmed… Have been confirmed to have coronavirus, so they need to be isolated, if we can do so safely and they don’t need to be in a hospital. That means a private restroom, they need to have meals delivered to them. Quarantine’s a little bit different, that is for individuals who may have been exposed to someone with the coronavirus, so we don’t yet know if they have it, but they similarly need to be in isolation and self-quarantine for 14 days in total. So I wanna start with that distinction. Now, what is most common in my conversations in terms of how space planning plays out is institutions, again, they want to accommodate the students that they’re bringing back to campus, and so they’re going to set aside one wing of a building, a stand-alone facility that has private restrooms, and at that level, it is the…

0:22:11.3 AL: I don’t wanna say easiest thing to do, because it’s certainly not an easy decision to make, but it is more straightforward to set aside maybe an entire building than it would be to scatter these… And safer in many ways, than to scatter these rooms across your entire density or your entire stock of dorm rooms, but I think what’s really tricky is, do we have the right amount of space set aside? So the university, UCSD San Diego, they have an estimate based on their own modeling in terms of if they have one student, one person who’s infected, how many people… And needs to be isolated, how many individuals would also need to be quarantined because they have been exposed to that individual? And they estimate that for every infection, there are nine people that they are going to need to quarantine. So I think the tough thing is, if you have 10,000 students living on campus, is it really sufficient to say, “This 150 room residence hall is our quarantine space, it’s our isolation space.” I’m not sure that that’s going to give you enough capacity, and then, as you’ve mentioned, you have students who are sharing a dorm room. If you have someone who is not necessarily confirmed to have coronavirus, but is living with someone who potentially was exposed to an individual with coronavirus, where are they going to quarantine? Are they gonna quarantine in the res hall? How do we keep both people living in that space safe? It’s really tricky.

0:24:05.8 KM: Yeah, that’s so interesting that I’m guessing that UCSD ratio accounts for if I’m a student and I’m exposed in my class, that means that my roommate in my double occupancy room is automatically considered to be exposed as well, and both of us will have to quarantine and isolate. Have you seen any innovative solutions out there? Or… I think I remember early on in the crisis talk of, “Well, maybe we could lease hotel spaces or figure out are there other physical locations to extend to to get more space for this purpose.” Are you seeing a lot of that?

0:24:41.5 AL: I don’t know, I’m certainly seeing schools that have access to and potential need for additional space consider things like going to local hotels to secure space. I’m not sure everyone has that option or has the resources to consider something like that. I think… Maybe this scares you a little bit, it certainly makes me cautious, but I think in extreme cases, institutions have the option, only for individuals who have been confirmed to have coronavirus, could you actually isolate them together, but only in the case where you know that they have the virus, and they have no risk of infecting one another. So not quite so innovative, but if you are space-constrained, that is one consideration.

0:25:30.5 KM: Yeah, it kind of connects to our conversation about academic spaces too, because if you are building in these contingencies or presumptions perhaps that students may or will be infected and we have to prepare for that, then faculty and instructors need to be preparing for it at any given time. A certain number of their students can’t come to those in-person classes, so how do they continue to make sure that they’re advancing in their classes when they’re in these quarantine or isolation periods?

0:26:03.3 AL: Absolutely, yeah, it’s tough. It’s tricky.

0:26:07.6 KM: Let’s talk about perhaps a lighter physical space that doesn’t often get a lot of attention or hasn’t gotten a ton of press attention around this crisis in particular, the dining hall. Maybe I’m biased, that was one of my favorite places in undergraduate, shoutout to south dining hall at the University of Notre Dame, great stir fry and pizza there. But what will happen to dining facilities? Will these buffets make your pizza and pasta stations go away? Are students going to have to eat in their rooms or outside most of the time?

0:26:42.8 AL: Yeah, I have to do a shoutout to my alma mater as well. I was an undergrad at Harvard when the great recession hit, and I tell this story whenever I can, they cut hot breakfast Monday through Friday. So the only eggs you could eat were hard-boiled eggs, and that is truly imprinted on my mind as a part of my undergraduate experience.

0:27:05.4 KM: So an important physical space for us to address. Everybody has their fond or otherwise memories of their campus dining experience.

0:27:13.2 AL: Truly. But you’re absolutely right that dining halls are poised for a pretty big impact here, and the reality is prior to COVID-19, dining halls were already changing in response to Gen-Z. Gen-Z is a very… They’re a very socially connected, and I mean that in the social media sense of the word, generation and they’re interested in transparency and they… A lot of institutions were pursuing things like interactive demonstrations or cook your own food stations in dining halls. I think it was Simon Fraser that has that option where students can literally go to a designated spot and cook their own food. There is a lot of those offerings that we’ve hit pause on for obvious public health reasons, but I think in the spring is an early signal of what is going to happen with dining halls. For the most part, these were consolidated and the ones that were left open were turned into these grab and go facilities, which means you’re not stopping, lingering, connecting with your peers, socializing as you consume your food. It’s really much more of a practical consideration. You need your meal to continue with your day. Now, for the fall, you’re hearing from dining hall leaders and facilities leaders. Our students say they want as normal an experience as possible, and so while we can’t promise things are going to be like they were in the fall of 2019, institutions are thinking about how can we make this as normal as possible.

0:29:06.6 AL: I referenced earlier that there are other decisions that might make it easier for you to determine what you do with a given space, and in this case, for dining halls, if you’ve already decided that your roommates are a family unit, for example… Well, it kind of doesn’t make sense to… Or let me phrase that differently. It would be a logical extension to say, and then that family unit can dine together, and so I’ve certainly heard at least one institution say, we think we’re going to have these “family units” dining together in our dining hall and then be socially distant, not wearing masks from some of their peers, but I will also acknowledge that the convenience element, the portability of food, that is a huge focus for many institutions, so that people who just don’t feel safe, even if dining in the dining space is an option, can take their food away.

0:30:10.1 KM: Yeah. Perhaps different than our conversation about academic spaces and resident halls, there actually are a lot of parallels here to what we’re seeing in the restaurant industry, where lots of Grab and Go, lots of convenience, but now even at least in DC as restaurants are reopening, it’s at reduced capacity indoor, it’s table limitations. I’ve seen some restaurants go as far as to say, “Only individual families or households can sit at the same table.” So a lot of parallels here. And I can’t help but think, as we’re having this conversation, with the academic spaces, some of these measures being put in place probably go against the efforts institutions were making towards students access and equity, and say with residents halls, some of the goals around student engagement and socialization and equity as well, fly in the face of social distancing and making COVID work. For dining halls the things that come to mind is the sustainability goals that institutions have advancing, which I know you and your team have spent a lot of time thinking about and researching in the past few years. I imagine that the uptick in portability, convenience option also leads to an uptick in plastic consumption. How are universities, have you… Or facilities leaders and others talking about how this impacts sustainability? What are you hearing?

0:31:29.0 AL: Oh, yeah, this is a huge concern, especially for dining hall leaders and other auxiliary leaders. There’s been such a sustained effort over the past couple of years to improve, to reduce the amount of trash, food waste that’s being generated in our dining hall, so this does in some ways, feel like a giant step backwards. Now, as a caveat, I will note some facilities leaders have sort of joked, but said in some seriousness that they aren’t as concerned about hitting some of their energy reduction goals this year because COVID has allowed them to take many of their buildings temporarily offline, and so in some ways, there’s been an upside for sustainability, but absolutely, dining halls is a space where many institutions feel like they’ve had to hit pause on their goals. Now, I do think we’ve seen some early movement in a positive direction here, so I wanna reference a pre-COVID initiative, and then how one institution is approaching the question of sustainability in response to COVID. So we talked to a public university in the Pacific Northwest, and last fall they were piloting reusable carry-out containers, and so they had set up a number of stations throughout campus where students could drop off those containers and then they were cleaned and then recirculated.

0:33:00.0 AL: So in theory, something like that is still an option. Now, let me share an example that is actually in response to COVID, a private urban university shared this week actually, that since the fall, what they have been doing is that every carry-out meal is in a reusable carry-out container with reusable silverware. And they require students to return that material before they can pick up their next meal, and if the student wants to return the materials but isn’t ready to take their next meal, they can take a token and then turn that in later when they want to eat. So while some institutions have said, “Yeah, we’ve just had to hit pause temporarily on those sustainability goals, trash reduction goals,” there are other institutions that have gotten a little creative with student support about how they are trying to advance their sustainability goals, even as the university tries to honor those public health recommendations.

0:34:11.7 KM: Sounds great to hear. I’m sure a lot of institutions haven’t even got to that another one of these next level considerations yet, and I know across the next few months, we’re going to be watching for all of these ripple effects, these unattended consequences, and hopefully more of these silver linings and positive stories coming out of this, like you mentioned. I think we only have time for about one more question, but I would love to get your take on that note before we end. I think a lot of the elements of this conversation, understandably, raise a lot of anxiety for students, for parents, particularly for faculty staff who are really entering a great unknown this fall. Even the best laid plans, the best documented plans can’t fully give comfort in how things are going to play out and what this experience will be like for the campus community. Can you identify any other things that make you hopeful or optimistic amid all of this uncertainty and anxiety that we’re experiencing?

0:35:11.3 AL: Yeah, it’s such a great question. I think the thing I’m most encouraged by as I reflect on the conversations I’ve had with university leaders, and I suspect that you’ve had as well, is just how hard everyone is working to respond to the coronavirus. I can’t think of another occasion in recent memory that’s given rise to such a unity of effort in higher ed as the re-population planning has for campuses. So I know from many of the task force or committee members working on various components of re-population, it’s really difficult because they’ve gotta be both an expert on the public health recommendations and then think about what does that mean for their particular institution, but people are doing their absolute best and they are working so hard to put together the strongest plan possible to give students, faculty and staff the best experience they can safely accommodate in the fall. And I think that’s really encouraging.

0:36:20.5 KM: Yeah, that’s a great way to end. I think I’ve said it already once, but I’ll say it again, hat tip to you all working to make this possible on your campuses this fall. Whether you’re still continuing fully remote instruction, that still takes a Herculean effort, as well as the folks that are working on the logistics of making an in campus or on-campus experience work for the fall, so shoutout to all of you, we look forward to continuing this conversation across the coming weeks and months as these plans continue to grow and evolve, but thank you, Ann, for joining and sharing your perspectives today, this was really valuable.

0:36:55.9 AL: Yeah, I had a lot of fun, Kaitlyn. Great to connect.

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0:37:04.3 MP: Thanks again for listening. On next week’s episode, Sally Amoruso and Hersh Steinberg join us to talk about what they learned from interviewing over a hundred university presidents who see long-term changes to the student experience, the way they hire, and even how they engage their communities. Hope to have you with us. For Office Hours with EAB, I’m Matt Pellish.

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