N.E. responds: Beth Israel-B.U. gear project; Dartmouth sets up COVID-19 ICU

Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon, N.H.

— Photo by Jared C. Benedict

From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)

BOSTON

As our region and our nation continue to grapple with the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, The New England Council is using our blog as a platform to highlight some of the incredible work our members have undertaken to respond to the outbreak.  Each day, we’ll post a round-up of updates on some of the initiatives underway among Council members throughout the region.  We are also sharing these updates via our social media, and encourage our members to share with us any information on their efforts so that we can be sure to include them in these daily round-ups.

You can find all the Council’s information and resources related to the crisis in the special COVID-19 section of our website.  This includes our COVID-19 Virtual Events Calendar, which provides information on upcoming COVID-19 Congressional town halls and webinars presented by NEC members, as well as our newly-released Federal Agency COVID-19 Guidance for Businesses page.

Here is the May 4 roundup:

Medical Response

• Boston University, Beth Israel Develop Improved Medical, Testing Equipment –Boston University (BU) and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) are collaborating to improve the equipment used to diagnose and treat COVID-19 patients. The partnership has already produced a more rapid diagnostic test, an improved ventilator design, and new models for testing swabs. The Brink reports.

• Dartmouth Hitchcock Establishes COVID 19 Intensive Care Unit – The neurocritical care unit at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center has been transformed into a new intensive care unit for COVID-19 patients. This change will ensure that the hospital does not exceed capacity for patients or deplete its existing stockpile of medical supplies and protective equipment. Read more in the Sentinel Source.

Economic/Business Continuity Response

• Framingham State Moves Elderly Learning Program Online – Framingham State University is transitioning its learning program for senior citizens online to provide a social outlet and educational opportunities to the most vulnerable, and most isolated, during the pandemic. The program had been postponed due to stay-at-home orders but will now offer the free courses in literature, songwriting, and more. The Worcester Business Journal has more.

• Northern Essex Community College President Calls for More Aid – President Lane Glenn of Northern Essex Community College (NECC), in a virtual event with Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), called for more aid to community colleges in Massachusetts as they support 100,000 students in the state during this crisis. President Lane noted that community college students are more likely to be low-income and minority residents and are experiencing housing and food insecurity at higher rates. Read more in the Boston Business Journal.

Community Response

• Ascentria Care Alliance Provides Support for Resettling Refugees – More than 100 refugees living in Concord, N.H., are receiving support and care from Ascentria Care Alliance as they resettle in the United States. The healthcare provider, through its Services for New Americans department, is helping these families navigate the resources available to them amid these challenging times. Read more in the Nashua Telegraph.

• TD Bank Launches Community Resilience Initiative –TD Bank has announced the TD Community Resilience initiative, dedicating $25 million to organizations supporting community response and recovery efforts from the pandemic. From healthcare workers in community health centers to local banking offices in the United States and Canada, the initiative will seek to support communities as they recover from the virus. Read more from CSRwire.

• Turkey Sends Medical Equipment to United States – Turkey sent a plane of medical equipment to the United States to aid the response to COVID-19. The Consulate General of Turkey in Boston shares that country provided 500,000 masks, over 500 gallons of disinfectant, and other essential materials in a continuation of its humanitarian aid around the world. ABC News has more.

Stay tuned for more updates each day, and follow us on Twitter for more frequent updates on how Council members are contributing to the response to this global health crisis.

Russ Olwell: Early college programs are way for New England colleges to avoid demographic disaster in years ahead

At Merrimack College, a private Augustinian college in North Andover, Mass. It was founded in 1947 by the Order of St. Augustine with an initial goal to educate World War II veterans. The college has grown to encompass a 220-acre campus and almost 40 buildings. North Andover is both a Boston suburb, high end in some places, and also a former mill town. It also hosts the Brooks School, a fancy boarding school.

From The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)

This photograph on top from Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s State of the Commonwealth address last month shows more than just happy college students in their sweatshirts. These students, from Northern Essex Community College and Merrimack College, are part of cohorts of students who have graduated from “early college” programs (with up to a year’s college credit) and successfully matriculated into a two- or four-year college. Recipients of the Lawrence Promise Scholarship at the Haverhill-based (but multi-site) Northern Essex Community College and the Pioneer Scholarship at Merrimack College, these students are on track to graduate on time, and can serve as mentors and role models to young people in their families and in their neighborhoods—proof that college is a real possibility.

Why are these students so important?

The students in the picture, and graduates of similar programs, offer a chance to avoid a demographic crash that faces higher education nationwide (but hits hardest in New England). This is most strikingly laid out in Nathan Grawe’s book Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education, which uses survey data and mathematical modeling to predict the future of higher education. For two-year institutions, regional four-year institutions and all but the top 50 colleges nationwide, the news in Grawe’s book is grim: The decline in childbirths in the wake of the Great Recession of 2008-9 will reverberate into the 2020s and 2030s. This will lead to fewer high school graduates, and fewer students with the family background and finances to propel them into traditional college enrollment.

Grawe considers a full range of possibilities to counteract this curve, such as changes in state higher- education policy, that could increase the proportion of students who might attend colleges, and reduce the racial gaps in groups attending college. In Grawe’s analysis, however, none of these policy tools will close the gap enough to save many higher-education institutions from closing, or from a stark decline in students and revenue.

What can change the curve?

The Commonwealth can try to bend this curve by increasing the number of students who aspire to go to college, and who have the skills to enroll and graduate. One such intervention, which has the potential to scale to the state level, is early college programming, in which high school students are able to take college coursework during the K-12 experience, in order to learn to successfully navigate the college world. Through success in college classes, these students stop thinking of college as a possibility, and instead as something they know they can do.

Early college programs have been a success story in American education, raising enrollments and enhancing student outcomes. Early college programs can help low-income and underrepresented students gain access to higher education and be more successful students once they arrive to college full time, according to research by David R. Troutman, Aimee Hendrix-Soto, Marlena Creusere and Elizabeth Mayer in the University of Texas System.

Early college programs (high school students attending college courses on campus) have shown great impact on academic achievement of students, net return on investment, and graduation rates of participating students.

In successful programs and statewide efforts, students thrive in these programs, are more likely to attend college and are remarkably more successful once they get to campus full time. They are more likely to graduate on time than their peers who attend traditional high schools, and earn a higher GPA.

Recent studies released by American Institutes of Research found the economic return of investment on early college programs to be $15 in benefit for every $1 investment; the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse recently certified the results of a random-assignment early college study that showed a positive impact in such key metrics as school attendance, number of school suspensions, high school graduation, college enrollment and earning a college credential.

New England has been a growing force in the early college field. Massachusetts now is home to at least 30 designated early college partnerships; Maine has created early college programs for its state four-year colleges, community college and maritime academy; and New Hampshire has launched a STEM-focused early college effort centered on career-technical education and the community college system. While these are far smaller than the efforts in Texas and North Carolina, they are making a positive impact and appealing to a broad range of families.

Scaling and expanding access

Early college programs have not been easy to expand or spread. First, like most successful policy interventions, they are hard to scale without losing the power of the model. The best early college programs are often about 400 students in size, run by dedicated instructors and leadership. Maintaining a size where each student can connect with at least one adult in the building is one of the keys to this work.

This model is hard to scale statewide, which is what would need to happen to have any meaningful impact on the downward curve of college applicants. Early college programs can also suffer from elitism. They can attract smart, ambitious, well-off students and families, leaving behind the populations that can be helped the most by the model. As college costs drive more behavior across the economic spectrum, middle-class and upper middle-class parents will see early college programs as a lifeline, and could seek out opportunities that had previously been designed for lower-income families. In my earlier work in Michigan, I saw programs start to fill up with the children of professors at the college housing the early college, as it was seen to be such a bargain.

However, as early college is embraced by new states and regions, policymakers are paying more attention to making sure that programs can grow, and can retain the characteristics that make the model so effective. As new programs are developed in Massachusetts, there is renewed emphasis on reaching the at-risk students who could be most helped by this intervention. With a push to help all students in a high school leave with some college credit, the impact of early college programs on student enrollment could counteract economic and social barriers to enrollment, moving whole cohorts of students into higher education.

In order for any of the above to have an impact on college enrollment a decade from now, state policy and spending will need to shift, investing in areas such as early college that can help students be successful in college from day one. Most importantly, early college programs and their impact would need broader recognition and support, and would need to be embraced by a wider range of K-12 and higher education leaders than have supported it to date. It might take today’s downward facing enrollment curve to get the attention of policymakers, who up until now have regarded early college with a mix of curiosity and suspicion. To save higher education in Massachusetts, we need more students up in the balcony, graduating from high school with college credit, ready to help their younger peers make the same good decisions.

Russ Olwell is a professor and associate dean in the School of Education and Social Policy at Merrimack College.

— Photo by NAThroughTheLens

An aerial view of the North Andover Old Center showing the North Parish of North Andover Unitarian Universalist Church.

Patricia A. Marshall, Robert J. Awkward, Stephanie Teixeira: Mass. is examplar of getting free stuff for colleges

Via The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org), on whose advisory board New England Diary editor Robert Whitcomb used to sit.

In just over a year, Massachusetts public colleges and universities have galvanized a statewide movement to adopt more comprehensive use of Open Educational Resources (OER). How did state and campus leaders achieve such momentum?

By way of background, OER includes teaching, learning and research materials in any medium—digital or otherwise—that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.

There had been prior nascent efforts to increase the utilization of OER in Massachusetts including: the launch of the Open Education Initiative at UMass Amherst, the MA #Go Open Project funded by a TAACCCT grant and the creation of a MA Community College OER Hub.

These initiatives served as watershed moments in the journey to begin to make more faculty, staff, administrators and students aware of the utility of OER as a learning approach and as an effective way of reducing rapidly rising textbook costs. For example, the efforts at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have benefitted nearly 13,000 students and have resulted in $1.8 million in savings. The Go Open community college program involved 9,000 students and 115 faculty members resulting in savings of $1.2 million for students, and the launch of the MA Community College OER Hub brought a repository for newly created open educational resources.

However, these efforts were accelerated when the statewide Student Advisory Council (SAC) presented a resolution to the state Board of Higher Education (BHE) in April 2018 asking the board to recognize OER as an approach to generate textbook costs savings for students and calling on the state Department of Higher Education (DHE) to explore and identify opportunities for implementing OER on a broader scale. Further, SAC noted that it would continue its advocacy for and support of OER.

The equity angle

During this same timeframe, Higher Education Commissioner Carlos E. Santiago was nurturing the development of what is now known as the Equity Agenda for Massachusetts public higher education. The Equity Agenda, officially adopted by the BHE in December 2018, aims to significantly raise the enrollment, attainment and long-term success outcomes among underrepresented student populations.

The goals of OER to reduce student textbook costs align with the Equity Agenda to increase persistence and completion of underrepresented students by: having a positive impact on student learning, addressing increasing interest among key stakeholders (e.g., students, public higher education institutions and faculty), responding to rising costs since textbook costs have risen by 88% over the last decade (OER State Policy Playbook, 2018), and addressing increasing interest in the Legislature.

________________________________________

A Textbook Case of Unaffordability

In a Florida Virtual Campus Survey conducted in 2012 and again in 2016, 20,000 public students
were asked what the cost of required textbooks had caused them to do in their academic careers.
Here are some of the results:

• Not purchase the required textbook: Two out of three
• Not register for a specific course: One out of two
• Take fewer courses: One out of two
• Earn a poor grade: One out of three
• Drop a course: One out of four
• Fail a course: One out of five

________________________________________

OER performs

This led the DHE to increase its involvement in OER beginning with awarding two direct OER Performance Incentive Fund (PIF) grants of $150,000 to the Massachusetts OER Collaborative, comprising UMass Amherst, Worcester State University, Northern Essex Community College and Holyoke Community College; and $100,000 to the Viking OER Textbook Affordability Initiative at Salem State University. In addition, two indirect OER PIF grants were distributed to Northern Essex Community College for its Competency-Based Pathways in Early Education for $198,414 and to Massasoit Community College for its Early College Strategies to Enhance Learning for $59,525.

In late fall 2018, Commissioner Santiago established an OER Working Group to convene, study, evaluate and make recommendations to him and the BHE that addressed:

• The need to identify lower-cost educational resources for students

• The BHE’s goals of increasing access and affordability, closing performance gaps and increasing completion

• The issue of addressing equity for underserved, low-income, and first-generation students, especially students of color

• Enhancing instructor effectiveness while lowering costs for students.

The OER Working Group convened in November 2018, co-chaired by Marilyn Billings, who heads the Office for Scholarly Research Communications at UMass Amherst, and Susan Tashjian, coordinator of instructional technology at Northern Essex Community College. The OER Working Group was staffed by Robert Awkward and the work overseen by Patricia A. Marshall, both at the DHE and both authors of this NEJHE piece. The OER Working Group consisted of 21 members representing all higher education segments and geographic locations in Massachusetts and included faculty, librarians, administrators, students and external representatives, including union, bookstore and employer reps.

First, a survey

To begin this initiative, the DHE partnered with the Massachusetts OER Collaborative to create and distribute a statewide OER survey to establish a baseline on OER utilization. The survey response rate was 100% and it provided very useful information on the state of OER in Massachusetts. The following are highlights from the 2018 OER Prevalence Survey:

• 71% of Massachusetts public higher education institutions had some level of OER activity

• Although there were higher and lower numbers of courses served, eleven to 20 was the most prevalent number of courses using OER, resulting in student savings of $10,000 to $100,000 for about half of the institutions (47%)

• English, Math and Biology were the highest enrolled courses and the courses with the most OER use

• Faculty select their textbook individually or as a common textbook

• Most prevalent deterrents to faculty adoption of OER included:

  • Too hard to find what I need (25%)

  • Not enough resources for my subject (19%)

  • Not enough high-quality resources (17%).

The survey data was used not only to inform the work of the OER Working Group, but also to inform the Massachusetts OER Collaborative as it designed OER training for faculty across the state. Nearly 500 faculty attended five successful regional training sessions at UMass Amherst, Worcester State University, Northern Essex Community College, Roxbury Community College and Bridgewater State University.

After the kickoff meeting of the OER Working Group in November 2018, the work was divided into five subcommittees to fulfill the mission. The subcommittees included: Faculty Development, Infrastructure, Marketing Communications, Policy & Legislative, and Stakeholders. The subcommittees began meeting and working in December and met continuously until they submitted their subcommittee reports in April 2019.

Meanwhile, the Student Advisory Council continued its efforts to support and encourage greater utilization of OER across the state as it had promised, holding a Legislative Advocacy Day in January 2019, a Public Higher Education Advocacy Day in March 2019 and an OER Photo Campaign (during the international Open Education Week) in the spring of 2019.

A timeline

By April 2019, the five subcommittees had completed their work and submitted their reports to create a draft full report, which was reviewed and revised by the OER Working Group. The draft full report was used to provide an update on OER to the BHE’s Academic Affairs Committee. In addition to sharing the research and findings with the committee, it contained time-sequenced recommendations.

The short-term recommendations called for adopting a statewide OER definition, designating a statewide coordinator, establishing a statewide advisory council, encouraging and supporting continued student advocacy of OER and identifying OER courses in course management systems

The mid-term recommendations included: providing OER faculty professional development, actively promoting the use of OER for graduate and continuing education and expanding a unified OER repository to make the discovery of local content easier.

In the long term, it called for increasing funding to address campus technology challenges and encouraging the consideration of OER in faculty tenure and promotion.

During the summer, DHE staff finalized the full report and sent it to public higher education presidents and chancellors to obtain their insight, ideas and perspective on the findings and recommendations, and how they will impact their campuses. The feedback received was incorporated into the final full report to the commissioner. After his review, the commissioner recommended the full report and a motion being submitted to the BHE’s Academic Affairs Committee to accept the final report and to implement the recommendations at its Oct. 15 meeting. After a useful and engaged discussion, including active participation by the two student members on the Academic Affairs Committee, the motion was approved unanimously. The ACC brought the final report and motion to the BHE on Oct. 22, where it was again approved unanimously, including active support by the student voting member of the BHE.

This OER initiative has been an exciting, multipronged effort that has actively engaged stakeholders from the grassroots and actively partnered with students. The utilization of a broad, diverse, representative working group to develop thoughtful and useful recommendations for BHE consideration and action was key to achieving useful and effective outcomes. Finally, the opportunity to coordinate these efforts with other campuses and with PIF grantees, and to work with OER advocacy groups and other states, has been rewarding to everyone involved. Nicole Allen, director of education for Scholarly Publishing Alliance Resource Coalition (SPARC), a national OER advocacy organization, noted that “Massachusetts is an exemplar for state policy action.”

Ultimately, the largest beneficiaries of this work will be the students of Massachusetts for whom reducing the cost of textbooks and other ancillary learning materials will significantly reduce student direct, out-of-pocket expenses.

In addition, the quality of student learning will also increase. The national student success initiative Achieving the Dream conducted a study comparing the use of OER to traditional textbooks at 32 community colleges in four states. According to the study, “more than 60 percent of students reported that the overall quality of their learning experience in an OER course was higher than in a typical non-OER course.” This is the power of collective action focused on a shared goal. The Massachusetts DHE is proud to be an active participant in this institutional change effort on behalf of the students at our public colleges and universities.

Patricia A. Marshall is deputy commissioner for academic affairs & student success at the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education. Robert J. Awkward is director of learning outcomes assessment at the department. Stephanie Teixeira is former Massachusetts Student Advisory Council chair. Visit  here to view the final OER report and recommendations.

Mike Cross: Going undercover as a student made me a better professor

On the campus of Northern Essex (County) Community College, in Haverhill

From The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)

‘Three years ago, I graduated with an associate degree in liberal arts from Northern Essex Community College (NECC) in Haverhill, Mass. Although I was one of over a thousand students to graduate that day, my situation was a little different than those of my peers. You see, I am a full-time faculty member at NECC with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry.

I had decided the year before to go undercover by enrolling as a student. Graduation day marked the end of an intense year of juggling school, work and family responsibilities. Since that day I have been asked two questions whenever someone hears about my experience: “Why on earth would you do such a thing?” and “What did you learn?”

The answer to the first question is simple. I wanted to understand some of the challenges my adult students were facing. I wanted to experience firsthand the struggle of transferring credits, taking the ACCUPLACER placement exam, registering for and attending classes—all while maintaining a full-time job and caring for my three children. This was very different from my days as an undergraduate at a research university where I was a full-time student, fresh out of high school, with a part-time job and no spouse or kids. My hope was that my experiences would help me to better understand the reasons some students drop out while others are able to push through.

What did I learn from the experience? I gained many insights into the struggles of my students and the minds of my fellow educators, but I’d like to focus on five key points with suggestions on what colleges can do to improve.

1. Some of the barriers to student success are small and easily addressed.

Many barriers to student success are small, but they are everywhere. From day one, I was confronted by tiny hurdles. While registering, I was told I had to find and bring in my high school diploma. The fact that I had a sealed transcript of the courses I took while earning a bachelor degree and doctorate wouldn’t suffice. When I took the ACCUPLACER exam, I found that the room was uncomfortably cold and loud. In one classroom, I found the chairs to be so uncomfortable I had a hard time concentrating.

Are any of these issues catastrophic? Of course not. But they are frustrating and they are certainly avoidable. When a student is struggling, even the smallest thing can be the deciding factor in whether or not they decide the hassle of college is worth it. What can we do to help? The simplest solution is to ask our students—and then take their feedback seriously. If students feel that they are heard, they are much more likely to push through the small stuff in order to achieve their goals.

2. Adjunct faculty are unsung heroes, and our colleges need to support them.

I made sure to take classes in all different formats: face-to-face, hybrid, online. And I also made sure to take classes from both full-time and part-time instructors. I had some amazing classes with fabulous full-time instructors but what surprised me the most was the commitment of our part-time instructors. Despite the fact that they are not paid to hold office hours (and many didn’t have an office at all), they often went above and beyond the call of duty to help students.

In fact, one of my favorite classes was a public speaking course taught by an extremely talented adjunct instructor. (On a side note, isn’t it tragic that despite spending every day of my career in front of a classroom of students I had never before taken a public speaking course?) The course was well-organized with clear expectations. The instructor knew that public speaking is a common fear and used humor to help students overcome their fears. He gave excellent feedback and encouraged students to give one another feedback as well.

Since adjunct faculty make such important contributions to the education of our students, we need to be sure they have the support they need. Adjunct instructors often feel isolated and don’t have the same access to resources. I’m pleased that in recent years, my college has increased the resources available to adjunct faculty through our Center for Professional Development. We have adjunct faculty fellows who build community among our adjunct faculty through social media, professional development events and an online toolkit, which provides easy access to needed resources.

3. We need to be clear about what constitutes cheating.

Cheating is rampant … but most students don’t consider what they’re doing to be cheating. In most of my classes, I was able to go incognito for much of the semester. Sitting alongside my fellow students opened my eyes to the sophistication of modern cheating. Gone are the days of crib sheets and bribing your roommate to do your math homework. In today’s classroom, students are constantly pulling up notes on their phone or watch. They use (and gladly share) test bank answers downloaded from any number of internet “study” sites. If you have a credit card, you can have someone online write your research paper or solve your take-home exam for you.

Cheating has always been a problem, so I wasn’t surprised to see that it is still an issue today. But I was surprised to find that many students don’t consider what they are doing to be cheating. They consider texting answers to classmates just “being a good friend.” Downloading publisher test banks is simply “using your resources.” Although it’s impossible to prevent all cheating, I believe the fastest and easiest way an instructor can reduce it is to make it clear what you consider to be cheating. Going over the do’s and don’ts of ethical behavior during the first week of class is a major deterrent to cheating for many students.

4. Faculty members should push through the fear and be open to new experiences that provide them with feedback on their teaching.

At the start of each semester as a covert “student,” I would try to meet with each of my instructors and let them know who I was before showing up to the first day of class. In almost every case, the faculty member would appear nervous, but would welcome me to the class and ask me to provide them with feedback throughout the semester.

There were a few professors who were not so open to having me as a student. One didn’t want me in her class for fear that I was secretly evaluating her for the administration. Another told me that by enrolling in classes at our community college, I was undervaluing the “real education” I had received during my previous undergraduate career at a university.

No one is immune to impostor syndrome. It is natural to feel anxious about new experiences, especially when those experiences may expose our shortcomings (either real or imagined). I have felt this myself as I have had a colleague take one of my classes recently. It’s an intimidating experience, but I have tried to use it as a chance to reevaluate and improve my teaching. We should be open to feedback and criticism, whatever the source may be.

Over the past year I have had the privilege of co-facilitating the Teaching and Learning Academy with one of our adjunct faculty fellows (and my former professor). The academy allows faculty to come together in a relaxed environment and discuss life in the classroom. Over the course of the semester, we visit each other’s classes and share honest feedback. Opportunities like this improve our teaching and build our sense of community.

5. It’s easy to forget what it is like to be student.

How many times have you heard colleagues say, “When I was a student …”? This phrase is usually followed by a condemnation of the current crop of students. We forget that we are just like our students. For example, in one of my classes, the professor had a strict no cell phone policy. Yet while students were doing group work, he would pull out his cell phone to check social media. We must hold ourselves to a higher standard than our students. If faculty lock the door to prevent late students from entering, they must be sure to never be tardy themselves. If we expect students to turn in work on time, we should be prepared to return exams and give feedback in a timely manner.

While not every experience I had while undercover was positive, it was truly the best professional development of my career. It rekindled my love of learning. When I registered for classes at NECC I found out that I was required to take English Composition II, as I had never actually taken it as an undergraduate. Despite my dread, I ended up loving the course. When my instructor informed me that she would like to nominate one of my papers for a writing award, I almost cried. This was the first time in all of my years of higher education that someone told me that I was good at writing.

Too often we refer to a Ph.D. as a terminal degree, as though our education is dead (or at least on life support). Most of us went into education because we love to learn, but between grading, curriculum development and committee work, it’s easy to forget the thrill of learning something new. Sitting alongside my students as we learned together not only helped me better appreciate their daily struggles, but it reminded me that we are on this educational journey together.

Mike Cross is a professor of chemistry at Northern Essex Community College.