Colorado University Athletics
Woelk: CU's Herbst Academic Staff Meets Challenge During Pandemic
April 27, 2020 | General, Herbst Academic Center, Neill Woelk
BOULDER — When the college sports world went from full throttle to total shutdown mode in the matter of just a few days in March, it meant new and previously unimagined obstacles for athletic departments from coast to coast.
Coaches in every sport faced challenges that would have been inconceivable prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. Seasons and practices were canceled, recruiting became a "virtual" endeavor and even such simple things as meeting face-to-face with student-athletes were no longer possible.
But while sports came to a halt, classes did not. Games aren't being played — but grades are still being given, tests are still being taken, final exams are still on the schedule and eligibility is still at stake.
Simply, the obstacles that have challenged coaches have been exponentially magnified in the academic arena — and support staffs such as those at Colorado's Herbst Academic Center must continue to produce in a world they could not have imagined barely six weeks ago.
"Not in a million years," said CU Senior Associate Athletic Director Kris Livingston, who heads the Herbst Center. "There are days I still sometimes sit back and ask myself, 'Is this really happening in our world right now?' And it is. We were in the middle of an academic year, we had everything in place, we had gotten into our routine, we had all of our student-athletes in their routines — and then, in a 48-hour period, we were talking to students and telling them all to go home."
But not go home and wait for classes to start again next summer, next fall or next spring. Go home and begin "attending" classes online.
Immediately.
It proved to be a challenging transition for the Herbst Center staff, to say the least.
"For the first two weeks, it was brutal," Livingston said. "There's no other way to describe it. It was absolutely brutal. Trying to make the transition, trying to help the students get set up was a huge task that we were adapting to on an hour-to-hour basis. Things were literally changing not every day, but every hour."
Indeed, there was no road map, no blueprint for such a crisis situation. Nobody had been down this path before.
"The first couple of weeks, we were just trying to establish with each student how their classes were being delivered, how the syllabus has changed — because they all did — and how the faculty changed the process," Livingston said. "The first two or three weeks was just trying to put the pieces together. It was exhausting."
But that was only one piece of a puzzle that seemed to take a different shape every day.
"Some students don't have internet in their homes," Livingston said. "They're doing their schoolwork on their phones. They're doing classrooms on their phones. They are literally trying to finish a semester on their phones, without access to a computer."
Meanwhile, some students left so quickly that they forgot essential items in the chaos — laptop computers, chargers and textbooks. Those had to be sent to students.
And, something Livingston and her staff never really considered suddenly became a critical obstacle — time zones. Not only are CU's student-athletes spread out from coast to coast, they are international as well. Thus, the meetings and classes that normally took place in the middle of the day meant that someone — either the academic coordinators, mentors, and learning specialists or the students — could find themselves with a middle-of-the-night meeting.
It was no doubt daunting, but the CU staff rolled up their sleeves and went to work.
"We didn't have a choice," Livingston said with a laugh. "But if anybody was going to tackle it and come out positively, it's the Herbst Academic Center staff. They're so resilient, they're flexible and we all believe in the power of education. You just jump in and become a teacher all over again. You have to figure it all out — how to best support each student-athlete. You figure it out every day, you learn and adjust, and then you try to make it a little better the next day."
Their efforts have not gone unnoticed by CU Athletic Director Rick George, who has kept close tabs on the progress since the campus shutdown began.
"Our Herbst Academic team — they're incredible," George said in a recent online press conference. "They really do an amazing job of engaging our student athletes and setting up tutor sessions and study tables online. They've done a great job, but it is really challenging … We discuss and talk about that probably two or three times a week, where we're at and what our student-athletes are doing. Kris and her team do an amazing job."
Livingston's staff includes six academic coordinators, three learning specialists and four academic mentors. Typically, they work with many of their student-athletes on a daily basis. Those students normally have access to the Herbst Center computer labs and study rooms, as well as the opportunity for face-to-face meetings with their coordinators and tutors on a regular schedule.
But now, all meetings are virtual affairs — and there is only so much time in a day for the academic coordinators, learning specialists and mentors. Thus, the task of keeping student-athletes engaged on a daily basis has increased dramatically in terms of difficulty.
"There's no face-to-face contact," Livingston said. "The cold fact is that you can only schedule so many meetings on Zoom calls. You can give them maybe 30 minutes to an hour a day when typically they might have been in the Herbst Center for two or three hours a day."
It all means the coordinators, specialists and mentors are locked to their computer screens from early in the morning until well into the evenings.
"Their days are back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back Zoom meetings," Livingston said. "It's exhausting for the staff and there's a lot of stress involved. We never knew there was such a thing as 'screen fatigue,' but it's a real thing."
While it's not something most sports fans take time to think about, there is normally a good deal of stress in the academic support realm. The Herbst Center staff must always maintain the highest level of academic integrity while also doing its best to make sure student-athletes are getting the help they need to succeed in the classroom. Their wins and losses show up on the grade-point average and graduation rate scoreboard.
Now that stress level has now gone up significantly. While coaches right now don't have to worry about winning and losing games, academic staffs must still produce — and there is no game plan from the past to lean on.
"It has certainly added to the burden and added stress to an already stressful field," Livingston said. "But we choose to be in the profession and we know what it entails. When we see the light bulb go on with a student, there's nothing like it. It's the greatest feeling. You know you had a small part in that happening. There's stress that comes with the territory and we know that. It doesn't mean that it feels good, but we're aware of it. It's just that now, that stress has been exponentially increased because of the daily uncertainties and new obstacles that keep popping up."
Still, Livingston said the Herbst Staff has managed to once again establish something resembling a routine for the student-athletes in the span of basically a month.
"They're amazing," she said. "They never really missed a beat. At the end of each day and each week they are exhausted, but they keep showing up and stepping up to help the students. They are a truly dedicated bunch."
Livingston said her staff has also been given an assist from CU coaches, particularly Karl Dorrell's football staff. A recent NCAA ruling that allowed coaches to have more "instructional" time with student-athletes every week has had the peripheral benefit of improving their academic work as well.
"It got the football student-athletes into more of a routine, and student-athletes' lives are structured around a routine," Livingston said. "We really saw a positive flip there when the coaches got more time and it's been great to see. They're in the routine of football and they're in the routine of academics. The coaches are doing a great job emphasizing academics and it has been a big help."
And, the entire ordeal has helped the Herbst staff prepare for the summer academic sessions, which will also be remote learning — something that is also still a possibility for the fall as well.
"We chuckle at learning skills we never thought we'd be utilizing," Livingston said. "There's a lot that we've learned. We're learning that we are flexible and innovative. We're learning that we can figure this out. It's a challenge that we've accepted. We understand now what it takes and we're going to keep getting better at it. We have a great staff and we're going to do everything possible to make this work."
Contact: Neill.Woelk@Colorado.edu
