Crimson and Gold Connection; Dr. Steve Scott

Welcome to Crimson & Gold Connection, keeping you connected with the people and current events at Pittsburgh State University. This is the Crimson & Gold Connection on 89.9K RPS. I'm Fred Fletcher-Fierro. On Tuesday, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly announced that all of the states K-12 schools would be closing for the rest of the academic year. Also on Tuesday, Pittsburgh State University made the announcement that all coursework will shift online. The president's halls will close on Monday, March 23rd, and commencement scheduled for this May was now canceled. Yesterday morning, I spoke with Pittsburgh State President Dr. Steve Scott via Skype to bring us up to speed on the rapidly changing developments at Pittsburgh State University over the last week. First of all, thanks for letting me spend some time with you and share what we're doing on the campus and how we're adjusting to rapidly changing landscape that's around us. I appreciate people being very supportive of our efforts and understanding of our efforts because it's been quite a ride. I'm sure people know that and see that and understand that.

We've had a really good group of folks that have continued to work their way through the decisions that we've needed to make, the communications we needed to provide to the campus and to the community. You know, you might say, well, guys, why don't you just decide all these things at once and make a decision, move on, but the thing is it just what we know just keeps changing. And the virus continues to grow in terms of who's affected and where those infections are. In fact, this morning we heard that there's the receipt report that Cherokee County now has a case. So it's coming. I think we all recognize that. And so today we announced that basically we're going to move to really limit the number of people on the campus and really go to just the essential employees and don't like to use that term because we think all employees are essential, but we've got police force. The boiler room has to be monitored and some key things that just we just have to have people there. But overall, we want people off the campus. We're going to continue to pay everybody. Many of those folks will be at home working. They'll have to continue to contribute.

And we're going to do that for the next two weeks and this really falls in line with what the governor is going to do with the executive branch starting on Monday as well. So I think aligning with the governor's approach is the right thing to do at this point in time. I was reading through the announcements that people can find at news.pitstate.edu. And I wasn't clear if you expect students to come back to campus. Sometimes this semester, or are we looking at the fall or summer when they come back? Well, in an earlier announcement, that's a good question. In an earlier announcement, we said that we were going to move all instruction to online delivery or certainly not face-to-face delivery. We've already made that statement. And so the only people that the students would be coming back to campus would be those that want to need to move out of the dorms because we've asked the students to move out of the dorms. And that's with some exceptions. We have some students that literally don't have a place to go and they need to stay here for a variety of reasons. We have international students who are going to continue to house. So we're going to house. I don't know what that number is, but I'm sure it's less than 100.

And they'll be spread out. And so we'll be able to maintain that social distancing that we're all after. So no students wouldn't need to be coming back to campus. And we've told our student workers we're going to pay them as they've been paid. And so we're trying to hold people harmless, recognizing this is not they're doing. And we've budgeted for that kind of expense. And we're going to try to make that work as long as we can. We would we would think that there would be minimal number of students on the campus if any and minimal number of workers. Right. And I want our listeners to know also that Pittsburgh State has dedicated its own website to coronavirus. You can find that at pitstate.edu slash coronavirus. If you have any questions or you want additional resources. You know, I think of the last time we talk, it's been a couple of months ago now. And this wasn't even on the radar. Then it seemed so far away. And here we are. Yeah, and I think every day, you know, in fact, I was talking to Kathleen Flannery about something and just every day you think was that two days ago, we decided that or three days ago because it just seems like every day is so full.

It's almost like every day feels like a week. And but we've just had so much to consume and so much to process when we recognize that others have as well. But we've been we've been working on contingency plans. It's certainly for some time. And our leadership group, the crisis management response group. We've been meeting every morning at eight o'clock as we as we've dealt with this and we focused on two things. One is what decisions do we need to make at that moment in time? And then what is our message? And how do we share that message in the way that is as clear as possible and concise as possible? That's challenging to do and thread the one piece of this that you feel bad in so many ways about a lot of things. There's no doubt there's some very, very disruptive parts of this. But our students, I think the biggest pain point they're feeling right now is the loss of commencement. And you saw, you probably saw that we announced we went in and announced that we're going to cancel commencement. Look for ways to celebrate the milestone in other ways, maybe virtually or maybe at an event later on. Certainly anybody who would be graduating in May, if they wanted to come back in December or even next May and walk, we would welcome that.

We would love to have them. But our students or families, they are really crushed by that decision. And you know what? So are we? But I think that was one of the hardest things we did. But we felt like we needed to get in front of it because people make lodging arrangements and flight arrangements and they all kinds of family plans that we just felt like when the CDC said about eight weeks out, you better, you better not do much in the next eight weeks. We felt like that was something that we were going to be right at that eight week period and didn't have the confidence that we could we could make that happen. So felt like we needed to make a decision and not make a decision at the last minute. But to give people a lot of guidance ahead of time, but just painful all the way around, very, very painful. And speaking to how much news and our announcements are coming out, that announcement was just two days ago. But it really seems like months ago because I know exactly. Yeah, go ahead.

Exactly. You know, another group that there's different parts of the campus are affected in different ways. But our athletics teams have really been slammed by this. And you know, you can move instruction online and you can deliver instruction in different ways. But we have we have student athletes that have competed for years and senior ready to play softball baseball run. And women's track or men's track team. And on a given day, all that was stopped. In fact, we had about 15 athletes in Birmingham, Alabama, who had qualified in our indoor track and field competitions to compete at the national level. They got all the way to Birmingham had a day there, possibly just as warm-ups, getting their kind of feet on the ground. And that event was canceled as we're all other championship events. So they got in their van and they drove back to campus. And I know they're crushed by it. They're just heartbroken about it. And any of people can say, let's not that big a deal in sports as sports. But sports is a big part of our society. I mean, you can see the reaction to March madness being canceled and the NBA season being suspended and so on.

These are things that just have not just economic implications, but they have some really serious emotional implications for the people who are involved in them. All right, President of Pittsburgh State University, Dr. Steve Scott, thank you for your time this morning. Fred, thank you. It's always good to be with you and let's all stay safe and let's do the right thing and let's move beyond this. Join us for Crimson and Gold Connection Wednesdays at 8.50 and Fridays at 350.