10 peas in a pod: How one CC committee is combining theory and practice to create a cohort-living model
Plus, how a summer project led to a COVID-19-related adjunct course
Good morning, and happy Wednesday. On this pre-pandemic date in 1918, cases of the Spanish influenza were growing on CC’s campus. On Oct. 4, 1918 The Tiger reported that there were 27 cases in the women’s halls but that the epidemic was “well under control.” By Oct. 11, the number of cases had increased to 50. (Ah, how the times change. Or not.)
Today, two members of a campus committee explain how they are working on a “pod” system for student socialization in the spring semester. We also spoke to three CC professors who are leading an adjunct course focused on COVID-19 and creative problem-solving.
➡️ICYMI: On Monday, our resident microbiologist Phoebe Lostroh gave her weekly forecast for El Paso County. She also explained why people should still wear masks even if they are six feet apart.
✉️In Your Inbox: Too many unread emails this week? We’re here to help with summaries of recent CC emails.
Campus wastewater testing results indicated “a small concentration of viral particles” in samples taken from a section of Mathias Hall. The email explained wastewater testing can detect viral particles from past COVID-19 infections, so there might not be any current COVID-19 infections in the building. Students living in the identified area of the building were tested for the coronavirus last week.
As of Sept. 30, there were around 730 students living on campus: 79 in Loomis Hall, 97 in Mathias Hall, 101 in South Hall, 187 in apartments and cottages, 107 in small houses, and 160 students in supplemental housing off campus.
CC students, staff, and faculty can make flu shot appointments with the campus health center. After getting a flu shot, they can email wornerdesk@coloradocollege.edu from their CC email address with “Flu Shot” in the subject line, and they’ll receive $5 in credit on Amazon.
One CC group searches for the right balance between isolation and risking an outbreak on a college campus
If there’s one thing researchers know about the coronavirus, it’s that it often spreads through social networks. So as colleges and universities bring students back to campus and battle COVID-19 outbreaks, some are turning to an area of sociology called network theory to help limit the number of people each person interacts with to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.
As applied to COVID-19, network theory aims to slow the pandemic’s spread by assigning people into groups (often called pods or cohorts) and only allowing social interactions between people in the same group. Allowing people to participate in a small social network can help mitigate the psychological effects of social distancing and isolation, while also simplifying contact tracing protocols and reducing the risk of another dorm-wide quarantine. The strategy has been widely used in school reopening plans across Colorado and is recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“What we’re looking at is ways in which we can use the type of thinking that social network analysis has to try to bring people back onto the Colorado College campus as safely as possible so that we can have people on campus but not have disease transmission,” sociology professor Kathy Giuffre told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “We can also use the network thinking to be super efficient in testing so that we can get testing quickly, accurately to the people that need to be tested.”
Theoretically, the pods could help meet at least two important needs during the pandemic. Pods could provide a safe way for small groups of people to interact together. For example, Giuffre said a group of students all interested in performing in a show might be able to form a pod and then safely be able to rehearse in person. Another pod might request a designated time every week to use the campus climbing gym.
Having pods could also make testing strategies easier. It still relies on strong campus testing and contact tracing, but for example, if one person in the pod tests positive, then the rest of the pod could go into quarantine without the entire dorm they live in needing to also do so.
Giuffre is part of a group working to use this knowledge to create a “pod” or similar system on campus. Other members of the group include leaders of CC residential life and one current student, John Capers ’21.
It is still being decided what these pods will actually look like when implemented. Giuffre said students would be able to choose if they want to be part of a pod at all, and they would select the other members of their pod. The group is also exploring possible incentives to encourage students to join or form a pod.
“I think ... under all of this is a sense that we have to develop a safe community where mental and emotional health is prioritized, and also where we are able to mitigate virus exposure,” Capers told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “And we believe by having it optional and also having some form of incentive to be joining a pod, we allow students to be empowered by themselves to maintain this community.”
Giuffre noted that CC students tend to bond well with their first-year roommates and the people in their halls, sometimes so well that those friendships last for all four years. The committee hopes that when they start the process, people will choose to be in pods with their roommates, Giuffre said. For students who want to be in a pod but haven’t had a chance to make friends yet, the committee is discussing how to offer an optional matchmaking process.
“The last thing we want is for people to feel excluded or marginalized, or alienated, or shunned, because ... that will just make things worse,” Giuffre said. “We don’t want to force people into a pod, but we don’t want people to end up feeling left out because they’re not in a pod.”
A challenge in a system like this comes down to the numbers. Giuffre said the pods could be as small as three or four people, but the maximum number of people is 10, per state and federal guidelines on group gatherings. A group of 12 people might have to be split into two groups of six. The inevitable shuffling of friend groups and college relationships can disrupt existing pods. Giuffre said the group is expecting that, and they’re trying to come up with ways to handle changes safely.
Capers and Giuffre stressed the importance of having pods flexible enough that students could switch out of them if necessary. The group is well-aware of the possibility that a breakup or toxic friendship may cause tension within a pod, and they are still working out how exactly to handle that. Giuffre said one idea was to require self-quarantining for a minimum amount of time before someone was allowed to switch pods.
“As students, relationships change often,” Capers said. “Not everyone knows who their friends are from the get-go, especially first-years who are just meeting each other and just meeting new people on campus, so we want to keep this as flexible as possible.”
Though the exact timeline is not necessarily set in stone, they are looking toward a spring semester roll-out, Capers said.
‘Creative Problem-Solving’: Three CC professors team up to lead a course about resilience and community during the pandemic
In March, Assistant Professor of Art Rachel Paupeck was losing sleep over the pandemic.
“I couldn’t not do something,” Paupeck told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.
Around the same time, Associate Dean of the Faculty Andrea Bruder, who also teaches in the mathematics and computer science department, came to a similar conclusion: she also wanted to put her expertise to use and try to make a difference during the pandemic. Paupeck and Bruder joined forces with Innovation at CC and started working over the summer with a team of students to produce 3-D printed face shields. In addition to operating the 3-D printers, the students also became the public relations team, making videos to raise awareness about their work. They called it “Project PPE.”
As the project progressed, the work became more student-driven, and Bruder and Paupeck were less involved in the day-to-day operations.
“We thought that it might be an idea that would work in the framework of a class,” Bruder told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “To have students get either involved in existing student-led initiatives on campus or create their own to identify a problem that COVID has created for the CC community or the community around us, and think about how we might contribute to solutions.”
What a class about the pandemic, during the pandemic, looks like
Bruder and Paupeck joined forces with Emily Chan, associate professor of psychology and director of the Bridge Scholars Program, to create a half-credit, extended-format class titled: “Creative Problem-Solving in the time of COVID-19: Building a Pandemic-Resilient Community.”
“We wanted to get a lot of people involved,” Bruder said. “We realized there are student groups ... across the campus that are already doing this in many different ways. So we were thinking about how we might provide some kind of umbrella structure or some kind of collaborative environment where students can join those initiatives or create their own.”
The first class was last week, but interested students can still register, the professors said. They will meet every first, second, and third Thursday until the end of J Block. Every week, a different faculty or staff member will facilitate a class discussion or give a presentation on a topic related to the pandemic. Students will work in teams to identify issues the CC community is facing during the pandemic and find ways to respond, whether by creating their own project or joining an already-existing initiative.
Student Seed Innovation Grants are available to students who need funding to implement their projects. Part of the class will be focused on writing a project proposal and pitching it. The best proposal will then receive funding.
“In spite of the limitations ... there are things that you can control, things that you can make better in scale small and large,” Chan told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “And I think this course is trying to empower people to both make those changes both intellectually and also in a practical way.”
Chan, Bruder, and Paupeck are planning to act more like guides than formal instructors during the class. Paupeck and Chan already have ideas about projects they’d like to work on if they were students in the class. Paupeck wants to continue working with the Navajo Nation — she estimates Project PPE has given them more than 4,000 face shields, but she wants to do more than provide shields, she said. Chan would like to support community mental health clinics in marginalized communities around the country.
“I think we [will] know that the class was successful when sometime in the spring semester, these projects are still going and have a lasting impact,” Bruder said.
About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project
The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Miriam Brown, Arielle Gordon, and Isabel Hicks, in partnership with The Catalyst, Colorado College’s student newspaper. Work by Phoebe Lostroh, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at CC and National Science Foundation Program Director in Genetic Mechanisms, Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, will appear from time to time, as will infographics by Colorado College students Rana Abdu, Aleesa Chua, Sara Dixon, Jia Mei, and Lindsey Smith.
The project seeks to provide frequent updates about CC and other higher education institutions during the pandemic by providing original reporting, analysis, interviews with campus leaders, and context about what state and national headlines mean for the CC community.
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