Colorado College’s contact-tracing team: Reporting for duty
Also, how the Collaborative for Community Engagement is providing employment opportunities this fall
Good morning, and happy Thursday. On this pre-pandemic date last year, the Indigo Girls were performing at the Ent Center for the Arts on the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs campus. (The university has cancelled or postponed all live performances for the rest of the year.)
Today, we speak with lead contact tracer Connie Brachtenbach about how Colorado College’s contact-tracing team is preparing for fall. We also explain how the Collaborative for Community Engagement is revamping its Co-Op program to provide students with paid employment opportunities.
➡️ICYMI: Yesterday, we talked to Shannon Amundson, Director of Financial Aid at Colorado College, about CC’s plans for tuition, billing, and updated student employment policies.
🗄️JUST SEEING US FOR THE FIRST TIME?: Some of you might be finding this newsletter in your inbox for the first time, meaning someone subscribed you because they think you’ll appreciate it. If you’re wondering about us, you can learn who we are at the bottom of this email. And you can also scroll through our vast archive of daily newsletters for our original journalism about how the pandemic is affecting CC going all the way back to May 28.
📝Community Commitment: Colorado College’s COVID-19 Community Commitment pledge is now available on the CC webpage. The college encourages community members to sign the commitment.
Campus contact-tracing team recruits student emergency medical squad in preparation for Pandemic Fall
At the end of March, Connie Brachtenbach began working at Colorado College as a campus safety officer. On July 16, Cathy Buckley, acting interim Director of Campus Safety, called Brachtenbach to ask if she would be willing to serve as the lead on a campus contact tracing team paid for by the college. And since then, it’s been a “whirlwind,” she tells The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.
Before coming to CC, Brachtenbach served in a variety of leadership and senior management roles at for-profit and not-for-profit organizations, during which she gained experience in emergency management, including becoming certified as a first responder and confidential victim advocate. So stepping into a role as lead contact tracer felt familiar, she says.
As lead contact tracer, Brachtenbach is responsible for developing the structure and reporting protocols for the 12-member team, which includes Brachtenbach and 11 students from CCEMS, Colorado College’s student-run emergency medical squad. (You might recall our mini-profile of the team from a previous newsletter.) The CCEMS students were a natural fit. They’re trained to respond to medical emergencies on campus and to comply with federal confidentiality standards; they’ve worked closely with campus safety in the past; and they’re students.
“They have a knowledge of and connections to other students on campus that maybe campus safety or someone like myself would not have,” Brachtenbach says. Some faculty and staff members have also expressed interest in contact tracing, she added, and the team will engage them if needed.
The contract tracers have already completed the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 contact tracing course. They will also receive training from acting Director of Student Health and Wellbeing Heather Horton on how to provide emotional, mental, and physical support, and training from El Paso County Public Health on expectations for contact tracers and regulatory requirements.
The contact tracers will focus on working with anyone in the CC community who is confirmed to have COVID-19, following these general steps:
Call the confirmed individual. Ask questions to determine who they might have exposed to COVID-19.
Call those contacts who might have been exposed to COVID-19. Explain the situation, and give them instructions to quarantine and get tested.
Check in daily with the individuals in isolation and quarantine.
Those calls could take place over the phone, Zoom, or Webex, during which the team will follow scripts to prompt them to ask certain questions.
“Our main goal is to make sure that we are providing adequate support to the campus, and to the students who have been impacted,” Brachtenbach says. “And definitely making sure that those students who are in quarantine and isolation are getting everything they need.”
Contact tracing on a college campus can bring unique challenges that a contact tracer in the broader El Paso County might not face, Brachtenbach says. In part, the college experience comes with a set of expectations of what life should be like for students — and indubitably, life at CC will be different this year. To minimize the spread of COVID-19, Brachtenbach says the entire campus community will need to play a part.
“The only way to address community spread, and the only way to effectively keep people safe is for everybody, as inconvenient as it will be and as tired of it as we will get, to follow the guidelines and the protocols that are in place,” Brachtenbach says. “And also to be understanding that it’s going to change.”
‘We’ve never had this many’: 15 new student interns will join revamped Co-Op at Colorado College’s Collaborative for Community Engagement
A recent email about changes to student employment directed students to Colorado College’s Collaborative for Community Engagement, or the CCE, for more information about opportunities for paid work with off-campus organizations. We had some questions about what that all meant, so we talked to CCE Civic Engagement Paraprofessional Sophia Pray ’19 about the new intern structure and plans for remote student engagement with community partners.
This fall, the CCE will hire 15 student interns as a part of their Co-Op program
The Co-Op is the CCE’s way of referring to their new intern team. Of the 15 positions available, five are for the Board of Directors and 10 are issue organizers. The Board of Director members are each responsible for a particular pathway to engagement within the CCE, and the issue organizers will each lead one of the 10 CCE coalitions.
“We’re really excited about our intern structure,” Pray tells The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “We’ve never had this many interns, and it’s been really exciting to think about all of the ways we can kind of give more responsibility to student staff.”
One objective of the Co-Op is that the students will mostly work together, and spend less time working directly with the CCE staff members. In the past, each student intern would report directly to a staff member, who would then coordinate with the rest of the staff. When the Co-Op begins, the staff will provide some training, but then turn much of the work over to the students.
For example, under the new model Pray says an issue organizer could work with the Assistant Director for BreakOut to plan a BreakOut Trip focused on their issue area. Those two students would then communicate with the Co-Director of Community Engaged Fellows and Co-Director of Community Engaged Leaders and Scholars to share the engagement opportunity with the groups they work with.
The Co-Op program is entering its third year, but it has evolved over time. Director Jordan Travis Radke and former Assistant Director Anthony Siracusa started the program as a place for on-campus collaborative work, and former CCE Paraprofessional Jasmine Wallack ’18 led the Co-Op during its inaugural year when there were only five coalitions.
“Essentially the Co-Op first was more oriented around those projects and campaigns, but then it’s kind of evolved into becoming our student employment structure,” Pray says. “And that is based on the value that a cooperative is a really successful democratic version of employment, of ownership.”
In accordance with current CC student-worker hiring guidelines, the CCE will give preference to students with work-study awards who apply for a Co-Op position this fall. The applications are available on Handshake, a career-services platform for college students, and have varied deadlines. The positions are open to returning students, but Pray invites first-year students to join one of the CCE’s issue area coalitions to become involved in the work, and then apply for one of the intern positions in the future.
The Co-Op isn’t the only way students can become involved with the CCE this fall
Another option is through the PEAK Inquiry Project, a CCE program that connects CC students to projects with local organizations. This work is generally unpaid but offers students an opportunity to combine their academic work with community engagement. PEAK projects will likely take place remotely, and CCE staff are hosting two workshops for community organizations looking to run a PEAK project this fall.
The 34 students who are a part of another CCE program, the Community Engaged Fellows, commit to at least 24 hours of community engagement per block. Students who participate in the fellowship receive a $5,000 merit-based award and a $2,100 work award. The CCE will continue to fund those awards.
In their feedback, some of the Fellows have said they don’t always feel like they are able to connect with others while they are doing their community engagement work, something the Co-Op structure is aiming to resolve. This summer, two Fellows worked as summer interns with the CCE, and Pray says their ability to provide a student’s perspective on the Co-Op has been helpful in finalizing plans.
About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project
The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is a student-faculty collaboration by Colorado College student journalists Miriam Brown and Arielle Gordon, Journalism Institute Director Steven Hayward, Visiting Assistant Professor of Journalism Corey Hutchins, and Assistant Professor of English Najnin Islam. 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.
📬 Enter your email address to subscribe and get the newsletter in your inbox each time it comes out. You can reach us with questions, feedback, or news tips by emailing ccreportingproject@gmail.com.