Navigating Academia During COVID-19: Perspectives and Strategies from BIPOC Women 3031356128, 9783031356124

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Navigating Academia During COVID-19 Perspectives and Strategies from BIPOC Women Edited by Anuli Njoku · Marian Evans

Navigating Academia During COVID-19

Anuli Njoku  •  Marian Evans Editors

Navigating Academia During COVID-19 Perspectives and Strategies from BIPOC Women

Editors Anuli Njoku Department of Public Health College of Health and Human Services Southern Connecticut State University New Haven, CT, USA

Marian Evans Department of Public Health College of Health and Human Services Southern Connecticut State University New Haven, CT, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-35612-4    ISBN 978-3-031-35613-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Navigating Academia During COVID-19: Perspectives and Strategies from Women of Color Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) women in academia are grappling with emotional tolls and invisible burdens, discrimination, political turmoil, social unrest, and public health crises. Moreover, the rapid pivot response to COVID-19 has exacerbated inequities among BIPOC women in academia. We hope to bring to the forefront the range of BIPOC women faculty, administrator, and student voices on the impact of COVID-19 during these unprecedented times. The seed of this book was initiated with conversations about the experiences of Black women faculty dealing with the numerous challenges that presented with COVID-19 and the trauma of civil unrest after the first year of the global pandemic, centuries of civil unrest, and economic inequities. Those conversations led to a presentation at a national conference. The responses from the audience and a feature article in a preeminent higher education newsmagazine that highlighted the editors’ presentation along with keynote speaker Kimberlé Crenshaw’s talk were the spark that acknowledged that the editors could lend voices to a subject that needed to be heard. Women are missing throughout all levels of academia. “While women make up nearly 40% of the provost and dean roles that typically feed into senior academic positions, they account for only 22% of presidents, 10% of system presidents, and 26% of board chairs. Women of color are nearly absent at the top altogether, comprising a mere 5% of presidents” (Eos Foundation, 2021). The editors determined that the v

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experiences of Black women administrators were needed, and a conversation was held to capture the richness of those challenges and strategies. While attending another national conference and speaking with book publishers, the possibility of having this work manifest into a co-edited book was conceived. The editors discussed what it would take and that co-­editing a book made sense with an already initiated collaborative process. Discussions ensued on the need to broaden the base of voices within academia during the contemplation of a book to capture the richness of the events, content, and audience. ‘Could we take this further?’ the editors wondered! Broadening the focus from Black to BIPOC made it more inclusive and expanded the audience. This was an intentional move that enabled the editors to include and invite a host of women’s voices and perspectives. At the time of this writing, we are still in the midst of a devastating global pandemic that has killed millions and the stories and perspectives are in real time, close-up, personal, and reiterative—still unfolding and traumatizing. This book has been a collaborative event from the beginning. A short abstract was developed to include in an email to gauge interest in the project and a list was created of invited BIPOC women academics, administrators, and students who might be interested in writing or co-authoring a chapter in the book. Several authors responded to the call immediately. It was a revelation to see how quickly so many BIPOC women faculty, administrators, and students signed on and submitted an abstract and a potential chapter title as if they had been waiting for the call for their voices to be raised during this time. Why, the editors wonder, do we wait for an invitation? There is power and beauty in sharing. It is momentous to create spaces for others to share. We are the solutions to the many challenges. This edited volume aims to provide personal narratives of a diverse group of scholars in academia about experiences, resilience, and strategies to navigate academia and life work during times of COVID-19 and unrest. Specifically, the authors of the chapters explore stories of ordeal, triumph, loss, and hope. There are three main subdivisions with overlapping tones and themes in the book: Recognizing the Inequities: Amplifying Our Voices; Turning Challenges into Opportunities: Building Resilience; and Identifying Solutions and Best Practices: Strategies for Success. This book may particularly benefit career seekers, faculty, administrators, staff, and students who work or study in higher education. As the pandemic has brought tremendous shifts for institutions and individuals within, this

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book aims to highlight stories of persistence, resilience, trials, joys, vulnerability, and ultimately, hope. The information presented in each chapter is crucial as the details could help educational institutions better equip teachers, faculty, staff, administrators, and students to navigate academia during times of COVID-19 and social unrest. Specifically, accounts of cultural and racial experiences in academia can help bridge gaps and foster diversity and inclusion in classroom and workplace environments. The recommendations can outline effective strategies for university leaders to consider in mitigating racial, ethnic, economic, and other inequities for BIPOC women in academia. The editors would like to thank the powerful Black women faculty and administrators who initially shared their time, experiences, and strategies to spark this journey: Uchenna Baker, Tammi Jackson, Dawn Stanton, Ebonee Brown, Dian Brown-Albert, Daphney Alston, Anuli Njoku, and Marian Evans. New Haven, CT, USA 

Anuli Njoku Marian Evans

Contents

Part I Recognizing the Inequities: Amplifying Our Voices   1  Self-Identification in Black, Red, Brown, and White: A Clarion Call to Address Medical Racism in Native American Communities  3 Mary Boudreaux  The Gift of Ontological Inquiry  7 Uchenna Baker  Lessons for My Daughters (Taught to Me by bell) 13 Brandon L. A. Hutchinson  Celebrating Ramadan During COVID 21 Fathima Wakeel  Grief and Bereavement During COVID-19: Funeralization and Ritual Losses 27 Cheryl Green  Reimagining Asian Women Scholars in Academic Spaces 35 Meghana Ray

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CONTENTS

 Working Around the Clock in the Time of COVID-19 43 Fauzia Saiyed  Experiences of a Latina Educator, Mother, and Student During the COVID-19 Pandemic 51 Yalitza Corcino-Davis  Some Time with Writing 57 Ogechi Iwuoha Njoku Part II Turning Challenges into Opportunities: Building Resilience  65  Grow Through What You Go Through 67 Chelsea L. Ortiz  Social-Emotional Challenges in K-12 Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic 73 Koren M. Paul  Leading in Color in Academia: A Latinx Chair’s Experience of Resiliency and Hope 81 Loida Reyes  Navigating Realities While Maintaining Perspective During COVID 89 Antionette Smith Epps  Giving Up Is Never an Option: Personal and Professional Development During COVID-19 97 Rochelle Felix  Redefining Resilience and Hope: La Lucha Continúa!103 Beatriz Suro

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 Finding My Way Through a Never-Ending Storm: Leading, Mothering, and Coping with Loss109 Sienna S. Abdulahad Part III Identifying Solutions and Best Practices: Strategies for Success 117  The Complications of COVID and Conduct119 Juhi Bhatt  Teaching the Calculus of Coronavirus-19127 Gelonia L. Dent  It’s a Win-Win: Faculty-Mentored Research with Students of Color133 Anuli Njoku and Rochelle Felix  ACEing the Black Trauma of the COVID-19 Pandemic141 Marian Evans  Coping Resources and Self-care During COVID-19, Police Brutality, and Social Unrest149 Anuli Njoku  Spaces to Heal: Providing the Table and Seats159 Anuli Njoku and Marian Evans Index

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Notes on Contributors

Sienna S. Abdulahad  is a scholar activist  and  co-author of The Table: Stories from Black Women in Student Affairs and Anti-racist Community Engagement: Principles and Practices. She has over 15 years of experience in higher education leadership, social justice, equity, inclusion, communications, and marketing. She serves as Director of Finance and Operations for the Phyllis M.  Taylor Center for Social Innovation & Design Thinking and an adjunct professor at the Tulane University School of Architecture. She earned her M.A.Ed. in Higher Education and Student Affairs at Virginia Tech and is also a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated. Uchenna  Baker is Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Dr. Baker earned an M.Ed. in counseling psychology and a B.A. in English and sociology from Rutgers University, and a PhD in educational policy with a focus on urban education from Rutgers University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She was the 2016 recipient of the Illinois Qualitative Dissertation Award for her research on ontological and phenomenological leadership. She has over two decades of professional experience in Higher Education and teaching experience at the undergraduate and graduate levels and is deeply passionate about social justice and access in Higher Education. Juhi  Bhatt  is the University Associate Dean of Students at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She holds her BA in Music Education from the College of New Jersey, MS in Counseling from Montclair State University, and Ed.D in Higher Education Administration from Saint Peter’s xiii

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University all in New Jersey. Juhi has worked for over a decade in Higher Education in the areas of student conduct, Title IX, behavioral intervention teams, student activities, student leadership and career counseling. Mary  Boudreaux is an associate professor and Coordinator of the Doctoral Program in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Southern Connecticut State University. Previous experience includes teaching and administration in public Pre-K-12 and higher education institutions. She teaches graduate online and hybrid courses and chairs doctoral dissertation committees. Her research interests encompass school improvement, school leadership, and teacher leadership. Yalitza Corcino-Davis  is a doctoral student at Lehigh University in the Department of Educational Leadership. She works as a research coordinator for a study through Lehigh University’s College of Health. Her research interest includes math performance, dual enrollment, and racial microaggressions and their influence on academic performance and persistence among minoritized college students. Gelonia  L.  Dent  is an associate professor of mathematics at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York. She earned a doctorate in applied mathematics at Brown University and studies fluid dynamics applications. Dr.  Dent is a Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) influencer who believes that scholars are students who are receptive to mentoring. Marian  Evans  is an associate professor in the Department of Public Health, affiliate faculty in Women’s & Gender Studies, and the Multicultural Center faculty liaison, and co-instructor for the University Access Program Study Abroad at Southern Connecticut State University, where she has taught for 18 years. She obtained a  Bachelor of Arts  in Biology  at Swarthmore College, a Doctor of Medicine (MD) at Pennsylvania State University, and an Master of Public Health (MPH) at Southern Connecticut State University. In 2022, she  was awarded Outstanding Educator Award from the National Sorority of Phi Delta Kappa. Her research and teaching interests include women’s health, reproductive justice, contraception,  environmental health, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Rochelle  Felix  was born in the beautiful island of Saint Lucia and migrated to the United States at age sixteen.  She  is a Master of Public

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Health student at Southern Connecticut State University  (SCSU). She completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in Interdisciplinary Studies, with concentrations in Public Health and Psychology  at SCSU.  Prior, she earned her Associates degree from Norwalk Community College in General Studies and Allied Health. Cheryl Green  is an Off-Shift Nurse Administrator at Yale-New Haven Health Bridgeport Hospital Milford Campus, Nurse Educator, and a Doctor of Nursing Chair and Committee Member at Abilene Christian University. Dr. Green has been a registered nurse for over 33 years and a licensed clinical social worker for over 29 years. Areas of research include incivility, mental illness, medication error prevention, medical-surgical health issues, incivility and discrimination, prayer and spirituality, self-care, distraction, stress and anxiety, nursing education, death and dying, health disparities, addictions, simulation, and mindfulness. Brandon L. A. Hutchinson  is an associate professor of English and affiliate faculty in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department, and has taught at Southern Connecticut State University for 20 years. She serves as a faculty fellow for the Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and is co-steering the newly designed Africana Studies minor. Anuli Njoku  is an associate professor in the Department of Public Health at Southern Connecticut State University. She obtained a  Bachelor of Science in Public Health at Rutgers University, Master of Public Health in International Health at Boston University, Doctor of Public Health in Community Health and Prevention from Drexel University, and postdoctoral training in Psychosocial and Behavioral Medicine from Fox Chase Cancer Center. She draws on over 20 years of experience in public health, including over 16 years of teaching, and has published extensively about health equity . Her research and teaching interests include social determinants of health, health disparities, health promotion and education, cultural competency in higher education, environmental health, rural health, and teaching and learning. Ogechi  Iwuoha  Njoku is an assistant superintendent within the New York State public school system. Drawing on over 20 years of teaching and leading at the elementary and secondary levels, Ogechi believes that all learners should know that their mind works and works well. She works to honor the unique styles of wondering, questioning, understanding, and constructing to make sound, compassionate, responsible, and

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informed instructional decisions. Ogechi holds a Doctor of Education in Instructional Leadership from Hunter College, a Master of Education in Learning and Teaching from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, and a Bachelor’s from Barnard College. Chelsea L. Ortiz  is the Director of Nursing Admissions and Enrollment Management at Southern Connecticut State University’s School of Nursing in Connecticut. Chelsea holds a Master of Public Health and a Certified Lactation Consultant licensure. Chelsea’s interests are in maternal and child health, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Koren M. Paul  is a newly retired, 24-year educator who taught at the elementary school level and served the last 11 years as an elementary school principal. She holds a Master of Science in Elementary Education from University of Bridgeport and a PhD in Leadership in Educational Administration from Capella University.  She is currently a writer, an audiobook narrator, and a proofing and editing business owner. Koren has two adult children and three grandchildren. Meghana Ray  earned her PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago, MBA from Illinois Institute of Technology, and bachelor’s from University of Mumbai. She is former faculty at Midwestern University and Roosevelt University, and the Indian Institute of Public Health in India. Her work focuses on improving healthcare and the environment as upstream determinants of health. Loida Reyes  is an associate professor and Chairperson of the Department of Social Work at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, Connecticut. She holds a PhD in Social Work and Master of Social Work from University of Connecticut.  Her research areas of interest include  Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), child welfare, and leadership. Fauzia Saiyed  is currently completing her PhD in Counseling Psychology at Lehigh University. Her research focuses on understanding the experience mothers, who experience low income and economic disparity, have with postpartum depression. In her free time, she loves hiking, reading, and taking care of her plants. Antionette  Smith  Epps is a  Master of Healthcare Administration (MHA) Program Director and Clinical Associate Professor at Fairbanks School of Public Health at Indiana University in Indianapolis. Dr. Epps

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received a DrPH from the University of Alabama—Birmingham, MHSA from the University of Michigan, and BA from Jackson State University. With over 28 years as a health care executive, she also completed a NAPHHI/New York University Senior Policy Fellowship. Beatriz  Suro  was born in Puerto Rico. She is a doctoral candidate in Counseling Psychology at Lehigh University. This year, she will be completing her health psychology internship at the New Jersey VA Medical Center. Her research interests include HIV prevention, immigrants, multicultural competencies, and social justice advocacy. She is an avid runner, a nature enthusiast, and a gifted storyteller of all tales. Fathima Wakeel  is an associate professor at Lehigh University’s College of Health. She has a Master of Public Health from University of South Florida, PhD in Public Health from University of Los Angeles, California, and postdoctoral training from University Wisconsin-Madison. She has over twenty years of academic and research training in maternal and child health as well as eight years of experience teaching and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students, curriculum and program development, and interdisciplinary community coalition development.

List of Figures

Reimagining Asian Women Scholars in Academic Spaces Fig. 1 Microaggressions and verbalizations. (Source: Internet comments and author’s personal experiences)

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ACEing the Black Trauma of the COVID-19 Pandemic Fig. 1 Ode to Breathe-Gabrielle McLemore

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List of Tables

Teaching the Calculus of Coronavirus-19 Table 1 The SIR model differential equations and the definition of the derivative from calculus Table 2 Calculus in Practice (CIP) project participation per class over four terms. Two numbers indicate different sections of the same course in the term

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PART I

Recognizing the Inequities: Amplifying Our Voices

Self-Identification in Black, Red, Brown, and White: A Clarion Call to Address Medical Racism in Native American Communities Mary Boudreaux

Dr. Mary Boudreaux (Pellerin-Keller, surname) is descended from seven Pellerin (origins in France) brothers who resided in St. Mary Parish in the state of Louisiana. The small village is known as Verdunville. Her great-­ grandfather (mother’s lineage) was a Frenchman named Charles Pellerin, U.S. Library of Congress: Slave Narratives Series (Texas) of Sylvester Sostan Wickliffe (ex-slave) can be found at the following link: https://tile.loc.gov/ storage-­services/service/mss/mesn/mesn-­164/mesn-­164.pdf An informative interview regarding the Black Chitimacha: The Lost Tribe can be found at the following link: https://iamblackchitimacha.wordpress.com/

M. Boudreaux (*) Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_1

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who married Marie Paul of African and American Indian descent. Her maternal lineage includes Spanish ancestry (Cuban). Professor Boudreaux’s father (descendant of slaves) originated from the small town of Crowley in southwest Louisiana. The intertwine of these bloodlines are representative of her proud Louisiana Creole ancestry and her lineage to the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) community of Verdunville, Louisiana. The two selected graphic photos from a collection called “A Coming of Age” resemble how Professor Boudreaux visualizes the beauty of her multiethnic culture and, more specifically, how she self-identifies with her African American/French/Spanish/American Indian ancestry along the Bayou Teche in south Louisiana. The diversity of her family ancestry is more vividly explained in the U.S. Library of Congress: Slave Narratives Series (Texas) through her ancestor, Sylvestre Sosthène Paul (an ex-slave), born in 1854  in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, who changed his name to Sylvester Sostan Wickliffe. In this typewritten record of Wickliffe’s life along the Bayou Teche, he spoke fondly of his family’s descent and bloodline in the Chitimacha Indian tribe in Charenton, Louisiana. However, the Chitimacha tribe will not acknowledge their Black American Indian family from the Verdunville area. Dr. Boudreaux continues to stand with the united front of the “Black Chitimacha” group to not only move forth the acknowledgment of their existence and ancestry to the Chitimacha tribe of south Louisiana but provide her people their rights and privileges as federally recognized American Indians. American Indian is the only racial/ethnic group in the United States in which persons must prove their ancestry. For many decades, Dr. Boudreaux’s family members have provided historical documents to enroll in the Chitimacha tribe but have been refused based upon the tribe’s intentional redacting of their official and original 1903 tribal ancestry roll, the 1926 annuity roll, and 1959 census to remove any relations to individuals of Black, Negro, or African American bloodlines. Establishing the progenitors of American Indian tribes can be a complex and nuanced process that requires the careful consideration of a variety of factors. In general, much of our understanding of the origins and histories of these tribes comes from a combination of archaeological evidence, historical records, and oral traditions passed down through generations. One important tool that has been used to establish the progenitors of these tribes is genetic analysis. By studying the DNA of different tribes and comparing it to other populations around the world, researchers can gain insights into the

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ancestral groups that gave rise to these communities. Other important factors to consider include linguistic and cultural similarities between different tribes, as well as their geographic distributions and historical interactions. Ultimately, the process of establishing the progenitors of American Indian tribes is an ongoing and evolving one that will continue to be informed by new research and discoveries. While our understanding of the origins and histories of these tribes may never be complete, continually striving to improve our knowledge of these communities is an important way to honor their rich and diverse cultures and to ensure that they are recognized and respected. It also has important implications for issues such as land rights and cultural preservation. By identifying the progenitors of different tribes, we can gain a deeper understanding of their unique histories and traditions, as well as their connections to other indigenous communities around the world. It is important to approach this process with sensitivity and respect for the perspectives and values of the tribes themselves, and to work collaboratively with indigenous scholars and communities to ensure that their voices are heard and their contributions to the field are acknowledged. Despite Dr. Boudreaux’s concern of racial and ethnic discrimination within racialized communities, other critical issues related to public health and equity are of grave concern for this Louisiana native. Like many communities of color in the United States, COVID-19 has affected tribal communities in south Louisiana. Inequities continue to exist for marginalized communities such as the state-recognized United Houma Nation (Choctaw) tribe of south Louisiana, in which many of her family members are enrolled. Setyawan (2021) wrote that of the over 19,000 enrolled members of the United Houma Nation across a span of six or more parishes, it is difficult to determine who has access and received the COVID-19 vaccine. Systemic barriers and inequity exist for members of racial and ethnic minority groups. These include access to medical care (non-­ emergency and emergency), treatment and care for drug and alcohol abuse, and health education for diverse gender and age groups. For communities such as the United Houma Nation, many of the members live in rural areas of south Louisiana and medical care is often inaccessible or non-existent. Setyawan (2021) explained that many members of the United Houma Nation lack transportation to the local clinic or vaccination site because of proximity and access to technology to learn more about COVID-19. These challenges and the disparities of the vaccine (vaccine gap) in rural areas and underserved communities have caused an

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increase in mistrust and a sense of hesitancy in receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. Other concerns include the historical side effects and long-term effects of the COVID-19 drug. These historical legacies of mistrust, skepticism, and abuse are based upon communities of color experiences stemming from the U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee to the most current misuse of blood samples from the Havasupai Tribe (see Quinn & Andrasik, 2021; Shaffer, 2018). Today, the U.S. government has put in place the COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force to confront issues of systemic barriers and inequities for underserved communities and racialized communities such as the United Houma Nation. Much more is needed. Food insecurity, drug use, suicide, mental health issues, stable housing, and diabetes are only a few of the public health issues faced by Native American Indian communities. These public health issues in Native American tribes are crises of epic proportions. In fact, they are part of a larger historical legacy of medical racism for marginalized communities in the United States. Building confidence and trust between Native American tribes (e.g., the United Houma Nation) and federal and local health agencies is reconnaissance work. Now, the movement becomes one of restorative justice (Smith, 2022).

References Quinn, S. C., & Andrasik, M. P. (2021). Addressing vaccine hesitancy in BIPOC communities—Toward trustworthiness, partnership, and reciprocity. The New England Journal of Medicine, 385(2), 97–100. https://doi.org/10.1056/ nejmp2103104 Setyawan, K. (2021, April 5). ‘There’s a lack of trust’: United Houma Nation works to reduce inequity, vaccine skepticism. Houma Today. https://unitedhoumanation.org/wp-­content/uploads/2021/04/United-­Houma-­Nation-­ works-­to-­reduce-­inequity-­vaccine-­skepticism.pdf Shaffer, M. (2018, September 12). Havasupai blood samples misused. Indian Country Today. https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/havasupai-­blood-­ samples-­misused Smith, T. (2022, January 31). How legacy of medical racism shapes U.S. healthcare today. American Medical Association. https://www.ama-­assn.org/print/ pdf/node/80111

The Gift of Ontological Inquiry Uchenna Baker

The Course Ontological inquiry was a gift. It was a gift that I gave myself years ago when I took the leadership course, “Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological/Phenomenological Model.” It was during this course that I discovered the power of leading myself. I had to discover how to lead myself before I could lead others. There was a question often asked in the course that has persisted for me: “What are your life, career, schooling, and relationships really about?” This question often called me to action in moments when the world occurred to me as immovable. The course invited me to discover that as I opened possibilities for myself, I opened a world of possibilities for others. Taking the risk to lead myself allowed me to create a world of possibilities that did not exist before. The course distinctions have never left me. I am continually accessing what it looks like to lead myself, even when leading occurs as painful, lonely, and confusing. Ontological inquiry offers a pathway to discovering

U. Baker (*) Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_2

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new ways of being and acting. To be human is to be afraid and angry, to hurt and be hurt. However, I have seen for myself that leadership is about creating a new future. It is about creating and inviting new possibilities despite those human feelings of fear, anger, and hurt. Leadership cannot be created from a past-driven trajectory, lest it simply become an extension of the past. Leadership is creating a new context and future possibilities. And so, in the face of all that was and all that is, I choose to show up and create new possibilities for myself, my children, and my institution.

The Cry I was in the middle of a meeting when I received a notification from my children’s school that they were moving to remote instruction the next day. Following the notification was a slew of emails from the children’s teachers with directions for online learning and what felt like endless corresponding web links. A wave of anxiety filled my body. I chose to keep it together until the workday was done. I knew that once I became unraveled, I would need some time to pull myself back together. My life already felt so out of my control, and this was one more thing I needed to figure out how to manage. That same day, the university also announced the shift to remote operations. After leaving the office, I sat in my car and cried. My whole life was falling apart. I could not make sense of the world around me. The next few weeks of homeschooling and remote work were a balancing act of keeping up with assignments, showing up to endless virtual meetings, supporting my staff through this sudden change, and working to not lose myself in the chaos of it all. A few weeks into this new reality, the death of George Floyd became national news. The world felt like a black hole of uncertainty and hopelessness. I was angry, hurt, and confused. I was not naïve about the imperfections of this world, but this one cut deep for me. I had to explain to my 11-year-old son why Floyd was killed. I will never forget the look in his eyes as he watched the events unfold on the news. It was innocence forever lost. This is what it meant to be Black in America. Later that night, in the stillness of my thoughts and with the intention of releasing some of my inner rage, I wrote: Today I cried. It was not a new cry. It was that same old cry except that it did not hurt any less. It hurts more each time. A new day with yesterday’s demons raging. How do I explain to my 11-year-old son why his 59-year-­ old self is begging for his life under a knee?

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“I can’t breathe.” How do I explain to my son why he is laying on the cold ground crying out for his momma with his last breath? “I can’t breathe.” 8 minutes and 46 seconds. “I can’t breathe.” This cry is suffocating. It runs deep. It is a familiar cry. This painful history, this excruciating daily reality. This is what it means to be Black in America. “I can’t breathe” but I am ok. I’ll show up again tomorrow. Swallow it. Chin up. Keep going. “I can’t breathe” but I am ok. Actually, I am not. I’ve been trying to swallow it. Digest it. Consume it. Hold it in the depths of my gut so that I can show up. I can’t. It regurgitates. It’s choking me. It’s suffocating me. I. CAN’T. BREATHE! Today I cried and tomorrow it won’t hurt any less.

I cried all weekend. It was February, just three months prior, when the world witnessed the last moments of Ahmaud Arbery’s life. In March we learned about Breonna Taylor. And now George. Maybe this one felt different because I watched this man take his last breath. I did not need to imagine what his last moments were because I witnessed them. I cried all weekend, wiped my tears, and showed up to work on Monday empty, drained, and lost. This was what it meant to be Black in America. I woke up on Monday with the heaviness of the past few days weighing on my heart. I was not ready for Zoom meetings, COVID planning, supervising, or managing any staff. I could barely manage myself. I opened my first Zoom meeting and was greeted by boxes of smiling faces and small talk about what folks had done over the weekend. How could it be that my reality was so much different than everyone else’s? At that moment I felt alone. I felt my Blackness. No one else looked like me; therefore, how could they feel what I was feeling? Everyone occurred to me as blissfully unaware while I was privately suffering in silence. I pushed through the meeting and dove right into another one. This one was with my university colleagues. One colleague, a Black man, began the meeting by sharing his own pain around George’s death. He was vulnerable as he shared his raw emotions. I too became emotional and shut my camera off. I could not let my colleagues see me cry. At that moment, I did not want to be vulnerable in front of them. I did not want my emotion to be a platform, a show, or a distraction from their own discomfort.

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I knew I could not leave my camera off for the entire two-hour meeting, so I turned my camera back on and pushed through the agenda items while periodically wiping away my tears, trying to hold back the pain. Nobody reached out to me after that meeting to see how I was doing. No phone calls. No text messages. No emails. This was what it meant to be Black in America. I had several additional meetings with my team members throughout the day, and while most of them were over the phone, the brokenness in my voice could not be masked. In those moments, as the leader of my division and as a supervisor, I chose to allow my vulnerability to be heard. This was my truth. So, with a shaky voice and moments of quiet sobbing, I responded honestly to the question “How are you?” Yet even in my own pain and despair, I too needed to reflect on the question. I needed to understand what this moment meant for my staff. As for me, I knew that this moment was calling for something bigger than my brokenness. Later that week I called my team into action. I invited them to examine our processes, practices, and policies around access, equity, and inclusion to ensure that our work was aligned with our mission to foster a safe, inclusive, and welcoming environment for our students and staff. I reminded the team that the work of social justice and equity was messy, textured, layered, and imperfect because we as humans were all those things. The work to create new and better possibilities in the face of so much injustice was difficult, uncomfortable, and lifelong. However, how we showed up for each other and ourselves at this moment mattered. I reminded them that this work belonged to all of us and that we had to understand that what impacted one, impacted all. I recalled a moment from the documentary I am Not Your Negro, where James Baldwin noted that he did not have the responsibility of making decisions that impacted hundreds of thousands of lives, nor was he responsible for raising money and deciding how it got used. He was not creating strategies for marches or voting registration drives. Thus, he did not have a level of influence in those big domains. However, he was a witness. He was a witness to all the injustices that were happening around him. Therefore, he had to “accept that part of [his] responsibility as a witness was to write the story and get it out” (Baldwin, 2017, p.  31). I reminded my team that we as individuals, as a division, and as a campus had a responsibility as witnesses. Therefore, how the story got told, who got to tell the story, and what sort of spaces we created for those stories mattered. Storytelling. Why does storytelling matter? Part of being able to

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truly address our goal meant that we had to be willing to examine ourselves. We had to be willing to tell the story. We had to be willing to tell the truth: our personal truth and our division’s truth. While those truths could be difficult to reveal, in having the willingness to name those truths, we got closer to our humanity. With that, I left my team with another quote from James Baldwin: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced” (Baldwin, 2017, p. 103).

The March One of the foundational elements from my ontology course was the notion of a commitment to something greater than oneself. Much like the way I needed to show up for my staff during these challenging times, I knew that this moment was also calling me to show up for my students. So, after I cried, I marched. One of my students decided to plan a city-wide march that began on the grounds of our campus. Without question I knew that I needed to attend that march with my family. The morning of the march was filled with much anticipation as my children prepared their signs and packed snacks for the day. I felt a sense of pride watching their eagerness to be part of something bigger than them. I felt even more pride knowing that I would get to experience this day with them. It would be the first march we experienced together as a family. We arrived on campus and joined a growing crowd of hundreds of people prepared to walk the streets of the city in the name of justice. We moved through the streets with our fists pumping in that air and saying their names: Breonna Taylor! George Floyd! Manuel Ellis! Each time I shouted I felt a sense of release. Each shout released a piece of my inner anger, my frustration, and my pain. In that moment, surrounded by my students, I was not the Vice President for Student Affairs. I was a Black woman in America raising Black children and marching for their futures. Halfway through the march, the organizers led the crowd in a sobering moment. We were all asked to lay face down on the concrete street for eight minutes and 46 seconds in remembrance of George Floyd. As I witnessed hundreds of bodies on the ground, including my own children, I was brought to tears. Here in painful solidarity, we lay, people from all walks of life, to collectively mourn this moment in America. For over eight minutes, hundreds of people laid quietly on the street. The silence was deafening.

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As I laid on the ground, I wondered what George’s last moments felt like. Without concern that my body was on the same street that feet walked on and cars drove through, I surrendered. I closed my eyes, exhaled, and knew that in that moment I was doing my part. Hours later, as I sat on my couch with aching feet, I reflected on my time at the march. It was remarkable to think that in a pandemic when I felt so disconnected from the world, I could feel so connected to hundreds of strangers. We were all fighting the same fight. Despite how painful the world felt and how broken we were, we showed up. We showed up for those we mourned and marched for our children, each other, and the future of America. Yesterday I cried, but today we marched.

The Gift The past few months have been extremely challenging. I experienced so many emotions. I had to dig deep within to show up professionally and personally. I had to surrender to that which I could not control. I was perpetually tired, emotionally drained, and mentally exhausted. I was sad and angry. There were many moments when I felt hopeless and afraid. And yet I found moments of joy, gratitude, and profound love. I relished small victories. I found the capacity to be patient with myself and extend to myself abounding grace. The past few months reminded me of the possibilities that existed for the future when I showed up and created new futures despite what the present looked or felt like. This past year, more than ever before in my life, I needed this gift of ontological inquiry. This gift invited me to not just question what was showing up within me but also ask myself what to do with it. I found that beneath the layers of hurt and uncertainty lay my commitment to creating a better world. My commitment to justice, my students, and my family was greater than the myriad feelings that 2020 had evoked within me. My commitment mattered, and it was my commitment that created a new future for myself and those around me.

Reference Baldwin, J. (2017). I am not your negro. Vintage Books.

Lessons for My Daughters (Taught to Me by bell) Brandon L. A. Hutchinson

Lessons for My Daughters (Taught to Me by Bell) I As I was navigating COVID-19 as a woman, mother, wife, and professor, the very thing I was reaching most toward, the nutrient I was trying to digest, absorb, and spill into each living cell in my Black body was “true love.” It is the kind bell hooks (2001) writes about in her book all about love: New Visions. Do you know why? hooks (2001) told us that “the most precious gift true love offers” is “the experience of knowing we always belong” (p. 164). It had occurred to me that that I had not been making the association between belongingness and “true love” outside of my familial and close friend relationships. It makes sense in my romantic life; it rings true in how I co-parent.

B. L. A. Hutchinson (*) Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_3

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But is “true love” what I am offering in my teaching? Is my pedagogy being shaped by it? What was most salient as I sought answers to these questions was the resistance that kept coming up as I dove in for more understanding. In her book, hooks invites us to both relish and stretch out in the transformative portal of love: In. All. Aspects. Of. Our. Lives.

That is how I was beginning to understand it. As hooks helps us to expand our understanding of love—it goes far beyond the romantic—to see its transformative power for both the individual and the collective, she wrote: Love is an action, a participatory emotion. Whether we are engaged in a process of self-love or of loving others we must move beyond the realm of feeling to actualize love. That is why it is useful to see love as a practice […] We learn to communicate, to be still, and listen to the needs of our hearts, and we learn to listen to others. We learn compassion by being willing to hear the pain and joy of those we love. (hooks, 2001, p. 165)

Once the pandemic tore into my normal pace, I could no longer be healthy or happy duplicating norms that, in their design, had created unhealthy compartmentalization. If we paint a picture of what this has looked like for me, imagine: some of me would be on one side, operating authentically, in the practice of “true love” with my family and friends. On the other side of the mouth-wide-open chasm would be a professional version of myself, one less authentic. Amid terrible global tragedy and upheaval, I was being given an unmistakable blessing: the opportunity to create a bridge, one that would link my selves into an embodied practice of radical self-care. A type of care practice that ripples throughout my life. It is one that I hope will stand—primarily—as a true love offering for my very own daughters who are being launched into a world that prioritizes other things over one’s own well-being and knowing.

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II Like plenty of people, I was forced to adapt to a different mode of work during the pandemic. Practiced in teaching my four-four course load in the traditional on-the-ground classroom setup, I was forced to learn how to work online only and in a hurry. In my twenty years of teaching, I had only taught one online course, and I was not familiar with the technologies for content delivery or student submission. Since I needed to uplevel my skill set, I made use of campus resources by attending webinars and working with colleagues with whom I felt I could be vulnerable and admit the things I did not know. I was doing the things most educators tell their students to do to be successful. I was trying to embrace a beginner’s mind while simultaneously swatting at the “you should know this already” narrative swimming around in my head. The heightened version of the monkey mind speaking was, “Oh, my gosh, girl. Now you know you are Black, and a woman, and you can’t not know. Everyone is watching.” With time, though, I became less embarrassed as I continued to ask what I considered to be the most basic of questions, like How do I set up a Blackboard page? How do I use TEAMS for class sessions? What are the best strategies for copying a course? Prior to the pandemic, I would not have thought that, in a virtual setting, I could be good at building the same type of rapport with my students and/or the type of community I create in person. I was used to students lining up for office hours or sometimes having writing sessions with several students (sometimes four at a time) in my smallish office space prior to paper deadlines. Those who showed up were often first-­generation students of color and, in that category, lots were women. I felt good, connected, and purposeful. However, despite my worries about relationship building in a virtual setup, I had similar success. I even wound up being nominated for and winning a prestigious teaching award at the university, all while teaching outside of my comfort zone. While the tutorials and one-to-one crash course sessions on how to create an online classroom were imperative to my success, equally significant, if not more, was the way in which I showed up in my work, the intention with which I set up the virtual classrooms, and how I developed relationships with my students. Teaching from my home made all the difference. This should not have been a surprise. I am invigorated at home; I engage in contemplative practices at home; I make healthy food and nurture my Black children at home. There is intentional affirmation and joy.

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We get to be angry at home—about the state of our world, about the violence that continues to mimic (eerily) the scenes in the anti-lynching dramas I teach, written by Black women playwrights in the 1900s. When I was drafting my dissertation years ago on Black women playwrights spanning from the mid- through late 1900s, I explored the ways in which their main characters, often female, sought protection from the outside world—namely due to the intersections of race, class, and gender—passed on survival information to their children; and created beauty and peace in their “homeplaces” (hooks, 1990, p. 43), to use bell hooks’ apt phrasing. She further wrote: This task of making a homeplace was not simply a matter of black women providing service; it was about the construction of a safe place where black people could affirm one another and by so doing heal many of the wounds inflicted by racist domination. We could not learn to love or respect ourselves in the culture of white supremacy, on the outside; it was there on the inside, in that “homeplace” […] that we had the opportunity to grow and develop, to nurture our spirits. The task of making a homeplace, of making home a community of resistance, has been shared by black women globally, especially black women in white supremacist societies. (hooks, 1990, p. 43)

Together my husband and I created a homeplace of resistance. Teaching in this place was a tremendous benefit, and it undoubtedly rippled over into my professional methodology. This was a new kind of living for me, and I recognized the gigantic privilege I had. I settled into the spaciousness that was created for me. Amidst global sadness and recurring violence on Black bodies, I was being cushioned away from things at the university that I was exhausted from: daily microaggressions, the loneliness that comes from being one of few Black women professors on campus, and hopelessness about sustainable change. Indeed, it was a true love offering. It was one that reminded me of the need to be steadfast in my commitment to caring for myself. While thriving in the cocoon we had created, I knew that post-pandemic, I wanted to live differently and grabbed ahold of this learning: as often as I can, I want to be in and to create “homeplaces” outside of my home that afford me necessary distance from racism.

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III Though I had to learn some significant tech skills to finish the semester of Spring 2020, I was riding on the coattails of a well-oiled machine. In my courses, we had an established pattern, and as a result, I found ways to replicate student participation in our mostly asynchronous setup. Since I had built relationships with students, I found it easier to reach out to those who needed it, such as those who suddenly did not hand in work on time. As a form of support, I found myself meeting with students outside of my designated office hours, talking on the phone with them, and listening to how they were handling the substantial change in their lives. Other students did not need this support. Some who had struggled with the traditional classroom space thrived in the online modality with the varying opportunities for participation. If the remainder of Spring 2020 was a transition period for me, then by the time the 2020–2021 academic year rolled around, I had completely transformed the way I met with students. Classes were set up to include a combination of small and whole group meeting sessions. My goal was to create multiple spaces for students to emerge (those who preferred speaking in larger groups had that opportunity and vice versa). Instead of students showing up for class not knowing what kinds of questions I might ask, I uploaded discussion questions on Blackboard in advance. We often migrated to other topics during class time, but, at the outset, the students knew what to expect. In many ways this added to the rigor—it helped them to come prepared. It was also easier for students to make my office hours virtually, especially since most of them worked over twenty hours a week. One of my biggest successes was not just winning a hesitant student over in the virtual office hour space but figuring out ways, together, to increase their participation. One thing I found to be helpful was asking the students to let me know, before class, which discussion question they were prepared to answer. If they wanted, I would even read their answer and give them feedback. There was comfort in knowing when I would call on them and that they were going in the right direction. And, boom—there they were, answering questions in class. More times than not, once the student got the hang of it, they would enter discussions without my support. With the change to virtual teaching, I had a clearer attunement toward student success and access but also to the fact that there was more room for me to put empathy into action. Yes, students requested appointments

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to talk about upcoming papers or to discuss various assigned readings, but plenty of times our conversations morphed into struggles they were having with balance or confidence. Sometimes we talked about the lack of support they received from their teachers or other tensions such as financial stress, anxiety about post-graduation, feeling unsupported if they were first-generation students, and what it meant to be matriculated at a predominantly white institution (PWI) if they were students of color. At that moment, it seemed that with my casted net, my yield had increased exponentially. As a result, I felt like I was making more of a difference and creating more belonging. I was making room for deeper listening, creating space for students to share more of themselves, and, when appropriate, there was reciprocity. I could share portions of myself. Sometimes there was a likeness in our experiences and a connection built in our holding of each other’s experiences. I was, as hooks wrote, listening to the needs of the heart—my own and to those of more students. I was indeed in the practice of empathy, a true love offering for myself and my students. IV But then, things became complicated. Like many full-time faculty members, I had service to maintain outside of teaching and, on top of that, I had appointments with the Multicultural Center and with our newly appointed Chief Diversity Equity and Inclusion Officer. Along with some of my favorite colleagues, I was stirring up the kind of “good trouble” Senator John Lewis encouraged us to initiate; together we were working collaboratively to help our university lean into and embody anti-racism as a form of practice. It was hard for me to reckon with the truth that even as I was in my “homeplace,” making meaningful connections with students and working hard to create a kinder and more just school climate, I had desperately lost track of my own body. I had fallen out of the practice of being empathetic to myself. After one full year of working from home, I had become accustomed to being available for just one more meeting and then one more. I was mostly on screen all day, five days a week. There were no boundaries. There was truly little time for the contemplative practices I found healing and necessary for my well-being. I was coming undone. Toward the end of my second year at home, the day before Easter Sunday, I woke up to my husband calling my name while steering us back into the lane I should have been driving in. Sometime

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after that scary drive and in the stillness that bell encourages her readers to spend time in, I replayed a favorite saying I learned awhile go, “you teach best what you most need to learn.” I was still learning. I still am. V One of the most significant lessons I learned was that working from home is not magic. It did not solve everything. It protected me from some very exhausting things, and it opened me up to some other exhausting things. For the sake of my own wellness, I created a list that I continue to add to. Think of it as an entry in a workbook: This is What True Love Looks Like . Create as many “homeplaces” as you can for necessary rejuvenation. 1 2. Listen and be in the practice of empathy toward yourselves and others. 3. Establish boundaries that allow you to take care of your own needs. Practice keeping them.

References hooks, b. (1990). Yearning: race, gender, and cultural politics. South End Press. hooks, b. (2001). All about love: New visions. Harper Collins.

Celebrating Ramadan During COVID Fathima Wakeel

“Wake up! Wake up! We need to leave soon to get there in time!” I gently urge, waking up my children at 6 am. The kids respond by moaning in annoyance at the task of getting up early for yet another school day. “Eid Mubarak!” I shout, reminding them that it is not just another regular day and that we need to shower, adorn ourselves in the new clothes that we painstakingly selected months in advance, and go to the mosque for the congregational prayer. This is how the day of Eid ul-Fitr, the Islamic festival that culminates the thirty days of Ramadan, typically begins for me. Fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, which is the month in which the Qur’an is believed to have been initially revealed, is one of the main pillars of Islam. When I describe the Eid holiday to many of my non-­ Muslim friends and colleagues, I liken it to a “Muslim Christmas” to contextualize it in their mainstream worldview. Living as a Muslim in the United States since age eight, I have gotten used to celebrating the Eid holiday with my parents and sister, and then

F. Wakeel (*) Lehigh University College of Health, Bethlehem, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_4

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with my own family with two kids, on days that are otherwise ordinary for most. Despite the additional efforts that American Muslims like me, as well as other religious minorities, make to create holidays that are not “just another ordinary day,” observing Ramadan and celebrating Eid before the COVID-19 pandemic were indeed the highlights of my year. As an introvert who habitually camouflages as a “social butterfly” with family and colleagues, I am inherently drawn to the focus on introspection and worship during Ramadan. It is a time to step back from the mundane rhythm of our daily routine and reflect on our relationship with God, our priorities, and our place in the world. It is a time to thank God for our blessings and to be more compassionate toward His creations by giving to charity, feeding the poor, and, what is often harder to do, controlling our anger and being more patient with those around us. Ramadan is the month my heart yearns for each year—it provides a much-needed mental and emotional reboot that revitalizes my “multi-tasking, academic mom with a never-ending to-do list who constantly worries about making everyone else happy” self. Though I gravitate toward this month’s emphasis on personal reflection and growth, I must admit that I also love the social aspects of Ramadan. While waking up for and preparing the pre-dawn suhoor meal is my least favorite part, there is something sacred about family quietly and drowsily eating together while the rest of the world slumbers. After a long day of abstaining from food and drink (including water), Muslims break their fast after sundown with the iftar meal. My iftars typically entail iron-­ rich dates, water, hydrating fruits such as watermelon and cantaloupe, and scrumptious fried treats such as samosas and pakoras. Iftars are followed by the Maghreb prayer, dinner, and, I ruefully admit, some of us try to cram in as many not-so-healthy foods (e.g., coffee, soda, sweets) as we can before the next day begins. Iftars tend to be social events—we often invite each other to our homes for lavish meals, or we gather at the mosque to break our fast with our community. After dinner, many Muslims rush to the mosque to pray the obligatory ‘Isha and optional Taraweh prayers with the congregation. Though some, especially those of us with small kids, opt to observe these prayers at home, I have found that it is infinitely more satisfying to pray alongside others at the mosque—it creates a sense of community as well as deeper spiritual fulfillment to hear the imams recite the entire length of the Qur’an during the month.

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Muslims gather to celebrate the Eid ul-Fitr festival to commemorate the end of Ramadan. Homes have much debate over selecting new clothes to wear on this special day. Children wait in anticipation for their Eid gifts and the special treats, such as cookies and candy, they will receive at home and the mosque. The congregational morning prayer on Eid can be held at various sites, including mosques, parks, convention centers, and fairgrounds. Despite the location, the scene always looks the same—latecomers struggling to find parking; people excitedly embracing each other in the beloved triple hug; and children running around in their cultural garb (somehow, cultural attire looks infinitely cuter on little kids). The prayer is followed by a sermon and then resounding exclamations of “Eid Mubarak!”, more triple hugs, distribution of gift bags filled with candy and toys to the kids, families posing for pictures together in their fancy new outfits, breakfast, and often a community Eid fair, replete with some hybrid of bouncy houses, rides, games, and food, later in the day. Eid also provides an opportunity for families to come together for delicious feasts and to invite neighbors and co-workers to enjoy the festival with us by sharing sweet or savory treats. Like my fellow Muslims in the United States, I have always striven to make Ramadan and the Eid holidays special for my kids, who would understandably ask why we do not celebrate Christmas and Easter like their classmates. Admittedly, in their eyes, Christmas and Easter are associated with kid-friendly mascots like Santa and the Easter Bunny, specific school activities and parties, breaks from school, dedicated candy like candy canes and chocolate eggs, readily available decorations, catchy songs, and classic family movies. On the other hand, to a child living in a non-Muslim majority country, Ramadan feels quite dull in comparison— parents who are weak and tired from fasting all day, lots of prayers, and having to skip a day of school for Eid (which is potentially fun, except for the fact that missed work needs to be made up). It is exhausting to always be the other, especially for a child. Being an academic mom—well, being a parent in general—is always a juggling act. During pre-pandemic Ramadans, I remember struggling to balance my demanding work tasks, spiritual duties, and small endeavors to make Ramadan and Eid enjoyable and memorable for the kids. These attempts have included decorating the house with décor I have tracked down on the internet, finding pre-cooked treats like samosas and spring rolls for iftar at the halal store because I do not often have time to make these foods myself, buying them Muslim theme-centered kids’ books

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(such as It’s Ramadan, Curious George), lavishing them with a variety of gifts (some on their list and some a complete surprise) on Eid day, and most importantly, trying my best to surround them with the Muslim community. In 2020, everything changed—for everyone—with the pandemic. During the early pandemic, my kids (then aged six and ten) languished at home with minimal schoolwork and choppy Zoom classes with understandably overwhelmed teachers attempting to engage children on the new virtual platform. For them, each day dragged on, and every day felt the same. Meanwhile, I was entirely consumed by my new job in a new town that we barely had a chance to explore (thanks, COVID). My job entailed helping to build a brand-new college from the ground up amid a global pandemic with a small but mighty team of seven people (which included the administration, faculty, and staff). Among other tasks, we worked on developing curricula and college policies, brainstorming and implementing virtual activities (such as research colloquia, film discussions, summer courses, and multiple outreach emails) to engage our upcoming first cohort of students, creating partnerships within the university and in the local and regional community, and preparing for teaching scenarios (i.e., virtual, in-person, hybrid) for the fall. Like others who were fortunate enough to be able to work from home, many of my days started and ended on Zoom, with small breaks in between to use the bathroom, prepare quick meals for the kids, and check in to ensure that they were logged into their virtual class sessions. My six-year-­ old son was not a fan of Zoom initially and would refuse to log into his sessions if I was not around. Thankfully, during the 2020 school year, his teacher did not require attendance at the Zoom sessions—hence, if I had a conflicting meeting, I would let my son slide on his Zoom obligations, desperately hoping that I was not damaging his long-term academic trajectory. When Ramadan rolled around in late April 2020, I felt a myriad of emotions: a sense of loss knowing that the month ahead would be isolating and lonely, a sense of panic wondering how many more months would be spent feeling this way, and a sense of deep gratitude that my loved ones and I were still healthy. While those around me complained about not being able to find toilet paper or hand sanitizer anywhere, I was thankful to be able to buy dates on the internet and most of the essential foods I needed in the store for suhoor, iftar, and dinner. As the halal store near me

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had temporarily closed, I had given up hope of including those much-­ coveted, pre-cooked Southeast Asian treats on our iftar table. In mid-Ramadan, my husband discovered a local Indian grocery store that sold halal frozen foods and encouraged me to explore it while he watched the kids. I still remember the mixed emotions of anxiety, excitement, and fear I felt as I stepped into the tiny store with my mask and gloves. During the early pandemic, I avoided in-person interaction outside our home like the plague (no pun intended). I did all my shopping online, and my weekly outings with the kids solely comprised car rides to pick up groceries that were gingerly placed in the trunk of our car by a masked grocery store worker. When I finally braved visiting the Indian grocery store in person, I distinctly remember the speed at which I stocked up the cart with as many iftar items as I could, not worrying about whether they would all fit in our freezer, as well as my annoyance that the cashier spoke to me with his mask pushed down under his nose. I remember running out of the store after paying, throwing away my gloves at a trash can outside the store, lathering my hands and the bag handles with hand sanitizer, and getting into my car to breathe a sigh of relief. I felt grateful that I could enhance the Ramadan experience for my family in a small way, but I also worried that I had unnecessarily put us all at risk while doing so. Ramadan in 2020 was lonely, to say the least. I am sure those who celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, Diwali, and other religious and cultural holidays felt the same that year. As I spent most of my days on Zoom, my work and home lives seemed indistinguishable. As the atmosphere in my little world dripped with disillusion and panic, the evening activities, such as iftar and night prayers, that I had previously cherished during Ramadan began to feel ritualistic rather than spiritual. My parents, who live in Florida, encouraged us to travel from Pennsylvania to stay with them during Ramadan and for the rest of the summer, as we were now interacting virtually with the world. Initially, I dismissed the idea due to the fear of COVID exposure during travel and inadvertently exposing my parents. I contemplated driving the 1000 miles to Florida, but then I dreaded potentially COVID-infested rest areas, restaurants, and hotels on the way. Finally, I decided I needed to give our family a real Eid. We booked last-minute airline tickets to Florida at record-low prices, and I paid the additional fee for priority boarding to minimize exposure on the airplane. We also took the earliest flight that day, knowing the plane would be newly cleaned. We aimed to take every precaution at the airport—masks, gloves, frequent sanitization of our gloves to prevent spreading the virus, careful

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sanitization of our seats and nearby surfaces, and social distancing. When we reached my parents’ home, we dumped our potentially “exposed” clothes in the laundry basket and showered before hugging anyone or even sitting down. I still look back and sometimes wonder if I did the right thing by traveling during that period. At the time, though, spending the remainder of Ramadan and Eid with my family nourished my soul, and I felt incredibly grateful to see my kids thrive again. As we have slowly neared a post-vaccinated/boosted “normal” Ramadan and Eid in 2022, I am all the more grateful for the simple pleasures that I have had the opportunity to experience once again—iftars and Eid prayer at the mosque, Eid community fairs and parties, the shared pictures of family and friends excitedly posing together in new Eid outfits, the physical and mental separation between work and home lives, and, of course, the sweet transformation from annoyance to unbridled joy on my kids’ faces when I wake them up on Eid morning to celebrate.

Grief and Bereavement During COVID-19: Funeralization and Ritual Losses Cheryl Green

Introduction The coronavirus disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus (CDC, 2022c). Persons exposed to the virus develop signs and symptoms associated with respiratory illness that include: fatigue, cough, loss of taste and smell, sore throat, fever, aches and pains, red or irritated eyes, headache, diarrhea, rash on the skin, discoloration of fingers and toes, chest pain, difficulty breathing and shortness of breath, loss of speech or mobility, and/or confusion. The virus is believed to be spread by droplet and smaller aerosols through speaking, coughing, breathing, sneezing, and singing. People infected by the virus vary in their course of illness from mild, moderate, and severe symptoms. Persons at greatest risk for severe illness are those with chronic respiratory disease, cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease (World Health Organization, 2022). This chapter will explore grief and bereavement, with regard to the navigation of academia during the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19)

C. Green (*) Yale-New Haven Health, New Haven, CT, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_5

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pandemic. In particular, it will focus on the disruptions that occurred in the funeralization of friends and family members in the absence of rituals to honor the dying and the deceased. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over one million people have died of COVID-19 in the United States (U.S.) since 2020. This is an unprecedented loss of human life that has not occurred since the influenza epidemic of 1918, when an estimated 50 million people died (Regional History from the National Archives, n.d.) within the United States.

Death From a scientific perspective, death is the ending of life at a cellular level. It is the cessation of the heart from beating and perfusing the body with oxygenated blood. It is the absence of breathing from the lungs and the ceasing of brain function. Warm skin becomes cold, rigid, and mottled (Hinkle et al., 2022). Spiritually, death is the absence of the soul from the human body. That which was alive is now dead. The soul lingers between the two worlds of the living and dying. The signs of dying encroach upon persons diagnosed with disease, acute and chronic presentations of illness, and unexpected traumas and injuries. The embodying signs of dying can include: fatigue, a preference for sleep, mottling, unceasing labored breathing, no desire for food or drink, breathlessness, and bladder and bowel changes (Taylor et al., 2019). Grief Grief is a normal response that people experience with death or a personal loss. Grief can cause feelings of loneliness accompanied by both physical and emotional isolation. Persons experiencing loss or death manifest their grief through physiological reactions such as wailing or tearfulness. The physical and emotional reactions to death, suppressed by the affected person(s), may lead to depression and heightened anxiety. The sole purpose of grief, from a physiological and psychological perspective, is to acknowledge the deep hurt that the death of a loved one has caused those who live (Green, 2020).

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Bereavement Bereavement is a period of grief and mourning after a loved one has died. Emotional toil and frustration consume the affected persons as they attempt to gain some semblance of normalcy in the absence of the significant person in their lives. According to Rando (2000), there are six key processes of mourning that may provide evidence of healthy adaptation to loss, including: recognition of loss; recognition of separation and experiencing and expressing the pain of loss; recollection and re-experiencing the deceased, the relationship, and the associated feelings; relinquishing old attachments to the deceased; readjustment to adapt to the new world without forgetting the old; and reinvestment. These processes help the living begin the long journey toward reinvention of life as they intermittently mourn the deaths of a significant person or persons throughout the remainder of their own lives.

A Disruption of the Normal The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the lives of people worldwide. Governments imposed lockdowns with the purpose of decreasing the spread of COVID-19, which separated families residing in different states and countries indefinitely (CDC, 2022a). Normal patterns of school attendance, commuting to the workplace, attending medical appointments, going to restaurants and movie theaters, and attending church were not permitted. The rituals of caring for the dying, mourning their deaths, attending the services of visitation and viewing (e.g., a wake) of the deceased, religious services for the memorialization of the deceased, and burial services were also limited by the fear of large crowds gathering and potentially causing a COVID-19 super spreader event.

Rituals of Death The rituals of death were impacted by COVID-19 restrictions. In hospitals, hospices, long-term care, and subacute settings, families, friends, and significant others were seldom permitted to be present as their loved ones died. Nurses and nurse assistants/aides provided selfless health care to the ill and also held phones, laptops, and tablets to facilitate face-time between the living (e.g., family, friends, and significant others) and the dying (Green, 2021). These new rituals of death that occurred during the

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COVID-19 pandemic, though necessary to maintain connections between the ill and dying and their loved ones, would define a period of time for many people, when their grief, bereavement, and mourning were disrupted and incomplete. The emergence of new COVID-19 variances such as Delta and Omicron (Ferdinands et  al., 2022; Lambrou et  al., 2022; Modes et al., 2022) heightened the fear of persons who had already experienced the deaths of loved ones, and potentially retraumatized those affected.

Funeralization and COVID-19 The normal process of funeralization was disrupted during COVID-19. With a limited number of people allowed to be indoors together due to the six-feet social distancing rule, funeral services were often confined to immediate family only (Lowe et al., 2020). Family members that had provided care to loved ones who had succumbed to COVID-19 were quarantined themselves and unable to attend their loved one’s funeral services. Funeral homes began using online platforms (e.g., livestream) so the family and friends of the deceased could participate in funeral services. Some funerals were conducted via a “drive-by” approach, whereby friends and family were able to remain in their vehicles and pay their respect to the deceased who was placed within an open or closed coffin near a large window. Other funeral homes allowed no more than two social-distanced guests at a time to enter individual funeral parlors (the specific room or area the deceased is located); walk past the open casket of their deceased friend, significant other, or family member; and greet the family of the deceased. Family and significant others of the deceased were socially distanced themselves behind a designated area separated by a rope or chain. Final respects paid to the deceased consisted of disinfecting of the hands with an alcohol-based hand sanitizer, wearing a mask, walking through an entrance into the funeral home, entering a designated funeral parlor, and exiting a door leading to the outside. The burial sites of the deceased, both outdoors at a cemetery and indoors within a mausoleum (Legacy.com, 2019), also maintained six-feet social distancing, per CDC guidelines (CDC, 2022a; National Funeral Directors Association, 2020; Public Broadcasting Service, 2021).

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COVID-19 and Navigating Academia as a Woman of Color According to the CDC (2020), ethnicity and race data showed that more than 90% of people within the United States (U.S.) that died from COVID-19 were of Alaskan Native or non-Hispanic American Indian, Hispanic or Latinx, or non-Hispanic Black origins. With a disproportionate death rate of people of color during the COVID-19 pandemic, women, children, and men were affected. Age-adjusted death rates (ADDR) by race and ethnicity within the U.S. from 2020 to 2021 showed a decrease of 14.0–40.2% for most ethnic and racial groups. Despite the reported decrease within ADDR, “large disparities in ADDR by race and ethnicity remained in 2021” (CDC, 2022b). Public health practice implications in addressing health disparities in relation to COVID-19, included clinical care, vaccination, and preventative interventions for COVID-19. Professors of color working at colleges and universities had to navigate online and hybrid teaching, but more often than not, had to also attend the funerals of friends, family members, and significant others who died of COVID-19. Additionally, professors provided emotional support to students of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, as students mourned the deaths of their family members and close friends. Compounding the professor of color’s experience of grief and mourning was the constant bombardment of racial tension that arose in the United States during the pandemic. Particularly, the national and international response to the death of George Floyd who died in police custody (History, 2022).

Healthy Grieving and Mourning The seeking of mental health care is imperative when grief, bereavement, and mourning negatively impact the daily functioning of persons who experienced deaths during the pandemic. Poor appetite (i.e., gastrointestinal problems), worsening depression, isolation, and difficulty in forming and maintaining relationships with others given the underlying fear of a recurrent loss can be common themes (Green, 2020; Mayo, 2022). Healthy grieving and mourning can now begin to occur for those persons who experienced the death of a loved one during the pandemic. Memorialization of the deceased in absence of COVID-19 restrictions should be a part of this healing process. A time of gathering for a picnic, a religious service, or a dinner in honor of the deceased allows the bereaved

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to process their loss(es) with others. Gatherings that include pictures and stories of the deceased pay tribute to them and their significance in the lives of those who mourn them. Grief and bereavement, while lifelong for the living who mourn the deaths of loved ones (Green, 2020), becomes healthy when it is freely expressed and shared with others. While we cannot undo the pain of the deaths that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, we can honor those we lost.

References Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, December 10). Disparities in death from COVID-19: Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. https://www. cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-­ncov/community/health-­equity/racial-­ethnic-­ disparities/disparities-­deaths.html Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022a, January 5). CDC museum COVID-19 timeline. https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022b, April 22). Provisional COVID-19 age-adjusted death rates, by race and ethnicity—United States, 2020–2021. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7117e2.htm Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022c, May 27). COVID data tracker. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-­data-­tracker/#cases-­deaths-­trends-­by-­ demographic Ferdinands, J. M., Rao, S., Dixon, B. E., Mitchell, P. K., DeSilva, M. B., Irving, S.  A., Lewis, N., Natarajan, K., Stenehjem, E., Grannis, S.  J., Jungmi, H., McEvoy, C., Ong, T. C., Naleway, N. L., Reese, S. E., Embi, P. J., Dascomb, K. Klein, N. P., Griggs, E. P., & Konatham, D. (2022, February 18). Waning 2-Dose and 3-Dose effectiveness of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19-­ Associated emergency department and urgent care encounters and hospitalizations among adults during periods of Delta and Omicron variant predominance—VISION Network, 10 States, August 2021–January 2022. Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report, 71(7), 255–263. https://www.cdc.gov/ mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7107e2.htm?s_cid=mm7107e2_w Green, C. (2020). Orphaned: When grief overwhelms. Journal of Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing, 28(2), 264–267. https://doi.org/10.1111/ jpm.12640 Green, C. (2021). Spiritual health first aid for self-care: Nursing during COVID-19. Journal of Christian Nursing, 38(3), E28–E31. https://doi.org/10.1097/ cnj.0000000000000851 Hinkle, J. L., Cheever, K. H., & Overbaugh, K. J. (2022). Brunner & Suddarth’s textbook of medical-surgical nursing (15th ed.). Wolters Kluwer.

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History. (2022). George Floyd is killed by a police officer, igniting historic protests. https://www.history.com/this-­day-­in-­history/george-­floyd-­killed-­by-­police-­ officer Lambrou, A. S., Shirk, P., Steele, M. K., Paul, P., Paden, C.R., Caldwell, B., Reese, H.  E., Aoki, Y., Hassell, N., Xiao-yu, Z., Talarico, S., Chen, J.  C., Oberste, M. S., Batra, D., McMullan, L. K., Halpin, A. L., Galloway, S. E., MacCannell, D. R., Kondor, R., & Barnes, J. (2022, February 11). Genomic surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 variants: Predominance of the Delta (B.1.617.2) and Omicron (B.1.1.529) variants—United States, June 2021–January 2022. Morbidity & Mortality Weekly, 71(6), 206–211. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106a4.htm?s_cid=mm7106a4_w Legacy.com. (2019). The pros and cons a mausoleum. https://www.legacy.com/ advice/the-­pros-­and-­cons-­of-­a-­mausoleum/#:~:text=An%20indoor%20or%20 chapel%20mausoleum,as%20private%20moments%20of%20reflection Lowe, J., Rumbold, B., & Aoun, S.  M. (2020). Memorialisation during COVID-19: Implications for the bereaved, service providers, and policy makers. Palliative Care and Social Practice, 14, 10.1177%2F2632352420980456. Mayo Clinic. (2022). Complicated grief.. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-­ conditions/complicated-­grief/symptoms-­causes/syc-­20360374. Modes, M. E., Directo, M. P., Melgar, M., Johnson, L. R., Hashu, Y., Chaudhary, P., Bartolini, S., Kho, N., Noble, P. W., Isonaka, S., & Chen, P. (2022). Clinical characteristics and outcomes among adults hospitalized with laboratory-­ confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection during periods of B.1.617.2 (Delta) and B.1.1.529 (Omicron) variant predominance—One hospital, California, July 15–September 23, 2021, and December 21, 2021–January 27, 2022. Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report, 71(6), 217–223. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/ volumes/71/wr/mm7106e2.htm?s_cid=mm7106e2_w National Funeral Directors Association. (2020). NFDA COVID-19 information hub. https://nfda.org/covid-­19 Public Broadcasting Service. (2021, March 23). Death is our business. Frontline. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/death-­is-­our-­business/ Rando, T. A. (2000). Promoting healthy anticipatory morning in intimates of the life-threatening or dying person. In T. A. Rando (Ed.), Clinical dimensions of anticipatory mourning (pp. x–y). Research Press. Regional History from the National Archives. (n.d.). The deadly virus: The influenza epidemic of 1918. https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-­ epidemic/ Taylor, C., Lynn, P., & Bartlett, J. L. (2019). Fundamentals of nursing: The art and science of person-centered nursing care (9th ed.). Wolters Kluwer. World Health Organization. (2022). Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). https:// www.who.int/health-­topics/coronavirus#tab=tab_1

Reimagining Asian Women Scholars in Academic Spaces Meghana Ray

Knowledge doesn’t just come from spreadsheets or Wiki entries. (Ji-Yoon Kim in The Chair, Season 1 Episode 1)

Background Asian women scholars (AWS) are a small but growing population of higher education faculty in the United States, growing from 252 full professors in 1980–1981 to 1267 in 1999–2000 (Hune, 2006). The National Center for Education Statistics (2022) reported that in Fall 2020, there were 74% full-time White faculty, 12% Asian-Pacific faculty, 7% Black faculty, 6% Latinx faculty, and that American Indian/Alaska Native or two or more races constituted 1% or less of all full-time faculty. Among the 12% Asian-­ Pacific faculty, 7% were males and 5% were females. Of the 5%, or 39,931, female faculty in 2020, less than 1% (6544) were full professors. Despite the growth of AWS in academia, their ability to attain leadership positions

M. Ray (*) HEED Lab, LLC, Health Analytics Network LLC, Rockville, MD, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_6

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appears to be limited, as reported by Chen and Hune (2011), and Opp and Gosetti (2002). An intersectional framework that includes both race and gender is a complex milieu of individual experiences, achievements, and challenges. In the United States, Asians and Pacific Islanders are often grouped together in the census and other survey data but remain distinct and separate groups with vastly differing experiences. The category Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) was designated by the U.S. Census Bureau for political expediency. Since then, 24 subgroups have been identified to include those whose historic homelands range from India to Bangladesh, Bhutan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. These subgroups are diverse and complex in their national and ethnic backgrounds, religions, language, immigrant generation, class, and education. Examining language use alone reveals much diversity within the Asian American category and its subgroups, with more than 300 languages spoken among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders along with hundreds of cultures and thousands of subcultures that have emerged as a result of this rich linguistic diversity. Asian Americans are an understudied and misunderstood group in the United States often due to stereotypes such as “model minority” and “perpetual foreigner,” despite their commitment and citizenship in American society (Chou & Feagin, 2008; Hune, 1998; Wu, 2002), along with non-academic stereotypes of shop keepers, restaurant owners, etc. (e.g., the Indian stereotype Apu in the popular TV show The Simpsons). In academic spaces, largely due to media anecdotes and aggregated college data, Asians are labeled as a racial success story. However, the extant literature on AWS experiences in higher education has revealed the everyday inequalities (normalized unwelcoming behaviors and subordinate treatment), such as feeling like “strangers” due to marginalization by faculty, students, and administrators (Li & Beckett, 2006; Lim & Herrera-Sobek, 2000). Indeed, it may be argued that the marginalization and relative loneliness combined with many Asian cultures love of education might perhaps lead Asian students to strive harder, thus feeding into the stereotype.

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Model Minority The model minority stereotype assumes “uncomplaining perseverance and submissiveness to authority” and “feminine qualities of submissiveness, self-effacement, and reticence to speak out” (Shrake, 2006, p.184). This stereotype ignores the diversity of backgrounds and identities while erroneously labeling Asians as overly successful and overly represented in higher education (Hune, 2006). In higher education, this stereotype is often an impediment. AWS faculty are at risk of being labeled “too aggressive or outspoken” when they try to counter the stereotype. Often, AWS faculty may find themselves conforming to the stereotype to avoid unpleasant and stressful situations. This model minority myth further adds pressure and prevents AWS from asking for help or being facilitated. I know I was called the ‘dragon lady’ by students because I was tough. But I won’t let students get by without doing the work. (A Japanese American faculty member in Hune, 1998, p. 10)

Racial Identity and Discrimination According to Jones (1996) and Smedley and Smedley (2005), racism is embedded in American society but has changed its form, over time, from blatant and direct racial aversion and hatred to subtle, ambiguous, and unintentional expressions, coined as microaggressions (Sue et al., 2007). Microaggressions are defined as “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory or negative racial slights and insults that potentially have harmful or unpleasant psychological impact on the target person or group” (Solorzano et  al., 2000, p.  60). Asian Americans are assumed to be a model minority and therefore resistant to racism and discrimination (Wong & Halgin, 2006). However, discrimination continues to affect their self-esteem and psychological well-being, and eventually diminishes confidence in their own abilities to lead and attain higher positions.

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Nonnative Speakers Linguistic and cultural conflicts can occur in higher education when students, colleagues, and administrators challenge nonnative English speakers’ credibility. Course evaluations can be used as tools to express hostility toward nonnative English speakers. Liang (2006) reported that AWS faculty experienced “internalized peripheralization of marginalized professional identities” (p. 91).

Lotus Flower or Geisha Asian women are often exoticized as a “geisha” or “lotus flower” in which they are objectified as exotic women for men (Shrake, 2006). This has been reinforced by mainstream media portrayals. Being viewed as delicate or feminine devalues authority and such objectification could lead to derogatory behavior, as well as demeaning their intelligence and capabilities as leaders. See Fig. 1 for common microaggressions and verbalizations. You’re inheriting broken systems, and so the work to make change or to find balance is extremely difficult. (Actress Sandra Oh on how she saw Professor Ji-Yoon’s tenuous position in The Chair)

But where are you really from?

You speak really good English/You’re so articulate

Are Asians even minorities?

All Asians are good at math and sciences

You don’t even have an accent

I am not even going to try to pronounce that name

You barely even look Asian

Fig. 1  Microaggressions and verbalizations. (Source: Internet comments and author’s personal experiences)

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Landscape of Higher Education The higher education landscape has changed in the past few decades, and universities are now run as businesses focused on revenue generation. While some progress has been made in diversifying academic spaces, leadership positions are disproportionately influenced by race and gender (Davis & Fry, 2019; Gasman et al., 2015). For instance, eight Ivy League institutions identified their colleges’ presidents as five women and three men, all of whom were white, even though the diversification of college presidency in the United States has increased by 5% from 1986 to 2011 (Gasman et  al., 2015). Since 2015, the race of college presidents has remained over 80% white and less than 2% Asian American, thereby resulting in over 50% of a diversity gap (Gasman et al., 2015). In addition, the representation of Asian Americans in positions such as academic deans and chief diversity officers is under 1% (Gasman et al., 2015; Chen & Hune, 2011). Due to multiple intersections of gender and racial stereotypes, AWS faculty face challenges in attaining leadership positions. According to Hune (2011), Asian American women faculty are differently raced, gendered, and deemed foreign by whites. Due to cultural barriers, AWS may not find appropriate mentors to develop leadership efficiencies and thereby attain leadership positions (Chou & Feagin, 2008).

COVID-19 and Racial Identity The COVID-19 pandemic hastened the expansion of online learning across all educational levels. On the one hand, distance learning has enabled universities to address safety concerns for their students, while, on the other hand, the lack of interpersonal engagement has led to psychological challenges including fear, anxiety, stress, and isolation (Masalimova et al., 2022). The Asian community experienced widespread discrimination and violence during the pandemic. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center after the fatal shooting of six Asian women and two other people in the Atlanta area on March 16, 2021, reported that 81% of respondents stated that violence against them was increasing, 45% reported they had experienced at least one out of five specific offensive incidents, 27% had been subjected to slurs or jokes, and 14% were told they were to blame for the coronavirus outbreak (Ruiz et al., 2021). This has significant implications for AWS who were already facing steep challenges of existing prejudices and stereotypes, and who now have to adapt not only to distance teaching but also yet another barrier that may render them invisible.

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The Path Ahead There is growing awareness about the disparities in treatment of and opportunities for AWS in recent years. Increasing diversity hiring in higher education denotes a positive step toward fully integrating scholars across vastly different racial and ethnic backgrounds, yet change is slow to occur. However, caution is advised here to avoid tokenizing AWS. Tokenism is associated with isolation, chronic distinctiveness, stereotyping, lack of fit with the environment, disproportional attention and causality, stress, and stereotyping, all of which are exacerbated when race and gender intersect (Boyd et  al., 2017). Academic institutions can and should do better in examining their own biases and prejudices, and support AWS in their work, promotion, and tenure. Over the years, many AWS have adapted strategies to improve their opportunities and strive to achieve leadership positions. Some strategies focus on improving assertiveness and negotiation skills to have clear expectations about responsibilities and duties. Criteria for tenure and promotion are not often explicit or may include ambiguous language and have unwritten rules. Addressing fit is an important consideration, and understanding how welcoming the environment is will determine an AWS’s career. AWS are often advised to be aware of their own resource allocation and to keep track of achievements. Traditionally, securing extramural funding has been challenging for faculty of color and AWS in particular, who may want to explore opportunities to be more visible (through publications and networking) that would improve their chances of being funded. AWS may be uniquely positioned to advise and help students from marginalized communities. Through sharing and reflecting upon their own experiences, they can help marginalized students develop coping skills, build resilience, and provide a diverse perspective to students from non-marginalized communities to build a sense of community. Many AWS may benefit from mentors in navigating their careers and challenges in their workplaces. Building a network of mentors that address specific needs such as professional development, emotional support, safe space, intellectual community, and role models is empowering and provides the much-needed impetus to drive change in academic spaces. As demographic trends shift, broader discourse on race and gender is called for, particularly in higher education, to prepare and train future generations.

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I am an American, not an Asian-American. My rejection of hyphenation has been called race treachery, but it is really a demand that America deliver the promises of its dream to all its citizens equally. (Bharati Mukherjee (deceased), Author and Professor Emerita, University of California, Berkeley, Department of English)

References Boyd, B., Caraway, J., & Niemann, Y. F. (2017). Surviving and thriving in academia. A guide for members of marginalized groups. American Psychological Association CEMRRAT2 Task Force and Committee on Women in Psychology. http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/brochures/surviving.aspx Chen, W.-C. E., & Hune, S. (2011). Asian American Pacific islander women from Ph.D. to campus president: Gains and leaks in the pipeline. In G. Jean-Marie & B. Lloyd-Jones (Eds.), Women of color in higher education: Changing directions and new perspectives (pp.  163–190). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-­3644(2011)0000010012 Chou, R.  S., & Feagin, J.  R. (2008). The myth of the model minority: Asian Americans facing racism. Paradigm Publishers. Davis, L., & Fry, R. (2019). College faculty have become more racially and ethnically diverse, but remain far less so than students. United States of America. Retrieved from https://policycommons.net/artifacts/616677/ college-faculty-have-become-more-racially-and-ethnically-diverse-but-remainfar-less-so-than-students/1597361/ Gasman, M., Abiola, U., & Travers, C. (2015). Diversity and senior leadership at elite institutions of higher education. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 8(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038872 Hune, S. (1998). Asian Pacific American women in higher education. Claiming visibility and voice. Association of American Colleges & Universities. Hune, S. (2006). Asian Pacific American women and men in higher education. In G. Li & G. Beckett (Eds.), “Strangers” in the academy: Asian women scholars in higher education (pp. 15–36). Stylus. Hune, S. (2011). Chapter 14. Asian American women faculty and the contested space of the classroom: Navigating student resistance and (re)claiming authority and their rightful place. In G. Jean-Marie & B. Lloyd-Jones (Eds.), Women of color in higher education: Turbulent past, promising future (diversity in higher education, vol. 9) (pp. 307–335). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. https:// doi.org/10.1108/S1479-­3644(2011)0000009019 Jones, J. M. (1996). Prejudice and racism (2nd ed.). McGraw-Hill Humanities. Li, G., & Beckett, G. H. (Eds.). (2006). “Strangers” of the academy: Asian women scholars in higher education. Stylus.

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Liang, X. (2006). Professing in a nonnative tongue: Narrative construction of realities and opportunities. In G.  Li & G.  Beckett (Eds.), “Strangers” in the academy: Asian women scholars in higher education (pp. 85–104). Stylus. Lim, S. G.-L., & Herrera-Sobek, M. (Eds.). (2000). Power, race, and gender in academe: Strangers in the tower? The Modern Language Association. Masalimova, A.  R., Khvatova, M.  A., Chikileva, L.  S., Zvyagintseva, E.  P., Stepanova, V. V., & Melnik, M. V. (2022). Distance learning in higher education during COVID-19. Frontiers Education, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/ feduc.2022.822958 National Center for Education Statistics. (2022). Characteristics of postsecondary faculty. Condition of education. U.S.  Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/csc Opp, R. D., & Gosetti, P. P. (2002). Equity for women administrators of color in two-year colleges: Progress and prospects. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 26, 591–608. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 106689202760181814 Ruiz, N. G., Edwards, K., & Lopez, M. H. (2021). One-third of Asian Americans fear threats, physical attacks and most say violence against them is rising. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-­tank/2021/04/21/ one-­t hird-­o f-­a sian-­a mericans-­f ear-­t hreats-­p hysical-­a ttaceks-­a nd-­m ost-­s ay-­ violence-­against-­them-­is-­rising/. Shrake, E. (2006). Unmasking the self: Struggling with the model minority stereotype and lotus blossom image. In G. Li & G. Beckett (Eds.), “Strangers” in the academy: Asian women scholars in higher education (pp. 178–194). Stylus. Smedley, A., & Smedley, B. D. (2005). Race as biology is fiction, racism as a social problem is real: Anthropological and historical perspectives on the social construction of race. American Psychologist, 60(1), 16. https://doi.org/10.103 7/0003-­066x.60.1.16 Solorzano, D., Ceja, M., & Yosso, T. (2000). Critical race theory, racial microaggressions, and campus racial climate: The experiences of African American college students. The Journal of Negro Education, 69(1/2), 60–73. http://www. jstor.org/stable/2696265 Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C. M., Torino, G. C., Bucceri, J. M., Holder, A. M. B., Nadal, K. L., & Esquilin, M. (2007). Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice. American Psychologist, 62(4), 271–286. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.62.4.271 Wong, F., & Halgin, R. (2006). The model minority: Bane or blessing for Asian Americans? Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 34(1), 38–49. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-­1912.2006.tb00025.x Wu, F. H. (2002). Yellow: Race in America beyond black and white. Basic Books.

Working Around the Clock in the Time of COVID-19 Fauzia Saiyed

Stuck in my apartment in April 2020, with the reality that the lockdown would last longer than a couple of weeks, I reasoned that I could find the silver lining of a terrible situation. I spent hours each day reading and writing, hoping to make myself an excellent academic through my dedication. I was not the only one: blog posts and articles at the time jumped to identify ways to make life during lockdown more productive (e.g., Anzia, 2020). Several weeks later, the bubble had burst, and it became clear that my personal growth would stall. I was protected from guilt by the flood of self-compassion-inducing articles explaining that growth and productivity during the pandemic was asking too much (e.g., Lorenz, 2020; Misra, 2020). Up until that point, I had assumed that there was one basic way to experience time: linearly progressing at a constant rate. I could recognize there were some exceptions to this rule: one particularly good summer flies by, one terrible moment expands into a hundred. Time is a central experience of human existence, so much so that I took for granted the idea that everyone experienced it the same way, most of the time. During the

F. Saiyed (*) Center for Gender Equity, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_7

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pandemic, however, I was disoriented by how time seemed to pass by both so much more quickly and slowly than usual. I was not alone: in a study of UK residents during the COVID-19 lockdown, participants reported sensing a distortion in the passage of time during the lockdown as compared to other times. Interestingly, some participants found time to pass more slowly, and some found it to pass more quickly (Ogden, 2020). It was not until much later that I understood how malleable the experience of time passing is. For one thing, there are individual differences in how we perceive time, referred to as “Passage of Time Judgements” (Ogden, 2020, p. 4). In fact, studies have shown individual differences in passage of time judgments using time tasks in which participants are shown shapes for different durations of time and then asked which duration was longer (Wiener et  al., 2014). Similar studies using emotionally expressive faces rather than shapes have shown that exposure to emotions and one’s own general emotional tendencies affected one’s perception of time as well (Tipples, 2008). As I had experienced, positive affect is associated with the sensation of time passing more quickly in the moment (Droit-Volet et al., 2018; Droit-­ Volet & Wearden, 2016), and negative emotions such as sadness or depression were linked to perceptions of time passing more slowly (Droit-Volet, 2019; Droit-Volet & Wearden, 2016). Along with emotions, our cognitions and mental load can influence how we perceive the passage of time: performing tasks with which we are familiar or that require lower cognitive load links to slowly passing time, whereas more complex or intellectually challenging tasks are associated with time passing quickly (Arstila & Lloyd, 2014; Wearden, 2016), unless the task is extremely challenging in which case time again seems to pass more slowly (Flaherty, 1993). Time perception in young age and old varied in that people who were older tend to perceive long periods of time (i.e., a decade) as passing more quickly (Droit-Volet, 2019). Experiencing a “flow” state of deep focus on an activity can lead to altered time perceptions in which hours may feel like minutes and minutes may feel like hours (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). A similar line of questioning looks at time availability, or the perception of having enough time to do what you need to do in daily life. One poll showed that nearly half of all Americans felt they did not have enough time available to complete their daily tasks (Newport, 2015). A wonderful series of experiments showed, however, that experiencing the feeling of awe can expand one’s sensation of time availability (Rudd et al., 2012).

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Understanding these concepts is crucial in understanding that our perception of time is not fixed but completely changeable. This is further illustrated by the fact that people across the world have long held different ways of measuring time and different cultural conceptions of the meaning of time. In some cultures, time is identified based on daily events such as meals, markets, or gatherings (as opposed to schedules being bound to clock-time; Alon & Brett, 2007). Time can be told based on lunar and solar observations, seasons, tides, or other natural occurrences (Filipovi & Jaszczolt, 2012). Time-telling may be attached to cycles of human biological needs, such as sleep and hunger; this form of time-telling is most strongly linked to caregivers of children (Everingham, 2002). Many cultures conceptualize time in spatial terms: seeing the future as in front of an individual and the past as behind (de la Fuente et al., 2014). This conceptualization is embedded in languages which refer to the future as being “ahead” and the past “behind.” Different spatializations of time could be indicative of greater focus or of attention being placed on either the past or the future. Researchers found that although the Arabic language aligns to the future-ahead and past-behind dichotomy, Arabic-­ speakers from Morocco frequently mapped the past as in front (de la Fuente et al., 2014). Although Spanish has the same language distinction as Arabic (future-ahead and past-behind dichotomy), Spanish speakers from Spain tended to conceptualize the future as in front and the past behind. The researchers also found that the Moroccan participants were more focused on the past than the Spanish participants and discovered that Spanish participants who were more focused on the past (Spanish elders) were more likely to spatialize the past in front as well. English and Mandarin speakers also show a preference for mapping time horizontally, left-to-right corresponding to past-to-future, and Mandarin speakers additionally conceptualized time as up-to-down (Fuhrman et al., 2011). Some groups, such as some Mian speakers of Papua New Guinea, conceptualize time as laid out based on the geographical landscape, close to the east-west axis (Fedden & Boroditsky, 2012). These various spatializations could be associated with different ways of valuing or experiencing the past, present, and future. Researchers have also found that an individual’s perspective on time is an important correlate with wellbeing. For example, identifying with negative attitudes toward the past was associated with depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem, whereas positive attitudes toward the past was associated with greater self-esteem and happiness (Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999).

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Orientation toward the future was associated with behaviors associated with future success (Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999). Individuals who endorsed a “balanced” orientation, which was defined as the ability to hold past, present, and future perspectives concurrently and move between them flexibly, reported the highest scores of subjective happiness; this profile was also associated with greater mindfulness than other time orientations (Drake et  al., 2008). Engaging with multiple cultural spatializations of time may support this flexibility, which in turn may provide some psychological benefits. Within Western academia, however, there is little tolerance for diverse notions of time. This is a staple of labor in North America. Time, conceptualized as linearly advancing, de-contextualized from natural occurrences, and bound to a mechanical clock, is the creation of Western industrialization (Everingham, 2002), which individuals involved in North American labor are usually required to follow (Nishimoto, n.d.). I consider this an economic paradigm of time: time as a resource that can be spent on labor for the purpose of acquiring wealth. This framework can even be extended to wellness: if one invests time in exercise, mindfulness, or even relaxing, labor output can be maximized later through greater productivity or even by elongating lifespan. This idea is supported by how we use the English language: we “spend time” rather than “experience time.” We talk about “time management” and “time constraints,” revealing the notion that time is a limited resource that we would like to fully exploit. Yet, so much is lost by conforming to only one way of telling and valuing time. Questions about how we value time seemed to re-surface in the cultural consciousness in the past few years, perhaps spurred by the unusual passage of time during the pandemic. Popular media outlets began focusing attention on the way we treat time as an economic resource, providing valuable frameworks for treating time differently. Ezra Klein (n.d.) recorded a podcast on reducing digital chatter to experience periods of deeper, focused work. NPR’s Hidden Brain released a podcast on doing less (Shankar Vedantam, n.d.). The Atlantic published an article on using your money to buy happiness, by reducing time spent on chores (Brooks, 2021). On a similar note, Jenny Odell’s (2020) book, titled How to Do Nothing, encouraged readers to experience expansion by resisting the attention economy. These authors represent a rising challenge to the economic paradigm of time. Although I consumed these podcasts, books, and articles, I could not fully understand them until I looked back through my own experiences.

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As a Muslim, I had been raised to value time based on spiritual potential rather than on economic potential. My family had taught me how certain times, like the month of Ramaḍan, had a value that expanded beyond other months. Surely enough, each year when that month arrives, I do experience the time as expansive. Living through the pandemic connected me with different ways of telling time. Since the months blended together, I noticed myself measuring time by the seasons, by waves of the virus, by the major events in my family life. The busyness of my academic life served to contract time, but in gaining awareness of time, I have chosen to delight in my own curiosities and seen that as I orient myself more fully toward something I care about, time expands and becomes available to me. I have noticed how re-evaluating my time for its spiritual potential has allowed me to do less and experience greater meaning. I have noticed choices that I have in how I use my time, how I measure my time, how I speak about my time, and how I visualize my time, that I previously did not know existed. This choice has made all the difference.

References Alon, I., & Brett, J. M. (2007). Perceptions of time and their impact on negotiations in the Arabic-speaking Islamic world. Negotiation Journal, 23(1), 55–73. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1571-­9979.2007.00127.x Anzia, N. (2020, March 28). Twelve ways to make a lockdown more productive. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/health-­ and-­wellbeing/coronavirus-­lockdown-­how-­to-­be-­productive-­a9422481.html Arstila, V., & Lloyd, D. (2014). Subjective time: The philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience of temporality. MIT Press. Brooks, A.  C. (2021, April 15). How to buy happiness. The Atlantic. https:// www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/04/money-­i ncome-­b uy-­ happiness/618601/ Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row. de la Fuente, J., Santiago, J., Román, A., Dumitrache, C., & Casasanto, D. (2014). When you think about it, your past is in front of you: How culture shapes spatial conceptions of time. Psychological Science, 25(9), 1682–1690. https://doi. org/10.1177/0956797614534695 Drake, L., Duncan, E., Sutherland, F., Abernethy, C., & Henry, C. (2008). Time perspective and correlates of wellbeing. Time & Society, 17(1), 47–61. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0961463X07086304

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Droit-Volet, S. (2019). Time does not fly but slow down in old age. Time & Society, 28(1), 60–82. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X16656852 Droit-Volet, S., Monceau, S., Berthon, M., Trahanias, P., & Maniadakis, M. (2018). The explicit judgment of long durations of several minutes in everyday life: Conscious retrospective memory judgment and the role of affects? PLoS One, 13(4), e0195397. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0195397 Droit-Volet, S., & Wearden, J. (2016). Passage of time judgments are not duration judgments: Evidence from a study using experience sampling methodology. Frontiers in Psychology, 7. https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/ fpsyg.2016.00176 Everingham, C. (2002). Engendering time: Gender equity and discourses of workplace flexibility. Time & Society, 11(2–3), 335–351. https://doi.org/1 0.1177/0961463X02011002009 Fedden, S., & Boroditsky, L. (2012). Spatialization of time in Mian. Frontiers in Psychology, 3. https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2012. 00485 Filipovi, L., & Jaszczolt, K. M. (2012). Space and time in languages and cultures: Language, culture, and cognition. John Benjamins Publishing. Flaherty, M.  G. (1993). Conceptualizing variation in the experience of time*. Sociological Inquiry, 63(4), 394–405. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1475-­682X.1993.tb00320.x Fuhrman, O., McCormick, K., Chen, E., Jiang, H., Shu, D., Mao, S., & Boroditsky, L. (2011). How linguistic and cultural forces shape conceptions of time: English and mandarin time in 3D. Cognitive Science, 35(7), 1305–1328. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1551-­6709.2011.01193.x Klein, E. (n.d.). Stop. Breathe. we can’t keep working like this. Retrieved June 25, 2022, from https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/stop-­breathe-­we-­cant-­ keep-­working-­like-­this/id1548604447?i=1000511694869 Lorenz, T. (2020, April 1). Stop trying to be productive. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/style/productivity-­coronavirus. html Misra, K. (2020, April 24). Why you should ignore the pressure to be productive during lockdown. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-­ news/2020/apr/24/productivity-­in-­coronavirus-­lockdown Newport, F. (2015, December 31). Americans’ perceived time crunch no worse than in past. Gallup.Com. https://news.gallup.com/poll/187982/americans-­ perceived-­time-­crunch-­no-­worse-­past.aspx Nishimoto, I. (n.d.). “Time is money” A consideration of the place of “time consciousness” in industrialization. Ph.D., The University of Manchester (United Kingdom). Retrieved March 5, 2022, from http://www.proquest.com/ docview/1992118257/abstract/E4345A7242A5408APQ/1 Odell, J. (2020). How to do nothing: Resisting the attention economy. Melville House.

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Ogden, R. S. (2020). The passage of time during the UK Covid-19 lockdown. PLoS One, 15(7), e0235871. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0235871 Rudd, M., Vohs, K. D., & Aaker, J. (2012). Awe expands people’s perception of time, alters decision making, and enhances well-being. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1130–1136. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612438731 Shankar Vedantam. (n.d.). Do less. Retrieved June 25, 2022, from https://podcasts.podinstall.com/npr-­hidden-­brain/202206062000-­do-­less.html Tipples, J. (2008). Negative emotionality influences the effects of emotion on time perception. Emotion, 8(1), 127–131. https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-­ 3542.8.1.127 Wearden, J. (2016). The psychology of time perception (1st ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. Wiener, M., Lee, Y.-S., Lohoff, F. W., & Coslett, H. B. (2014). Individual differences in the morphometry and activation of time perception networks are influenced by dopamine genotype. NeuroImage, 89, 10–22. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.11.019 Zimbardo, P. G., & Boyd, J. N. (1999). Putting time in perspective: A valid, reliable individual-differences metric. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 18.

Experiences of a Latina Educator, Mother, and Student During the COVID-19 Pandemic Yalitza Corcino-Davis

Many of my workdays began with conversations like this: “Hi Milagros, this is Yalitza from Hills Community College. I am a learning specialist and work with students that might be struggling in their courses. Your professor asked me to reach out because she has not heard from you since the pandemic started, and you have missed some assignments. So she thought maybe I can help you catch up.” “I know I haven’t been in class and missed some assignments. I want to talk to my professor, but I am afraid of her. She was kind of mean when I tried to talk to her before. I don’t know if I can do it [complete the class]. A few weeks before the pandemic, me and my kids were homeless and were sleeping where we could for two weeks. Now, we have a place to live, but I don’t have a job anymore because of the shutdown. I am spending

Y. Corcino-Davis (*) Educational Leadership | College of Education, Research Coordinator | College of Health, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_8

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two days a week taking a bus with my kids to the food bank. Also, I only have one computer, and now I am sharing it with my kids, so getting homework done is hard. Do you think you really think you can help me because I don’t want to fail this class?” I want to say this student’s story was an outlier in my experiences as a learning specialist. But the truth is that the pandemic only intensified the already challenging lives of the students I served. Before the pandemic, professors often referred the most challenged students to me because I had a track record of helping students turn around their academics and succeed. I have helped many students go from academic probation to the dean’s list. Having an empathetic personality helped me get into my students’ worlds and journey with them along their paths to find solutions to their academic difficulties. Empathy has been defined not as an emotion but rather as our reactions to the feelings of others (Powell & Roberts, 2017). In their book Primal Leadership, Daniel Goleman et  al. (2016) explained, Empathetic people are superb at recognizing and meeting the needs of clients, customers, or subordinates. They seem approachable, wanting to hear what people have to say. They listen carefully, picking up on what people are truly concerned about and respond to the mark. (p. 50)

While being empathetic helped me succeed at my job, it also contributed to my decision to leave it during the pandemic. The negative aspect of being empathetic is that it can cause empathy fatigue, which includes physical and mental symptoms such as upset stomach, feelings of exhaustion, overwhelm, and lack of concentration (Cleveland Clinic, 2021). Before the pandemic, I was very effective at compartmentalizing my life. I had to be able to juggle a doctoral program, work, and home life. Each day, as I drove to work, I visualized becoming a learning specialist. As I went home or to school, I imagined taking my work off and becoming a mother, wife, or student. However, the boundaries I had built during my doctoral program disappeared during the pandemic. Once permanently at home, I struggled to keep the boundaries of home, work, and school life. My children and husband would pop into my home office space between our Zoom sessions for hugs. At first, I found it sweet how my young adult children and husband would seek me out for some love. First, my daughter would pop in after her 8 am lecture for a hug. Later, after his

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U.S. History class, my son would come in for some love. Then my husband would check in. However, after a few weeks, I realized they were all seeking comfort. My family was struggling with their experiences of the pandemic, and I was their comfort. In her essay titled “The Incredible Importance of Mothers,” Melanie Tannenbaum (2013) argued that humans need love and comfort as much as basic needs such as food. She shared that in secure attachments with their mothers, children seek to be close to their mothers and use them as safe havens to “gain the necessary courage to explore the surrounding environment and try new interesting things without being too scared” (para. #2). While I loved being a secure space for my children and students and still do, during that time, I began to feel like I could barely keep my head above water. The heightened need for comfort from my students and family left me feeling like a wet noodle at the end of the day. I was exhausted yet still had to muster the energy to do the work for my doctoral program. During the initial shutdown, I was taking a statistics course and started making silly mistakes that negatively impacted my grades. For example, in one exam, I scored 10 points lower than I could have for repeatedly putting the incorrect greater than/less than sign. When I looked back at my calculations, I had handwritten the correct symbol, but I changed it when I transferred it to the computer. Between the Zoom sessions, working, and school, I spent 10–12 hours daily looking at a screen, and my eyes were exhausted from so many hours on the computer. My eye prescription changed three times in less than two years. The final straw that pushed me toward choosing between work and school came when my children’s mental health started declining. A few months into the shutdown, my daughter started crying daily and often did not leave her room. Before the pandemic, she had a vibrant life that included college, a fulfilling part-time job, and a great group of friends that she could no longer see except through video conferencing. My son started sleeping through his classes and missing assignments. When I asked him about them, he shared that he felt no motivation. Seeing my children depressed and knowing I was too exhausted at the end of the day to give them the extra support they needed, I realized something had to give. While I could usually lean on my husband for extra support, he too was burnt out because his work sector became essential during the pandemic, and his days were often longer than mine. After some soul searching, I realized the only thing I could let go of was my doctoral studies, yet it was a tough decision. I began my doctorate in

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my mid-forties; it was something I had wanted to do for a long time. Once my youngest started high school, I felt like it was my time. As someone in the sandwich part of their lives, in other words caring for aging parents and for children still at home, my days often involved supporting the needs of others. The doctoral program became my space, the place where I did something fulfilling for me. Additionally, as a Latina, I felt like the doctorate was the legacy I would leave to future women in my family. I am among the first women in my family to get bachelor’s and master’s degrees. While many of the men have gone to college, the women of previous generations have mainly dedicated themselves to homemaking and child-rearing. During a tough moment in my undergraduate experience, the women in my family helped me persist by sharing their unfulfilled dreams of an education and their conviction that I succeed. Furthermore, I wanted to break the glass ceiling for my daughter, nieces, future girls of my family, and my first-generation Latinx students. I want them to believe that if I can do it, they can too. Currently, only 24% of the U.S. Latinx population has completed an associate degree or higher compared to 44% of the overall U.S. population (Excelencia in Education, 2019). In my small way, I want to contribute to improving these outcomes by being an example for others. Yet, when push came to shove, the doctorate was the only thing I felt comfortable giving up. With tears streaming down my face, I broached the subject with my husband and reasoned, “I’m so exhausted. Student needs are intense right now and require a lot of energy. Also, my grades are going down because I am so tired that I can barely look at the computer screen at night. But more importantly, the kids aren’t doing great, and I think I need to spend more time with them, especially our son. I am worried he will repeat his grade if he keeps missing class and assignments.” Finally, a few minutes into our discussion, my husband suggested, “Quit your job. We can work out our finances. If you quit your job, you can go to school full-time and help our kids.” Although my husband is a White man raised in the United States, he understood enough of Latinx culture and me as a Latina to know that for me, family comes first, even if our kids are young adults. Ramos (2014) found that Latina mothers support their children’s education through sacrificios (sacrifices), consejos (advice), and apoyo (moral support). Sacrificios are about “Latina mothers’ cultural beliefs about gender roles, specifically marianismo. Marianismo refers to women making sacrifices and emphasizing the needs of their children (and husband) above their own” (p. 3).

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Latina mothers take pride in their sacrificios and hope they give their children a chance at a better future (Ramos, 2014). Sacrificing for the family was normalized and ingrained in me from a young age. I grew up watching my mother, aunts, and grandmothers sacrifice for the well-being of our families. As a result, I embraced my Latinx culture and the concept of sacrificio, and when push came to shove, I sacrificed for my family, and I am not the only one. During the first year of the pandemic, Latinas exited the workforce at higher rates than any other demographic group in the United States (Hernandez et al., 2021). The authors wrote: Before the pandemic, Latinas spent over twice as much time as Latino men on household activities and close to three times as much on caring for household members, but almost half as much on work or work-related activities every day. As pandemic-induced shutdowns continued and household and caregiving responsibilities increased, Latinas involuntarily left the market to care for their homes. (Hernandez et al., 2021, p. 12)

It took me almost three weeks to finally quit my job. First, I grappled with my position of privilege in being able to quit my job during the pandemic when so many people, like my student Milagros, were struggling with health, food, and housing insecurities. Second, I wrestled with feelings of failure in various areas of my life. For example, I felt I failed my students and co-workers by leaving during an extremely challenging time. I also worried my family would see me differently because I could not manage as well as I used to. Moreover, I struggled to envision my new post-job identity since my overall identity was tightly interwoven with my work identity. In retrospect, at the time, I downplayed my struggles because I felt they were not as severe as those of others. I now realize my challenges were smaller but no less significant. After a few months of grappling with my feelings and identity, I concluded that I needed to adopt a different perspective to thrive on my new path. I made a conscious decision to accept the uncomfortableness of the unknown, not only of the pandemic but also of my career and direction. I started saying yes to opportunities outside of my comfort zone. For example, I accepted a part-time  job as a research coordinator for a study on women’s health. I also  collaborated with professors and classmates on research and writing in educational leadership.

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Focusing on what is important to me and making tough decisions has set me on an exciting new path I never imagined for myself and, in the process, has allowed me to expand my professional capacity. Recent reports estimate that only 4.73 million people or 2.1% of the U.S. population hold doctoral degrees, of which only 0.6% are Latinx (U.S.  Census Bureau, 2022). In sharing my story, my hope is that Latina graduate students and mothers can relate, see themselves in my experiences, and feel strengthened in their academic journeys. ¡Nosotras podemos!

References Cleveland Clinic. (2021, June 25). Empathy fatigue: How stress and trauma can take a toll on you. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/empathy-­fatigue-­how-­ stress-­and-­trauma-­can-­take-­a-­toll-­on-­you/ Excelencia in Education. (2019). Latinos in higher education: Compilation of fast facts. https://www.edexcelencia.org/research/publications/latinos-­higher-­ education-­compilation-­fast-­facts Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R. E., & McKee, A. (2016). Primal leadership: Unleashing the power of emotional intelligence. Harvard Business Review Press. Hernandez, K., Garcia, D., Nazario, P., Rios, M., & Domínguez-Villegas, R. (2021). Latinas exiting the workforce: How the pandemic revealed historic disadvantages and heightened economic hardship. Latino Policy & Politics Initiative, University of California Los Angeles. https://latino.ucla.edu/wp-­ content/uploads/2021/10/Latinas-­Exiting-­the-­Workforce.pdf Powell, P. A., & Roberts, J. (2017). Situational determinants of cognitive, affective, and compassionate empathy in naturalistic digital interactions. Computers in Human Behavior, 68, 137–148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. chb.2016.11.024 Ramos, M. (2014). Research brief—The strength of Latina mothers in supporting their children’s education: A cultural perspective. Child Trends Hispanic Institute. https://www.childtrends.org/wp-­content/uploads/2014/06/ Strengths-­of-­Latinas-­Mothers-­formatted-­6-­10-­14.pdf Tannenbaum, M. (2013, May 12). The incredible importance of mom. Scientific American. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/psysociety/mothers-­day-­ 2013/ United States Census Bureau. (2022, February 24). Table 3. Detailed years of school completed by people 25 years and over by sex, age group, race, and Hispanic Origin: 2021. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2021/demo/educational-­ attainment/cps-­detailed-­tables.html

Some Time with Writing Ogechi Iwuoha Njoku

With eyes tightly shut, I pressed my face into the pillow and exhaled. Something is going to happen. Something has to happen. Nothing happened. I quickly flipped over on the bed, careful to avoid making eye contact, and canvassed the ceiling in search of relief. My companion lay sprawled across the left side of the bed, unresponsive and seemingly unmoved by the littering of printed drafts, edited drafts, and disjointed notes that blanketed him. What am I going to do? Maybe I should just pause and focus on work. * * * The days had spun into weeks and now months with few breaks of clarity that would lead to the completion of the results chapter and the modification of the methodology chapter in my dissertation manuscript. A significant revision to the research method was necessary due to challenges encountered during the pandemic. Internal pressure was mounting because I was not meeting the deadlines carefully mapped for a successful defense of my research. Writing was a struggle—not in my professional/

O. I. Njoku (*) New York, NY, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_9

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workspace but in my academic space. Confronting my struggle with writing had become a battle of the mind. COVID-19 provided time alone that should have been welcomed. However, I was finding it increasingly difficult to push through and birth the baby that was my dissertation. Prior to COVID-19, work was at fault. There was always work, and now, there still was work. While navigating academia during COVID-19, I found myself, a Nigerian-American female, assisting and overseeing teaching and learning for more than nine thousand students, K-12. Of primary importance, during this time, was institutionalizing coherent systems and structures that would support academic achievement and recovery, as well as the social-emotional resilience of our students. Work demands during the global pandemic were real and could easily be blamed for the interruptions in my writing. But something was not sitting right. Again, COVID-19 provided time alone that should have been welcomed for some time with writing. What follows returns to where I began, with me grappling with writing. Writing is personified in the narrative that follows, and our differing approaches become apparent and problematic, necessitating a revision of the relationship. * * * With eyes tightly shut I pressed my face into the pillow and exhaled. Something is going to happen. Something has to happen. Nothing happened. I quickly flipped over on the bed, careful to avoid making eye contact, and canvassed the ceiling in search of relief. My companion lay sprawled across the left side of the bed, unresponsive and seemingly unmoved by the littering of printed drafts, edited drafts, and disjointed notes that blanketed him. What am I going to do? Maybe I should just pause and focus on work. “Oge? Don’t be so melodramatic,” Writing said, reading my movements. The sound of my name from his lips pinched a nerve. A small cocktail of impatience and frustration laced with disbelief settled in my stomach. Maybe if I responded with a sharp retort in Igbo, he would realize that there is something wrong. There is work to be done, now. And just reclining in bed does not produce a paper! I draped one arm over my face, covering my eyes. With the other hand, I reached across and plucked a draft from the pile. I began to read with my arm now resting on my forehead. I read the same introductory sentence for three solitary minutes before a flood of self-pity propelled me upright into a sitting position. I adjusted

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the pillows to rest against the metal headboard. With the laptop open, I tapped the file and took stock of my current situation. Thankful for moments of fluid thoughts that I typed quickly before they receded, I added to the document notes scribbled from earlier edits. I continued to push through. Writing shifted to peer at my progress and raised his left brow. The slight raise of an eyebrow was usually followed by input. He propped himself up, leaned his head on my shoulder, and whispered. This was our ritual. But now, his whispered words did not bring the same warmth. The timber of his voice and the familiar rhythm of his accent became instantly grating. I shrugged one shoulder, causing his face to fall. He did not return to his place on my shoulder. Instead, he sagely tilted his head against the headboard and closed his eyes. “You’re different,” he said. “You have changed.” Sweeping around the mixture of emotions and not wanting to explain my actions, I shrugged off his statement, saying, “We are pressed for time, and I’m a bit anxious to finish.” I looked over at him. “Let’s focus on the task. What are your thoughts on repurposing some of the methods section and placing it in the limitations section?” He assumed a look of pensive tenderness and wondered aloud, “When did our being together become a burdensome task? I remember and hold to the happy moments of laughter and lightness.” The words that followed were measured on my part: “For some, there are moments that overwhelm … moments of happiness.” I explained, “And then there is a joy that many exist in when writing; a joy that has become their way of life; a joy that flows from within like rivers of honey. You exist in that constant state of ‘extravagant joy’ that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (englishpen1921, 2018) speaks of. She, like you, writes because she loves to, because she has to, because she loves the possibility of touching another human being. Time and circumstance make this impractical for me. I would have to unlearn so much. And I am not willing to risk losing. I am content with the satisfaction when our fragmented thoughts coalesce into meaningful ideas and when those ideas end in a completed piece of writing.” “I see,” was his response, followed by questionable silence. “Do you remember our first story?” I nodded. “We were both fearless, not grasping the concept of limits or boundaries. We had no clue where the storyline would take us. You did not mind

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me leaning on your shoulder then. We leaned on each other.” He paused. “There was no ending in mind when we began. We trusted that it would unfold. It was storytelling in written form. Ms. Murray, our second-grade teacher, could not contain her excitement. She was satisfied with her lesson demonstrating how good writers use direct quotes to bring their characters to life, guiding us through the expectations of our storybook project.” “There was an abundance of wonder in those pages. I do remember,” I said. “I also remember sharing vivid dreams. There was the one with Lot’s wife, a pillar of cascading salt. She was just outside my bedroom window, beckoning us like the pied piper to join her. We watched as children accepted her invitation and were immediately drawn into her salty flesh. The outlines of their faces pulsated like heartbeats from within.” “But do you remember our first story, Oge?” “Yes, I do,” I said. “It resembled a comic strip. A group of peanut M&M friends wanted to go swimming but some were apprehensive about climbing the ladder to the diving board. Through encouraging words all of the M&Ms reached the top. One by one they jumped …” The headboard shook as Writing chuckled. “They jumped off the diving board and into a bowl of ice cream! The diving board was even shaped like a spoon.” He quirked an eyebrow. “You have to admit that was enjoyably joyful.” I did remember. I remembered that the story was written in second grade, which was close to thirty years ago. I could not deny the magic of the experience. Was he really comparing an elementary story project to our doctoral research? There was much more expected in our writing now, as adults. Frustrating even myself, I just asked, “How have I changed?” “No one wants to be mishandled like unwanted luggage.” He sighed. “I brought up our M&M story because it was an episode in time where the fantastical was permitted. You cared about a wider audience. Not just an audience of one-whomever graded the work. You desire to connect and trigger emotions. In this, we were a team. Now, not so much.” “Our focus has shifted quite a bit since then, from the fantastical to the factual. There is much more expected in our writing now, as adults,” I reminded him. “You know the quality of work we are required to produce. Organizing and synthesizing our ideas is a constant challenge. Even now, we are pushing through this assignment and we could have benefited from beginning earlier and using a visual tool of sorts. If we began earlier,

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lying in bed to muddle through our thoughts would not be so stressful. And connecting with the audience is important. However, we lose any audience if there is no clear direction in our writing.” “Would you prefer to be alone or is there space for me?” Writing questioned. Writing and I have never been apart. He was offering me what he thought I wanted. I didn’t desire distance. I wanted structure. In this quest to submit scholarly writing, I may have devalued the process. I tried to recall the reasons I’d harbored resentment for Writing but could not hold onto any one thing. Instead, I kept seeing him crouched over me, desperately trying to breathe life into drafts—and succeeding. Then I pictured him lying beside me, hands behind his head thinking. Amid a pressing deadline, he remained calm. I need that. I took a deep breath. He was not a stranger. I placed my hand on his shoulder and then let it fall. “Maybe I’ve become a bit of a stranger to this process. To answer your question, I would prefer to do this together. I need you.” I paused. “But we must find a compromise. It should come through a conversation before we began a new piece of writing.” Neither of us uttered a word for what seemed like an eternity. After some time sitting beside Writing, I could hear the faint sounds of the alley cat several stories below. Leaning sideways to peek out the window, I caught a bit of eastern light touching the brick of the neighboring apartment building. It’s morning. I turned to study Writing. Was he still thinking? His eyes were closed, yet the rise and fall of his chest suggested he was still awake. The butterflies in my belly were fluttering lower in fear. I slipped from under the comforter and out of bed. Gathering some of the drafts, notes, and my laptop, I walked out of the bedroom and organized myself at the dining room table. I typed. I typed his words. I typed my words. I typed our words into sentences and then into cohesive paragraphs. Separated, the process did not hold the same luster. Maybe our collision of words back and forth was our way of forming connections and making meaning. I wish he were here. There were just a few hours before work. I continued to type. I heard him before I felt his presence behind me. Looking up, I met his black eyes, dancing and playful. Writing winked. He nodded to the computer screen. With silent understanding, I smiled, adjusted my position to

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slide one foot out, and pushed at the legs of the chair beside me offering him a seat. Seated, Writing gently leaned his head on my shoulder and whispered. I typed. * * * During the COVID-related school closure, I had large chunks of time with myself and with my thoughts, and I began to pay attention. I began to pay attention to my relationship with writing. I began to think about experiences and situations that shaped my relationship with writing. Admittedly, I have had a strained relationship with writing. This is not an admonition of guilt; rather, it underscores my relationship with writing, that writing, for me, has been very purpose-driven. As an adult, I rarely enter into writing for the pleasure of the process. I write for a product that demonstrates my capacity to contribute to the space I find myself in. When I began to pay attention, I found that I held to the idea that as a woman of color when writing in academia or when writing in general, I should be putting forth something noteworthy when I wrote, something that would move people to action, something that could not be dismissed. Defending this idea might very well be a distraction preventing me from writing. The tendency to write when I am pressed for time forces out a product. If the work is accepted, then I am validated. But if it is not accepted, then it is due to lack of time. This thinking resembles Claude Steele’s (2011) findings on stereotype and identity, as well as research on stereotype threat and academic procrastination presented by Deemer et al. (2014). In summary, Steele’s (2011) work spoke to how academic behaviors may be explained by efforts to dispel stereotype threat, or concerns and fears of what people may think because of one’s race, gender, age, or the like. Deemer et al. (2014) suggested that to counter this fear of confirming negative stereotypes, individuals may adopt procrastination as a self-handicapping strategy to protect themselves. Paying attention has been a lesson in itself. I continue to reflect. I am understanding the importance of speaking to the fuller version of myself. I think on things that are honest and true, things that positively distract and build my toolbox to be content with where I am with writing.

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References Deemer, E. D., Smith, J. L., Carroll, A. N., & Carpenter, J. P. (2014). Academic procrastination in STEM: Interactive effects of stereotype threat and achievement goals. The Career Development Quarterly, 62(2), 143–155. englishpen1921. (2018, October 9). Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie—PEN Pinter Prize 2018 [Video] YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=s2xyMBzkCeo Steele, C. M. (2011). Whistling Vivaldi: How stereotypes affect us and what we can do. WW Norton & Company.

PART II

Turning Challenges into Opportunities: Building Resilience

Grow Through What You Go Through Chelsea L. Ortiz

The sudden pause on life in March of 2020 brought forth a new reality for which I was unprepared. During this particular time of the year, I was preparing to send hundreds of decision letters out to hopeful students seeking to gain a spot in our competitive nursing programs. These students were eagerly awaiting notice of whether or not their upcoming fall semester would be filled with clinical rotations, learning new skills and interventions, reading mountains of textbooks, and wearing the distinctive navy-blue scrubs that are highly regarded around campus. In my own personal world, this time was supposed to be focused on finalizing my thesis in preparation to graduate from my graduate program in Public Health—the first in my family to receive a professional degree. What I hadn’t prepared for was the significance of these two aspects intersecting at once. As my busiest semester of the academic year, the spring of 2020 was proving to be a challenge from the start. I had just reviewed over 500

C. L. Ortiz (*) School of Nursing, College of Health and Human Services, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_10

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applications for our nursing programs and was awaiting final scores from committee members in order to send out my communications to applicants and campus administration. My thesis was undergoing its hundredth round of edits—or at least that was what it felt like—and I had suddenly fallen severely ill. My primary care assured me that it was a 24-hour bug and that rest with consistent hydration would do the trick. That temporary “bug” turned into a five-day “bug” with every symptom imaginable, including residual respiratory issues for the next nine months. I hadn’t realized, at the time, that my health concerns had been overlooked by my healthcare providers, especially during a time when COVID-19 was burrowing into communities and affecting people of color the most (Monte & Perez-Lopez, 2021; Hill Golden, 2020). Only three weeks later, after I had slightly recovered, did the entire state shut down. We were forced to transition all our on-campus teaching and responsibilities to virtual learning and working from home. With all the mandates (State of Connecticut, 2022), there was so much uncertainty, both in academia and in our home, as to how we would do our jobs; how we would connect with and support our students; how we would protect ourselves and our families from this illness; would we still be able to work and have an income; and so many other questions for which we had no answers. What initially seemed like an unfortunate health crisis on the other side of the road, which was actively being taught about in our public health and nursing classrooms, was suddenly in our own backyard. A few months prior to March 2020, I moved into a new home with my husband and brand-new puppy. We were still living out of packed boxes, and now I needed to make room for an entire office area to be able to work from home. Needless to say, this was a very overwhelming time, both professionally and personally. I had been working diligently in my role to make a name for myself in my department as one of only four people of color. Having become a “yes” person very early on in my career in order to be a “team player,” I became very good at putting my personal life to the side and focusing solely on my professional growth. No one knew I had quietly been struggling with infertility for several years and had been looking toward 2020 for a reboot of self-love and growth. As a family, my husband and I had plans to travel, celebrate my graduation, renovate our home, begin seeking fertility treatment, and spend more time with family members. I had not expected COVID-19 to challenge the

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human race in ways we had not been tested before, putting everyone’s plans on hold for the foreseeable future. Thankfully, even with the disruptions to workflow, I was successfully able to deliver all the decision letters on time and communicate with all campus personnel to ensure students were able to register for their courses. Fortunately for my workplace, everyone was eager to continue their role virtually without much disruption to processes and deadlines. But while there was ease in decision delivery, there was not much comfort and ease-­ of-­ transition in planning future summer and fall events for our new student-­nurse cohorts. Our campus community was waiting to find out what restrictions would be put in place by every college or university so as to not risk the health and safety of students, faculty, and staff. We all had our eyes and ears glued to the news outlets, health organizations, and in-­ house specialists to determine best practices. This balancing act of reassuring families and students of a smooth operation while also waiting to learn facts as they were coming in felt much like putting the cart before the horse. Junior-level nursing students were concerned about how virtual learning would interfere with their academics, and senior-level students were concerned about whether or not they would be able to register for their National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX). Parents were concerned about their children’s safety in clinical and the quality of program delivery with a virtual learning platform. They too were listening to the news reports of limited medical resources and burn-­out and were worried for their children’s health and emotional wellness. Faculty were concerned about patient and student safety in the clinical setting as well as ensuring that their learning objectives would continue to be met to prepare students for examination and practice. I was concerned about how I would onboard new groups of students while also giving our graduates the pinning ceremony they deserved. We all had valid concerns. Our fears were shared by many across the country—and questions were piling up without responses. This time was, by far, the greatest challenge of my career. Working virtually, with more to do, meant working longer hours and throughout the weekend. My colleagues and I were all working more, but I did not feel like I had the luxury to complain as vocally in an academic environment. Seeking advancement, I was focused on showing my capacity to work, to prove that I could handle more responsibility at a higher level. I was assigned more work, but not at a higher level. However, what was more

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important to me was that I was a part of a group of people trying to make it work, just like everyone else in the workforce. As a professional responsible for accepting and enrolling new nursing students annually, I had to make sure students exited our program feeling empowered as providers and understanding the impact their role would have on the public’s health. I was acutely aware of the way we were running our program with COVID restrictions to ensure program and curriculum quality were not compromised. It was important for me to be able to confidently speak to our new virtual learning model and our school’s capacity to successfully prepare future nurses. Shortly after this at-home working environment began, the State Department of Public Health decided that all barbershops and salons were shut down until further notice (CNN, 2020). This meant that my husband, a professional barber, was no longer able to work. Suddenly, on top of working from home with an increased workload, we became a single-­ income household. This was especially difficult for my husband to experience. Given that we were both home, our utility costs increased, and the bills did not slow down. Leaving the house for something as simple as getting a gallon of milk was halted by ensuring we had sufficient mask supplies, alcohol wipes, and excellent hand hygiene. As a Hispanic family, being able to regularly see our parents and grandparents was important to us. Family events turned into driveway celebrations; worrying about access to medicine and food for our older family members became an increasing concern; and conversations about expanding our own family seemed further off as clinics stopped taking new patients. The stark reminder that nothing about 2020 was going as planned had us glued to the TV and our emails. We waited for the latest public health updates and social restrictions to dictate how we went about our day outside—if possible. However, all was not lost. By the time my husband was able to return to work several months later, it was well after the summer came to a close. Though those months home together allowed us a new-found appreciation for one another, it was collectively one of the most challenging and humbling times of my career and personal life. The first half of 2020 was about learning how to continue with normal day-to-day activities under abnormal circumstances. This gifted me an opportunity to spend more time in my home, with my husband, learning how to raise an adorable puppy who wanted nothing but love and affection—and the occasional treat. I successfully completed my thesis, had a virtual graduation, won an award within my graduate program, and pulled off all our normal

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workplace events in a virtual setting. I took the extra time at home to seek professional development opportunities and was able to obtain my licensure as a Certified Lactation Consultant, assisting parents both in-­person and virtually with their chest-feeding concerns when they needed help the most. Additionally, I expanded my role within my university by participating in COVID-19 vaccine programs and N95 mask-fit testing for our nursing students. Though I was cautious about the rapidly increasing infection rates, I embraced the actionable learning experiences to help others, especially our students, cope more easily. My husband and I were unable to seek treatment for our fertility issues to expand our family in the way we had wanted, but as time passed, we were able to find a facility to meet our needs. In comparison to the stories on the news about loss, grief, crisis, and fear—real issues that were felt by millions of people around the world—my home was a small oasis. What I learned as a young professional minority in academia was that vulnerability, honesty, and compassion needed to mutually exist in the era of COVID.  How we interact with our families, friends, coworkers, students, and community members speaks volumes to how we understand and appreciate the circumstances of others—especially the most vulnerable populations. While I hope to never experience another global pandemic, I do cherish the growth I experienced and the ways that I pushed myself beyond my limits.

References CNN. (2020, March 20). Hair salons, tattoo parlors and other beauty shops ordered to close indefinitely in four states. CNN Business. https://www.cnn. com/2020/03/20/business/coronavirus-­barbershops-­salons/index.html Hill Golden, S. (2020, April 20). Coronavirus in African Americans and other people of color. Johns Hopkins Medicine. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ health/conditions-­and-­diseases/coronavirus/covid19-­racial-­disparities Monte, L. M., & Perez-Lopez, D. J. (2021, July 21). How the pandemic affected Black and White households. United States Census Bureau. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/07/how-­pandemic-­affected-­black-­and-­white-­ households.html State of Connecticut. (2022). Emergency orders issued by the Governor and State agencies. Connecticut COVID-19 Response. https://portal.ct.gov/ Coronavirus/Pages/Emergency-­Orders-­issued-­by-­the-­Governor-­and-­State-­ Agencies

Social-Emotional Challenges in K-12 Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic Koren M. Paul

In education, we are in the business of teaching and learning. At the heart of our business are our students. Educators have the responsibility to shape the young minds of pupils as they move through the grades in our school buildings, and we must consider the whole child in order to enhance the learning experience. Specifically, we have to be aware of, and care for, their social-emotional needs. In order for students to be fully prepared for learning, they must be in good shape socially and emotionally. The global pandemic declared on March 11, 2020, by the World Health Organization wasn’t like anything educators had ever experienced, and it was unknown just how much it would affect the social and emotional health of students, parents, and educators. At the elementary school level, at-home learning was far from what we were used to—teaching while building relationships and community within a classroom of young learners as we also teach them how to socialize and play together.

K. M. Paul (*) Oxford, CT, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_11

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Students In March 2020, my school district was well on its way to improving the way we cared for the social-emotional needs of our students. As a district, we were about to embark upon a new social-emotional learning training, which was rolled out to the staff in the first year (2020–2021) and would then be introduced to the students in the second year (2021–2022). The teachers in my building were very well versed in how to care for the youngest students in our school system, so the district work would only enhance their skills. No one expected the world to shut down. The switch to distance learning at the elementary level was probably the most drastic pandemic change in education. After six months of in-person school, students were suddenly at-home learners and expected to adjust to this new normal. Most students in the primary grades had not been previously exposed to a virtual classroom platform such as Google Classroom, and the learning curve for students, parents, and teachers was steep. The first three months of the pandemic shutdown didn’t initially cause any harm to younger students, especially our students who were in preschool, kindergarten, and grade one. To them, they were at their best, simply enjoying more time at home with their families. As time went on, they did have questions, and they were not questions that their parents and guardians could answer with certainty. We heard questions such as “What is COVID?” and “How long do we have to stay home?” Because this was their first school experience, they didn’t really have anything else with which to compare the abrupt end to in-person schooling. Our 2019–2020 preschool and kindergarten students haven’t had a normal school year as of yet, and they will be entering the second and third grades in the 2022–2023 school year! During this time, their lives were affected in several ways. What our students have missed the most is high-quality teaching and learning, and educators are doing everything they can to support students and close gaps that have been made during remote learning and COVID-19 quarantine periods. However, what students are also lacking is the social-­ emotional growth that occurs as a member of a classroom, gaining independence, and learning to get along with their peers. Children don’t just learn how to read, write, and do math in school; they also learn how to socialize with others. The period that students were at home full-time or halftime has had a negative effect on students’ social and emotional

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growth. Most schools were back in session 100% in-person for the 2021–2022 school year, so students finally had a chance to participate in some authentic school experiences; however, COVID-19 restrictions such as social distancing and not sharing materials still thwarted the full experience. During the 2021–2022 school year, some first graders attended school for the first time in their lives. As a repercussion of the pandemic and not being in school, students at every level of education are displaying different degrees of social anxiety and immaturity for their ages. In a national survey of educators administered by the Education Week Research Center in January (2022), 39% of respondents said that “compared to prior to the pandemic in 2019, the social skills and emotional maturity levels” of their current students are “much less advanced” (n.p.). 41% said their students were “somewhat less advanced” in those areas, and 16% said they were “about the same” as their pre-academic peers (Blad, 2022). One unfortunate thing that happened because of the pandemic is that many preschool-aged children who may have attended preschool did not attend any type of preschool or daycare center before entering kindergarten if their parents were not employed. Connecticut state law currently requires students to be five years old before January 1st before beginning school in the September before. A four-year-old child who was born at the end of December started kindergarten with us, had no preschool experience, and was now expected to be an online learner three days per week in the middle of a pandemic. We supported the mother, and she tried to make it work, but he just was not ready; he cried, and he only wanted to go back to sleep. The other two days of the week, he came to school, and he was a learner, but then he went home for five days. This continued until we returned to school full-time later in the year. He clearly needed another full year to fairly experience his kindergarten year and thrive as a student. One other extreme example of the effect of the pandemic on a student is a first grader who did not want to get out of his car in the morning. He was one of many students who had trouble coming back in after being home so long, but his resistance lasted the longest. He just wanted to “stay home and play video games.” One day, he even went so far as to wet himself. To his surprise, we simply gave him a change of clothing so he could finish out the day. His challenges continued for a while, and he eventually came around.

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Parents While some parents/guardians were 100% involved in their children’s education from day one, many were not. Those who were fully involved were confused about what to do with online learning but jumped right in to help their children. Some were a little detached and needed our help to guide their children with this new distance learning. Others who were more detached from the classroom were the hardest to reach during the pandemic. A major challenge at our school was engaging parents; the pandemic made this even more difficult, as the only way to connect with them was through electronics. In order to educate elementary school students from afar, the responsibility relied heavily on parent or guardian participation. This was, at times, difficult, so add to that a scary virus and parents’ job responsibilities or lack thereof, and the task became even more difficult. Parents and guardians left in these positions were more worried about how to put food on the table and pay bills than how to connect to a virtual meeting so that their children can participate in remote learning. Being a parent myself, I could certainly empathize with the parents and all the reasons why their child was not consistently online. Some parents had to work, and children were left at home with older siblings or grandparents who didn’t know how to use the technology or who couldn’t speak English well enough to assist them. However, it was my job to make sure that students were connecting with their teachers for teaching and learning. More often than not, my suggestions for how students could stay connected were not accepted. Some parents stopped answering the telephone all together, but I still kept them in my call rotation and left messages of hope and encouragement to connect to their teacher during lessons. During the three-month shutdown from March to June 2020, it was a struggle and very stressful to engage students and families. The district was fortunate to be able to provide a Chromebook to each student who needed one for remote learning. The 2020–2021 school year began with a hybrid schedule, so students attended school for two days in person and had three remote learning days. As a result, we were able to reach more students and provide more consistent learning experiences since most students were physically in school at least two days per week. However, in some instances, this schedule allowed some families to disconnect from

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school for the three remote days, and their children were always behind because they had not joined the streamed lessons from home. The hybrid school attendance plan continued for a little more than half the school year. This was the most difficult part for parents, especially for working parents. Parents who had a job struggled to find childcare for the three remote days, and even if they did have a childcare plan, that didn’t mean the provider could facilitate online student learning. There were many grand attempts to help parents with this new type of learning, but not all were successful. One new option was that daycare centers accepted grade school children into their programs while parents worked, but they didn’t necessarily help students with their lessons. One teacher reported that a student was connected for many of her daily lessons, but instead of sitting and engaging in the lesson, he walked and ran around the room with his Chromebook in hand since there was no adult supervision. Needless to say, there was no follow-up independent work or learning done by this first grader. Even though every student in our district was provided with a device and a Wi-Fi connection if needed, that didn’t mean that at-home learning was equitable or even happening at all. There were language barriers for those families for whom English was a second language; how could they help their children with work in English if they didn’t speak or write the language themselves? Parents working from home found it difficult to simultaneously help their children with learning while taking care of job responsibilities. Juggling a work meeting while a student is on a school meeting is not an ideal situation both aurally and visually, especially with a younger child who may need assistance. Those with limited education themselves did not feel competent enough to help with at-home student work. These stressors of the pandemic left many parents feeling helpless about their situation both emotionally and financially. In a study done by Moreland-Russell et al. (2022), less than half of the survey respondents lived in households with an adult who could help their children with learning. The researchers found that hybrid schooling options offering both in-person and online learning were associated with poor parental mental health, as was working from home.

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Teachers I was very fortunate to have a hard-working group of teachers in my building at the onset of the pandemic, and I was always confident in their abilities to provide high-quality instruction to the students under their charge. Whenever a challenging situation arose, the staff rose to the occasion again and again, and I knew this would be no different. Because we had no idea what to expect, students were sent home with several weeks’ worth of “work” for their at-home learning. Only a couple of teachers had knowledge of Google Classroom, so the method of teaching was primarily email and perhaps some phone calls to parents. Of course, this had to change once the few weeks turned into months. The teachers’ stress levels were very high. The expectation to teach lower elementary students from home seemed impossible to everyone. However, they all managed to learn how to use Google Classroom to post lessons and guide students and parents at home with completing lessons. It was a constant struggle for teachers to engage students and parents, but we worked together to keep the communication going. The teachers and support staff shared ideas and strategies that they found helpful, and the collaboration helped everyone to get through the challenging period of 100% at-home learning. The following year proved to be even more stressful as teachers navigated in-person and remote teaching at the same time. Students were divided into two cohorts and each attended school two days per week. Wednesday was a remote learning day, and the other two days students joined the classroom from home via Google Meet with Chromebooks. I did everything I could to support the teachers during this time as they basically taught three groups of students: the in-person learners, the remote learners, and the students whose parents chose for them to connect remotely every day. Teachers had to figure out how to teach all subjects to all three groups and then find time to assess them all. While I was concerned with the social-emotional state of the students, I was also just as concerned with the social-emotional state of the teachers. Teachers were expected to take special care of the students’ needs, but they were also dealing with their own social-emotional struggles in the middle of a pandemic. Our theme throughout the most difficult times was “We’re all in this together,” and we were, but staff morale was low, and stress levels were high. Teachers felt a disconnect from each other due to the virtual staff meetings and closing of the staff room due to COVID restrictions. I did all I could to engage them with snacks, games, and activities showing appreciation for their work.

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One teacher’s health was clearly affected by the extra stress of teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. The teacher suffers from multiple health conditions, and each year during the pandemic, the conditions would flare up and progress to a point where she would be out of work for extended periods of time. Due to the high stress associated with the job duties at work, the doctors made sure she did not return to work too soon. I was of course concerned for her health, but the other big concern was the inconsistent class coverage for the students. No one wanted her to come to school sick, but the education of the students was at stake, so stress levels were high as everyone scrambled to cover the class.

Administrators How exactly do you run a school virtually from home? This was the question on every administrator’s mind when the world shut down. Virtual learning in the middle of a pandemic was not covered in any administration class. I quickly learned that this required a lot of emails and virtual meetings with staff, families, and colleagues, and many, many calls home to families who were not showing signs of participation in virtual learning. As the principal of an elementary school with an 80% population of children of color, the number one priority for teaching and learning was that it was equitable for all students. While we were making strides in ensuring equity in the school district, there was only so much that you can do in the students’ homes. We could control what happened in the classroom, but trying to ensure equity during distance learning was a challenge since every family was dealing with its own obstacles during the pandemic. I wanted to help, but all I could offer were words of encouragement and assurance that we would get through it all together. The social and emotional toll of the unknown during this time, and the stress of not being able to solve everyone’s problems, seemed unsurmountable at times. Job responsibilities multiplied as administrators were not only in charge of trying to engage families and supervising staff members and students, but it became necessary to plan for mitigation of the spread of COVID-19, contact trace when there was a new positive case, and keep track of it all on a daily basis. From the onset of the pandemic until school days resumed full-time in person, there were multiple shifts in the schedule and policies surrounding COVID-19. The effects of those changes from the previous few years were experienced by the students and brought into my school, and the results were pretty explosive and stressful to say the least. It is part of my

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job to ensure that the climate and culture of the school are conducive to learning, and this proved to be very challenging during this time. Another major part of my job is to be an instructional leader, and I had very little time for this because what I spent most of the two years during the pandemic doing was dealing with student behaviors. We simply did not have enough support staff to handle the social-emotional needs of the students. This also required a physical support to students who were flopping to the floor or eloping from the classroom. The combined stress and physical challenge of this daily situation did not fare well with my weakened immune system disorder. There were many days I wanted to walk out of the building and not return, and I had to remind myself that I was the one in charge, and I couldn’t leave. There were even some days I could barely walk down the stairs out of the building at the end of the day, and I would wonder as I drove home if I could go back there. I returned the next day to do it again. We have to keep showing up. I made sure to spend less time at work to at least help lower my stress level. My key takeaways from the pandemic experience are that we are resilient and innovative, and we will always find a way to do what is necessary to educate our students. The social and emotional health of students, parents, and educators was negatively affected during this time. Teaching and learning may not have looked the same, but educators utilized their knowledge and experience to make it work, even though they were struggling emotionally themselves. What we need to do now is use this experience to improve our education system. Yes, we are in the business of education, but we have to ensure that we consider the social-emotional needs of everyone involved. This includes caring for students, parents, teachers, and administrators. The day-to-day work gets busy and stressful, but we have to remember that we are all human, and feelings and connections matter.

References Blad, E. (2022, February 24). Educators see gaps in kids’ emotional growth due to pandemic. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/educators-­ see-­gaps-­in-­kids-­emotionalgrowth-­due-­to-­pandemic/2022/02 Moreland-Russell, S., Jabbari, J., Ferris, D., & Roll, S. (2022, May 4). At home and on the brink: U.S. parents’ mental health during COVID-19. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(9), 5586. https:// doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19095586

Leading in Color in Academia: A Latinx Chair’s Experience of Resiliency and Hope Loida Reyes

My educational experience shaped who I am today and inspired me to dedicate myself to increasing the representation of people of color in our educational institutions. My hope is that students of color see themselves in my story, as I wish I could have seen myself in lectures, books, and examples when I attended school. My story is also for faculty and staff in academia who have the immense privilege of shaping the lives of those they teach. I ask that you do this with care and to take the time to reflect on the lessons I share so that you will provide a culturally responsive environment for all our students.

L. Reyes (*) Department of Social Work, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_12

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The Student/Faculty Diversity Gap As U.S. population trends continue to shift, the number of students of color, including African American, Latinx, and Asian students, is projected to grow, while the number of White students is projected to decrease. Colleges and universities must improve their capacity to meet the needs of racial and ethnic populations that are currently underrepresented in higher education. Colleges and universities, as well as elementary and secondary schools, must increase the proportion of racially and ethnically diverse faculty. It is not enough to improve access to college for students with diverse backgrounds. We also must ensure that the academic environment is prepared to receive them, us, me. According to Flynn (2022), people of color are severely underrepresented among faculty and administration in higher education. Some colleges and universities have prioritized the recruitment of diverse faculty and staff; however, they are challenged to retain them. The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) (2022) reported that three-­ quarters of full-time faculty in the fall of 2020 were White. Proportions of non-White faculty ranged from Asian/Pacific Islander males (seven percent), Asian/Pacific Islander females (five percent), Black females (four percent), Black males (three percent), Latinx males (three percent), Latinx females (three percent), American Indian/Alaska Native faculty (one percent or less), two or more races (one percent or less) (2022, p. 1). In the last decade, colleges and universities have made some strides in preparing their institutional environments to be more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. All colleges and universities have taken the first step of securing a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) officer or a DEI division to meet stated strategic goals. Of the many DEI objectives, none is more critical than the identification, recruitment, and retention of diverse faculty and staff. Diverse faculty are valuable because they enhance the breadth, depth, and quality of teaching. As a full-time Latina professor, I am representative of just three percent of faculty in the nation, yet Latinx/Hispanic students make up the fastest-growing student demographic group. Without intentional change, the faculty-student diversity gap will continue to grow. To borrow the phrase of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v Board of Education (1954), we must diversify with all “deliberate speed,” as students of color deserve better.

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My Story My parents migrated from Puerto Rico after being newly married in pursuit of the American Dream. My father grew up in extreme poverty after losing his father at an early age, and he was not able to attend school after the sixth grade. My mother also grew up in a working-class family. Her father was a farmer, and her mother was a homemaker. My mother could not attend school after the seventh grade, as her family could only afford to educate some of their children, and they opted to educate the oldest two sons. Hence, education became a priority in my home. I grew up loving school and often was teased for being a bookworm. My parents encouraged school activities and aspired to have all their five children graduate from high school. I am saddened to report that my experiences as a student from 1975 to 2015 were not always positive. For my entire early academic career (elementary, middle school, and high school), I never had a teacher of color. These early educational experiences were ones of alienation and confusion. The message I received, whether directly or indirectly, was that people like me did not belong. I never showed up in the books, in the examples, or in the people who taught me, except, of course, the Latina women in the cafeteria who were made to be invisible. At home, my parents reproduced the island experience. We had a garden in our backyard where my mother grew cilantro, beans, and peppers. We had roosters and spoke Spanish and listened to Spanish television and radio. I thought everyone grew up as I did. Most of my friends were of Spanish descent and I felt connected to my cultural roots. I only felt different when I went to school. I was the first in my family to attend college. One of my early college experiences was taking my first English course and listening to the professor go on and on with an analogy to the experience of eating a s’more (a campfire desert of toasted marshmallows and chocolate sandwiched between graham crackers). My classmates laughed and recalled similar experiences of eating s’mores while camping with their families during the summer months. I smiled but could not relate. I had no idea what a s’more was, and I had never been camping. I felt embarrassed and like a misfit. I reflected on my own summers of traveling to Puerto Rico to spend time with my grandparents and feeling as though my experience could not compete, so I never shared. I left class in a hurry. I felt genuinely lost. I ran to see if my advisor was in her office, as I had come to rely on her to educate me on these sorts of

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things. She was not in her office, so I ran to my room in hopes that my White roommate was there. I then asked my roommate what a s’more was, and she began laughing and stated that she could not believe I never ate a s’more. She proceeded to go out to the grocery store and came back with the s’more ingredients. She made me s’mores in my room with a lighter. We ate about two or three each and I remember crying as I ate them. The lesson for faculty and staff is to never assume that your worldview and experiences are shared by your students. I was the only student of color in that class and would never have had the courage to ask what the professor was describing given the environment she had created by making this assumption. This s’more incident made me feel as though I had an inferior childhood because I had never been camping. I thought I had missed an important experience, not understanding that my opportunity to travel to Puerto Rico to spend summers with my grandparents was equally beautiful. Students of color need to see themselves in what is being taught to be engaged and to learn. Faculty must be open to reciprocal learning as they are not going to know every culture. They must create learning environments where they are not guided by erroneous assumptions. I then went on to graduate school, and again I had no faculty member in the classroom who mirrored my experiences. The faculty saw my dual language skills as a deficit rather than an asset. One professor wrote “ESL (English as a Second Language)” in red ink on my paper, because I had confused tenses in my writing. My entire educational experience was encapsulated in this message that I was inept and did not belong. Although I was a successful Latina with a rewarding career in child welfare, the professor made me feel small. I relived insecurities that I had long buried. When I met with her to ask what she meant by ESL, she stated that I wrote as though I was not fluent in English, and this was a problem. I kept the paper for many years in a file at home as I was in disbelief that a professor would be that cruel. I was a busy graduate student with responsibilities for work and raising my children, and I could not stay on campus after classes, so I really did not know other faculty outside of the classroom. After receiving that paper, I went on a quest to find a faculty of color, preferably one that was bilingual. Eventually, I was able to find a Latino professor. I asked to meet with him to discuss the possibility of doing an independent study for my capstone. He agreed to meet and to take on the advising responsibility. I was over the moon. For the first time

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in my entire educational experience—by then I was in my early thirties—I interacted with an educator who shared my heritage and my language. And guess what? He had an accent, and he was ESL! He was the first professor to make me feel like I belonged. He explained why I confused the tenses in my writing, and he took the time to share his experiences with writing in a second language. I walked away feeling whole. This professor planted the seed that being a professor was a possibility. The lesson for faculty and staff is to have a cultural appreciation and perspectives that counter negative stereotypes and biases. Diverse faculty offer opportunities for enriched educational experience that foster a sense of belonging among our students. We need to move beyond thinking that just having articles from diverse authors and different examples is enough. While universities continue to work on recruiting and retaining faculty of color, we need to prepare White teachers to work with children of color in culturally responsive ways. This requires faculty to practice cultural humility and self-reflection and to seek to understand their own biases and privilege rather than to stigmatize students with labels. As I reflect on my educational experience, I think about its profound impact on my worldview. It taught me that I belong at the periphery, but never in the center or at the head. I felt like an outsider when examples were used that did not include or consider my cultural experiences. I had some phenomenal educators, but I never felt truly engaged, appreciated for my difference, or understood. I often had to count on allies outside of the classroom to make sense of what was being asked of me or what was being taught. I am blessed to have had these allies, some of whom were White. They understood my shame and lack of understanding due to the cultural disconnect. I also counted on my family, my parents, for their ongoing encouragement and their confidence in my abilities. They honestly believe that I am a bright woman, and they commend my bilingualism. They view “ESL” as being connected to culture and orgullo (something to be proud of). Why is it essential for students to have faculty from diverse racial backgrounds? For one, students need to see role models that mirror their race and ethnicity. Your dreams and goals are shaped by seeing people who look like you in those roles, period. You must see it to believe it. Having someone who can directly challenge stereotypes and biases is critical in unlearning and learning how we are socialized. My own experience shows what happens when no one challenges a teacher’s perception of ability. My teachers typically shamed me for not having fluency in English. They did

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not appreciate my talent of being able to learn a new language while continuing to speak another. In graduate school, I was told that I did not speak like a scholar and therefore needed to learn how to do so in answering questions in class. Women of color experience disrespect, bias, and microaggressions from others in their work environments (Velazquez et al., 2022), and this has been my experience in academia. I must constantly fight not to personalize microaggressions and to combat imposter syndrome. As defined by Fields and Cunningham-Williams (2021), people with imposter syndrome have difficulty believing that they are as intelligent, skilled, and deserving of their success as their colleagues, and they fear that this unfounded truth will be discovered by others at any moment. When you do not see yourself represented in spaces, you begin to doubt yourself, and then you believe you are the one that needs to change rather than understanding your personal experience as a systemic issue. When students do not see themselves represented among faculty and staff, they are often silenced. They question their worth and whether they belong in college. As a result, faculty of color carry an invisible workload. Students of color seek us out, although we are not their advisors or professors. I recognize my power beyond my title in serving as a role model and I advocate for these students, because I was one of them. As a chairperson of a department and the first chairperson of color, I am privileged to be in a position where I can influence policies that create real, systemic change. To begin dismantling systemic racism, organizations must commit to addressing these issues head-on by reexamining policies, practices, and work environments that have perpetuated systemic inequalities. When we all do the work to become more racially and culturally conscious, then the academic environment will become more inclusive for everyone.

References Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Fields, L., & Cunningham-Williams, R.  M. (2021). Experiences with imposter syndrome and authenticity at research-intensive schools of social work: A case study on Black female faculty. Advances in Social Work, 21(2/3), 354–373. https://doi.org/10.18060/24124 Flynn, K. (2022, November 22). Academic leadership by race. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/student-diversity-grows-while-leadershipremains-white-5112518#toc-first-black-college-student-and-president

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National Center for Education Statistics. (2022). Characteristics of postsecondary faculty. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/csc Velazquez, A.  I., Gilligan, T.  D., Kiel, L.  L., Graff, J., & Duma, N. (2022). Microaggressions, bias, and equity in the workplace: Why does it matter, and what can oncologists do? American Society of Clinical Oncology Educational Book, 42. https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/EDBK_350691

Navigating Realities While Maintaining Perspective During COVID Antionette Smith Epps

I represent many different faces to different audiences. One of these faces is that of a university professor of healthcare management. Some of the other faces are that of a Black woman, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, niece, cousin, friend, neighbor, colleague, employee, leader, citizen, human, traveler, and survivor. During the ongoing COVID-19 (hereafter referred to as COVID) crisis, the synergy between these various faces has been my lifeline. The advent of COVID presented many challenges to individuals, organizations, and society at large. This is especially true for the extreme sides of a heterogenous and often polarized population within the United States. The aforementioned  polarization is well-­ illustrated  by phenomena such as  many  Americans believing  the 2020 elections were  free and fair, while many others  believe that elections were  fraudulent and unfair. A similar divide also emerged during the COVID crisis. When did we become such a strident society with various

A. S. Epps (*) Department of Health Policy and Management, Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health, Indiana University, Indianapolis, IN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_13

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tribes going at each other? The haves versus the have-nots. The super-rich oblivious to the plight of those existing on minimum wage. Xenophobic, homophobic, racist, sexist, exclusionary, and insular positions bantered about seemingly without regard to how these positions may exclude others and/or signal a desire to obliterate entire groups of people (Heltzel & Laurin, 2020). This truth has been  dramatically highlighted during the continuing COVID crisis and has tested and challenged my comprehension of the varied faces  I inhabit. It has also resulted in a surprising well of resilience. What I have discovered is that navigating multi-dimensional, and sometimes conflicting, realities requires varying strategies to survive not just a global pandemic but the struggles, pitfalls, and triumphs of everyday life as well. Like many people in March 2020, I was going about my day-to-day business. I had just returned from two trips—one for pleasure and one to attend the memorial service for a colleague who had recently passed. I took traveling and moving around the United States and my local environs for granted. I had never worried about wandering far afield of my native Mississippi. If there was an airport nearby, I reasoned, I would be within twelve hours or less of getting to my parents and home, if necessary. At the beginning of COVID, I was an assistant professor at a regional state university in Michigan. I was teaching several courses, and the semester was going well. A colleague and I planned a spring break visit to an attraction about an hour and a half from our town. We started hearing about this virus with a funny name, SARS-CoV-2 (later called COVID-19), and the potential for restrictions to prevent the spreading of what was unknown at that time. My colleague and I decided that we would take our trip anyway. Since we were both health professionals, we were accustomed to taking precautions to minimize the risk of infection. We reasoned we would do what we had in the past and would be okay. As it turned out, we were correct. We had a nice trip, enjoying the northern Michigan scenery and the early spring weather. To my surprise, that trip to northern Michigan was the last trip that I took for a while. Upon my return, I learned that my university would not return to in-person courses for the remainder of spring 2020. This continued through the summer of 2021 and into the next academic year. A limited roster of in-person courses were scheduled in the spring of 2021. It was not until the 2021–22 academic year that most traditional universities resumed in-person courses—my

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university included. These changes disrupted the face I embraced as a university professor and traveler in the world. My personal faces of mother, daughter, sister, aunt, niece, cousin, friend, and neighbor were also disrupted. There would be no visit to my parents in Mississippi for Easter; my best friend’s planned visit later in March 2020 would not happen; a “sister-friends” trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, would be put on hold; and my routine jaunts would cease. No visits to Detroit to check in with relatives, no visits with my son or my aunt in Kentucky. All travel would end for the next two years. Travel was a mainstay of how I managed stress and stayed connected with family, friends, and colleagues. I would have to learn how to connect and recharge in other ways. That other way of connecting and recharging proved to be Zoom and other platforms for virtual interaction. Several of my personal and professional groups developed regular Zoom meetings to be in contact. Some were virtual happy hours; others were check-ins to see how everyone was doing. All university-related responsibilities found a virtual space, whether it was a regular meeting, ad-hoc committee meetings, or other activities. After a while, these virtual spaces achieved normal status and felt more comfortable and navigable. There was also lots of telephone contact, along with some good old-fashioned note cards and letter writing. Maintaining the faces belonging to me as a Black woman, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, niece, cousin, friend, and neighbor turned out to be much less challenging than the faces of me as a colleague, employee, leader, citizen, human, traveler, and survivor. Naturally, with courses entirely virtual, there was a learning curve for students, some of whom were not accustomed to online courses. There was also a learning curve for many professors, me included—the adjustments to my professor’s face would have to be reconciled in this new landscape. Fortunately, online teaching was not entirely foreign to me since my programs routinely delivered content in virtual and online formats. Thus, adapting my in-person courses to virtual formats was manageable. There were other challenges, however, such as spotty broadband connections, unreliable Wi-Fi, device malfunctions, system crashes, students who did not have devices that could accommodate sustained use, and students who thought they could skip synchronous class meetings and still do well in their courses. After an adjustment period, those challenges were mostly addressed, and most everyone adjusted to this new way of doing things.

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This is where the intersection of my various faces was a lifeline. The better I mastered the technology and methods for interacting in the virtual environment, the better I was at doing so in all aspects of my life. Through the adaptations needed to navigate COVID, I became more resilient, an enlightened survivor who took the helm in the face of the challenges rather than denying reality. Through those faces—Black woman, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, niece, cousin, friend, neighbor, colleague, employee, leader, human, and survivor—I have gained a perspective of acceptance and responsibility. While some people think the COVID virus can be willed away by pretending that the pandemic is over, I know it is not over and will never be over. I have accepted the reality that COVID is here to stay and that I must take responsibility in my communities that I have a role as a human and a survivor. As a human, I am responsible for taking care not to put others at risk. So, I am vaccinated and boosted. As a survivor, I realize that I cannot forget the lessons from high school biology in regard to how viruses replicate, survive and spread. Viruses need human hosts to survive. Once inside our bodies, viruses replicate themselves. One of the realities of cell replication is that copying errors occur; scientists call these errors mutations. When the virus has accumulated enough mutations, it is then referred to as a variant. Studies have indicated that variants will continue to emerge from the SARS-CoV-2 virus (Papanikolaou et al., 2022), requiring additional vaccines at certain intervals. This is true of other viruses, such as the flu. The fact that so many people choose to deny this reality is incomprehensible to me— especially to my human and survivor faces. How is it that suddenly, a large segment of the population who have lived with vaccines their entire lives and experienced limited harm, are now refusing to take a safe and effective vaccine? This makes no sense. It feels surreal—like logic and reason have simply vanished. Each of us has a duty to take personal responsibility for our own safety AND that of our communities. To my neighbor and citizen faces, this means that everyone who is eligible should be vaccinated and boosted. This means taking mitigation measures in environments with high transmission potential. What is ongoing and will affect everyone is the continuing struggle to contain and reduce negative health outcomes from COVID, both in the United States and around the world. Getting populations to accept this reality is an ongoing part of our lives  as healthcare and public health professionals. Choosing not to be informed or refusing to take on the

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responsibilities of being a citizen means that, over time, fewer common beliefs, goals, and values bind the populous. This  result contributes to  continued stress  within American society as we have come to know it. As evidenced by two-thirds of respondents to a Pew Research Center survey believe that the lack of trust in government messaging makes it harder to solve problems being faced in the United States (Pew Research center, 2019). It seems that many have come to believe they must protect their tribe, rather than seek consensus with other groups for the good of the whole. We have individual civic responsibility. One of the most important responsibilities is that of citizen—PERIOD, FULL-STOP. Reduced trust in governmental institutions, along with the pronounced political divide over issues related to the pandemic, have led to the erosion of the formerly settled agreement of what “public welfare” means. Debates over the limits of public health and governmental authority to mandate certain mitigation efforts verses the perceived unlimited rights of individuals to decide for themselves have spilled over into the realm of bitter distrust. The notion of shared individual responsibility by respecting and caring for others in our community has been dismissed. This presented further challenges my faces of citizen, human, and survivor. This backdrop is the lens through which I have navigated COVID. Added to this mix is the triple social reckonings of Black Lives Matter, the Me-Too Movement, and the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others. The milestones in this march backward are troubling in the speed and doggedness of the retreat as I try to reconcile my faces and place as a Black woman, leader, citizen, human, and survivor. April and May 2020 brought assaults on the Michigan Statehouse (Censky, 2020), which proved to be a dress rehearsal for the January 6, 2021, attempted coup of the United States Capitol (Duignan, 2021). Both events were surreal in their incongruency with the stated, but clearly aspirational, ideals of majority rule, democracy, and the notion of “all men are created equal.” Armed militants, anarchists, insurrectionists, and traitors blatantly opposed the rule of law with limited and, in some instances, no intervention by law enforcement. Contrast this reality against the often violent and military-style reaction of law enforcement to peaceful, unarmed Black Lives Matter protesters in the summer of 2020. This juxtaposition plays on a loop in my mind. It resounds most loudly to my faces as a Black woman, human, and citizen. Continually seeing one set of lax enforcement and rules for one group verses a quite separate set of harsh

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enforcement and brutality for another (Greenberg & Kim, 2021) leaves me at a minimum concerned and in the extreme without hope.  The ugly truth is that there is an unacknowledged reality in the United States, one that grew more pronounced during the  COVID pandemic. This truth lies in the millions of people who feel left behind by current state of society. Individuals with that mindset have demonstrated a limited ability to cope with or accept this new societal  landscape; instead, they look for someone to blame. This describes a wide swath of conservative, predominately white, people who perceive that their privileged place in American society is slipping from their grasp. A vocal segment of conservative whites uses these feelings of being left behind to sow distrust and dissent, spread lies, and erode the very foundations of this nation for their financial, personal, and political benefit. Sarah Kendzior (2018), in the introduction of her book, The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America, stated: It is easy, when people feel frightened and abandoned, for a demagogue to exploit those feelings of despair for political gain. It is easy for that demagogue to translate fear into fanaticism, to shift extremism to the mainstream and market it under the guise of populism. By the time buyer’s remorse hits, a new and more brutal political culture has arisen. A gaslit nation becomes engulfed in flames. (p. 2)

Ms, Kendzior’s  predictions about this “Forgotten America” were eerily accurate. Seeing her predictions play out in real time challenged my long-­ held belief that the majority of Americans, regardless of their political views, were decent and good. Translation: Although everyone has biases and preconceptions, at our core my hope was that Americans would treat each other (even those with opposing opinions) with respect. This has proven to be an erroneous notion, which now feels incredibly naïve. Reflection on my professor face at a predominantly white serving university, I often wonder if the students that I teach are open to gaining an appreciation for how diverse and multi-faceted the nation and world have become. I question whether some of them can develop tolerance for those who look, think, and believe differently from themselves. As future healthcare leaders, it is important that health professions students gain a broad perspective on who is served by their organizations, recognize and accept their responsibility to serve all people in those communities. This obligation exists for every student who enters the health professions, regardless

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of their background. Would students who have not embraced this reponsibilty be able to provide the best care possible to each patient encountered without unfair judgement?  For students  who had never encountered a teacher of color, many are  unprepared for receiving critical feedback from  a Black woman. My routine critique of student submissions was received by some as “rude.” Comments intended to provoke deeper thought on subject matter resulted in resistive, and sometimes challenging, reactions. My learning, in this regard, included not taking these occurrences personally and continuing to offer measured, yet helpful, feedback. This is something that existed before COVID and will always exist as an ongoing challenge to my face as a university professor. These attitudes were alarming in and of themselves but bore particular concern for me as we were poised to return to in-person learning. Would my students adhere to the rules? Would they challenge me when I enforced the rules? Would the classroom environment be compromised? As it turned out, when we returned to in-person classes, much remained unchanged from the pre-pandemic situation. My professor face saw many of the same ongoing issues. Just like pre-pandemic, I still had to get students to come to class, pay attention, read directions, and perform other tasks associated with getting a group of disparate people to follow a single path. I am grateful for these routine problems because they are small enough in scale that they can be comprehended and addressed. Since entering this different phase of the pandemic, I have moved from Michigan to Indiana and taken a position at another university. Many pandemic-related issues continue to persist. I view these annoyances as just that—annoyances. They are not unlike the myriad inconveniences everyone deals with regularly. In our human faces we navigate these annoyances daily. Why are there never enough cashiers at the grocery store? Why don’t slow drivers stay in the right lane? Do I really need a hundred differently formatted passwords or two-factor authentication? How many commercials can they pack into one television program? How we navigate these annoyances, the world around us, and our places in it will continue to evolve. This includes how we deal with COVID. What has been revealed about the United States and its multi-faceted people, however, is much more difficult to deal with. While there is a vaccine for COVID available for those willing to take it, there is no vaccine for bigotry, willful ignorance, oppression, disenfranchisement, lying, or hate. As Kendzior (2018) so clearly pointed out, once these evils have

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been unleashed and there is a reset to a harsher, more brutal, and exclusionary environment, there may be no way to stop the inferno from erasing the idea that all people in this country deserve the rights, responsibilities, and privileges associated with a pluralistic and democratic society. Those ideals are what the United States Constitution aspires to attain. These ideals remain in the forefront for the faces I continue to wear in the pursuit of mindfulness, understanding, tolerance, acceptance, gratitude, and hope. In my combined faces, it is my ongoing goal and responsibility to do my part to move closer to realizing a “more perfect union” where no one is left behind and everyone is free to wear their best faces.

References Censky, A. (2020). Heavily armed protesters gather again at Michigan capitol to decry stay-at-home order. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2020/05/14/855918852/ heavily-­a rmed-­p rotesters-­g ather-­a gain-­a t-­m ichigans-­c apitol-­d enouncing-­ home-­order Duignan, B. (2021). United States Capitol attack of 2021. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/United-­States-­Capitol-­attack-­of-­2021 Greenberg, J., & Kim, N.  Y. (2021). Black Lives Matter protests and Capitol assault: Comparing the police response. PolitiFact. https://www.politifact.com/ article/2021/jan/08/black-­lives-­matter-­protests-­and-­capitol-­assault-­co/ Heltzel, G., & Laurin, K. (2020). Polarization in America: Two possible futures. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 34, 179–184. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2020.03.008 Kendzior, S. (2018). The view from flyover country: Dispatches from the forgotten America. Flatiron Books. Papanikolaou, V., Chrysovergis, A., Ragos, V., Tsiambas, E., Katsinis, S., Manoli, A., Papouliakos, S., Roukas, D., Mastronikolis, S., Peschos, D., Batistatou, A., Kyrodimos, E., & Mastronikolis, N. (2022). From delta to Omicron: S1-RBD/ S2 mutation/deletion equilibrium in SARS-CoV-2 defined variants. Gene, 814, 146134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gene.2021.146134 Pew Research Center. (2019). Trust and distrust in America. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/07/22/how-­americans-­see-­problems-­of-­trust/

Giving Up Is Never an Option: Personal and Professional Development During COVID-19 Rochelle Felix

Two years ago, the world stopped for a brief minute, and we all got the scare of a lifetime. When it first began, nobody thought the virus would escalate and destroy so many lives. But, in the blink of an eye, lives were lost, homes were destroyed, and the world as we knew it was gone. Personally, I got both ends of the stick in this pandemic. COVID-19 brought me tremendous pain yet brought me lots of opportunities. With every high came a low and with every tear drop came a smile. The stressors associated with the pandemic were innumerable, including fear of becoming ill and dying, worries about infecting others, the grief associated with the loss of loved ones, social isolation from family and friends, and the loss of jobs, businesses, and income (Kalin, 2021). COVID-19 taught me the value of loving myself and appreciating others and opportunities. I got to “See Me!”, a woman of color, an immigrant, accomplishing so much while

R. Felix (*) Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_14

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facing many challenges along the way and a chance to view life differently. During the heavy wave of the pandemic, I lost someone who was no longer part of my life physically at the time, but very close to my heart. At the age of thirty-three, my ex-boyfriend died from COVID-19. For many reasons, people of color are disproportionately affected by COVID-19. The news of my ex dying from COVID-19 came as a huge shock for me. It was hard to believe someone so young who loved life and worked hard was gone. He worked at a hotel in Manhattan and lived in Brooklyn. During that time, New York was in bad shape with the virus. I constantly thought about him because I knew him well enough to know not even a pandemic would stop him from “living” like he called it. We were not on speaking terms, so I never reached out to him. Today, I must live with that regret. My calling may not have made a difference, but at least I would have felt better knowing I tried. On April 14, 2020, while attending one of my last classes for the semester, I got a text message from a mutual friend of ours which read, “Shelly, do you know Josiah is in critical condition at the hospital? He got COVID.” At that moment I went numb. Maybe I am hallucinating, I thought. I tried to snap out of it but could not. I forgot I was in class and began making calls to his family members. Finally, I got through to his nephew and this was when it all became real. From what I was told, Josiah had turned off his phone, refusing to speak with anyone. He was supposed to be discharged the Sunday prior, but his condition had gotten worse, and he never got to leave. I called the hospital so many times, but the phone kept ringing with no response. The last time I tried calling, I got a nurse who told me to consult his sister about his condition. At that point there was nothing left to do but wait until I heard from someone. At approximately 8:45pm that night, I got a call from the same mutual friend. I was too afraid to answer so I sent the call to voicemail. After a few minutes I sent her a message, and her response was shocking: “He is gone …” At that moment I did not know what to do. There was no way Josiah could have died just like that. I called his nephew hoping to hear this was all a lie, but he confirmed my biggest fear. This was still not enough for me. I needed someone to tell me it was not true. So, I called his sister and from the sound of her voice and her cries, a piece of my heart died. Josiah was gone, and this was the end. My heart could not stop hurting. I felt guilty and broken. I kept wishing I could turn back time and warn him. For days, I was not able to visit any of my social media sites

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because my timeline was flooded with pictures of him. I was in a very dark place. I kept waking up in the middle of the night crying, holding my head, and speaking to him. This could not be true … I started reaching out to his sister because she was one of the people who understood what Josiah and I had. When she realized I was still in denial and shock, she sent me a picture of his lifeless body lying in the coffin before he was cremated since there was no proper service for him due to COVID. This was when I finally started believing he was really gone. At times, I still find myself speaking to him, hoping my phone will ring and he will be on the other end, but I am still waiting. I never thought this would be the last of us. In July of 2020, I graduated with a bachelor’s degree. Due to the pandemic, we had a virtual graduation. Graduating was bittersweet. I was not able to walk for my graduation and my family was not able to see me walk across the stage either. When I met Josiah, I was just beginning my undergraduate journey. The year I lost Josiah to COVID was the same year my undergraduate journey ended. So, so strange! I know he looks down on me with proud eyes and a bright smile, but I could not help but wish he were still here. He would proudly cheer me on like he always did. Despite how difficult it was for me, I was still proud of myself. It was a well-­ deserved degree. A few months after, I got a call for a part-time job as a University Assistant at my alma mater. I was so excited about this position because I had just graduated from the same university and was getting ready to submit my application for graduate school there as well. By August of the same year, I was accepted into the master’s program majoring in Public Health at my alma mater. So, I was an alum of this university, got a job at the university, and was headed back to the same university as a student again. Talk about full circle! I was so happy and proud of myself. I had to keep pushing because I knew Josiah would have wanted me to. So, by the fall of 2020, I was working and going to school. I loved it! In my new position, I got to advocate on students’ behalf to help make their college experiences less stressful. The job had its challenges, but at the end of the day nothing good in life comes easy. My students needed me, and I needed them. They were learning from me, and I was also learning from them. For a minute there, things calmed down on my end and it felt so good! I was finally going days without blaming myself for Josiah’s death. But that did not mean he was far from my thoughts. I was finally starting to relax. Closer to the end of the year by November, I lost another friend to

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COVID. For eleven years she had battled kidney failure and was patiently waiting for a transplant. She got sick with COVID and died. All the pain and turmoil came rushing back. Sleepless nights reoccurred. It hurt more knowing my friend left her only daughter in this world without a mom. Individuals, families, and communities experience feelings of hopelessness, despair, grief, bereavement, and a profound loss of purpose because of pandemics (Usher et al., 2020). At that point, my mental health was in shambles. My depression started consuming me and I needed to seek help. I went back to my therapist and gradually started getting out of the dark hole I resided in. I did not just find help for myself but for my mom and my family too. My mom is my motivation and I have always tried to make her proud. She is relying on me to be the strong woman she birthed and raised. As 2020 ended, I reflected on my life, the challenges I faced and my aspirations. COVID was here to stay, and I had to find a way to deal with it. I am constantly reminded of the losses I had because of COVID, and I had to find a way to deal with it and move on. Both my friends would want me to be happy. Not too long after, I met with my school advisor and in getting to know each other, I happened to mention my love for writing. She was so excited to hear that and immediately invited me to co-author an article she was working on with a few other students. The title of the article was “Changing the Narrative: Addressing Structural Barriers in Racial and Ethnic Inequities in COVID-19 Vaccination.” I was so excited about this interesting experience. This was my call to begin a writing journey, to change the lives of others through a small piece of my writing, and a chance to help me write off a wrong. We were all so excited about this project. Though writing this article stirred up lots of feelings and produced lots of challenges, I knew I had to see it through. In the summer of 2021, I decided it was time to get myself a car. It was an incredibly stressful experience, but I made it. I bought my first car, a Honda Civic. With all the pressure and stress, I went through, I got diagnosed with Bell’s palsy a few days later. I eventually made a hundred percent recovery, but not too long after, I found out there was swelling in the optic nerve of my eyes. When it rained, it poured! Despite all these health issues I kept pushing. I used the article I was working on to distract me from thinking about my health because it was now the one positive constant in my life. I owed it to myself to get better and do better. In September, the article was accepted. I was immensely proud of myself and my hard work. We endured and, in the end, we had momentous results. I

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am now a published author in an international journal about environmental research and public health! When I say with every up there was a down, I meant it. Things started becoming stringent for me financially. I was the main provider at home and what I was currently earning was not enough to make ends meet. The only way I could have survived would have been to find a full-time job. Working part-time at the university was not cutting it anymore. Although leaving was a very tough decision for me to make, I began my search for a new job and out of nowhere a miracle happened. In November, I got an email from the health department where I interned, advertising a new job opening, and at that moment, I knew this was my job. I applied for the position and soon after I got an interview. For months there was silence. But, one day while sitting at my desk at work, I got an email offering me a full-time position for a community health worker position solely dealing with the COVID-19 vaccine. This job was not only an opportunity for me to be in a better place financially, but it was also another way for me to show awareness of COVID-19 and to make a difference in the lives of others. Most people, especially people of color, are hesitant toward getting vaccinated for various reasons, including mistrust, combatting misinformation, and lack of access to COVID-19 vaccines (Dada et al., 2022). When I got the news that I had been offered the full-time job, I began sobbing, forgetting I was at work. I was so happy for myself. I really needed the job, and it was in my career of choice. Since my boss knew I was searching for a full-time job, I went to her with my news. She gave me her blessing despite my departure being difficult. There were no full-time positions available at the university, so I had no choice. I graciously accepted the job, and I began my new position in January of the coming year. Basically, my entire life revolves around COVID-19, good and bad. I have always been one to work hard for everything. I was never fortunate to have things handed to me. When the pandemic came about, things only became more strenuous. I have always heard that when things come easy, rethink them, and try again. So, when all my hardship and heartbreak came with the pandemic, I endured. COVID-19 made me stronger. I also learned to appreciate my life and be grateful for the chances I have been given. COVID-19 gave me a chance to tell my story, a chance to keep living, a chance to continue to make a difference, and a chance to grow as a professional. I will continue fighting the good fight. COVID-19 may have taken lives from me, but COVID-19 also gave me life.

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References Dada, D., Djiometio, J. N., McFadden, S. M., Demeke, J., Vlahov, D., Wilton, L., Wang, M., & Nelson, L. E. (2022, January 1). Strategies that promote equity in COVID-19 vaccine uptake for black communities: A review. Journal of Urban Health, 99(1), 15–27. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-­021-­00594-­3 Kalin, N.  H. (2021). COVID-19 and stress-related disorders. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 178(6), 471–474. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi. ajp.2021.21040371 Usher, K., Durkin, J., & Bhullar, N. (2020). The COVID-19 pandemic and mental health impacts. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 29(3), 315–318. https://doi.org/10.1111/inm.12726

Redefining Resilience and Hope: La Lucha Continúa! Beatriz Suro

Months before the pandemic began, I was a fourth-year doctoral student in Counseling Psychology, balancing different roles and responsibilities. I was finishing the last course of my degree, completing my clinical work at a Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center (commuting an hour and a half away from home), writing my dissertation proposal, and working as a clinical supervisor at a substance abuse clinic. One day, I received news that my advisor was leaving for another university. Receiving this news when I had just shared with my advisor my dissertation topic was heartbreaking. I felt at a loss and left with many questions about what would happen to me and my future. I handled this situation by talking to my advisor about my next steps, wondering: Who would be my advisor now? How can we work together on my dissertation while you are away in another state? I reached out to others including my professors, friends, family, and partner, all of whom gave me the strength I needed to continue doing the work I was

B. Suro (*) Counseling Psychology, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_15

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doing. Throughout the loss, I knew I was not alone, and I was not going to give up now. With time, I started a new advisee-advisor relationship with a new faculty member while continuing to work long distance with my former advisor. Shortly after this, I also received more sad news that one of my mentors was leaving the university. This news caused me a lot of anger and sadness and, once again, feelings of doubt. How am I going to move forward without my former advisor and mentor? During graduate school, I had come to realize that my support system meant everything to me, and I was devastated that two of my role models would no longer be physically present. What helped me get through these challenging times was thinking about how strong these relationships were and trusting that no matter the distance, they would both support me and help me navigate the challenging road of graduate school. As I was mourning the loss of my mentor and former advisor, I often thought to myself, How am I going to move forward in the doctoral program without them? It was tough to work with my former and current advisors, given that they had two different working styles and that one of them was in a different time zone. As I was working vigorously on my dissertation proposal, the fall semester of 2019 began, and I started working as a clinical supervisor to four master’s level students in the counseling and human services program at an outpatient substance abuse clinic. My plans for that academic year were to propose my dissertation early in the fall semester of 2020 and apply to my pre-doctoral psychology internship. The COVID-19 pandemic changed my whole life.

Spring of 2020 At the beginning of the pandemic, I remember feeling scared, confused, and in shock. Suddenly everything changed. My last doctoral class was offered virtually, and all my meetings were through Zoom. It was very difficult for me to focus. I was not motivated to study for my class and, on top of that, work on my dissertation. I was tired, but at the same time, I had to go to work and support four supervisees during their master’s internship. Together with the guidance of my clinical supervisor, I supported and trained these four supervisees in transitioning to telehealth. There were many transitions and uncertainties all around me. I had to quickly adapt to the situation and take it one day at a time.

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Within two weeks, the substance abuse clinic closed its doors, and the VA informed me that I could no longer come back. This happened with no warning. I left one day without ever knowing that that day would be my last day there. All my work, all the clients—I was never able to say goodbye and we never had closure. This caused me immense pain, hurt, and sadness. I had been working there for almost a year by then and had built strong and meaningful therapeutic relationships with clients, and in one day, that was all gone. Moving forward, I was only able to contact clients at the VA via the phone and with my supervisor through Zoom. From one day to the next, all the relationships I had with my trainees, my clients, my advisor, my supervisors, and my classmates changed to virtual relationships. I found myself doing all my clinical, class, and dissertation work in my kitchen. My living space was no longer a place I went to unwind and rest. My home became my workspace. The summer began with no sunshine in sight.

Fall of 2020 As all this happened, I encountered another challenge in my career path. I was unable to propose my dissertation on time and therefore was unable to apply for my health psychology internship. When I realized I was going to be held back, I was devastated. All that work I put in. All the long hours of writing my dissertation. All the stress, the tears. All for nothing. Not only that, but I had spent hours preparing a list of potential clinical sites where I wanted to apply for an internship. All that time I had put into reading and deciding where I wanted to apply vanished. Up until that day, I thought I had experienced challenging situations, but this one made me ponder and reflect on my purpose, who I am, and who I wanted to become. In the face of so much adversity, I turned to my inner circle, my family, and my partner. At first, I thought, That’s it; I’m done. As days went by, though, my anger fueled my passion for the work I was doing: Nobody and nothing will stop me from becoming who I want to be, a counseling psychologist. These experiences were not going to deter me from my goal of completing a doctoral degree. I took a deep breath, made hard decisions, and informed my advisor that I was going to start a new dissertation. I was going to succeed this time. With my advisor’s support, I started this new journey in my graduate studies.

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Coping and Resilience Throughout the pandemic, everything drastically changed from one day to the next. There was uncertainty about how long we were going to be living this, from having no separation between my work and home to being far away from family, and being worried about their safety and wellbeing. I was tired, sad, angry, and felt alone. Trying to cope with all the challenges and uncertainties, I started going on walks. Going on walks became my time, when I listened to music or talked to my parents. After many walks and buying a new pair of shoes, I decided to start running. I was tired of walking and needed more. Running felt exhilarating, and even though I was exhausted by the end, I felt happy and accomplished. I started with three miles. I had never run before; I never liked it. All my life, I have always been a part of sports, but I always said that I didn’t like running. When I told my mom (who used to be a marathon runner) that I had started to run, she was very excited for me and started teaching me the ropes. While I ran, I often thought about my mom. I thought about how strong she was and how she trained for marathons while raising three kids by herself. Those thoughts kept me motivated and made me feel like I could run, too. I am strong too! Running helped me be one with myself, love myself, accept myself, and, most importantly, find peace in the chaos during the pandemic. Nothing around me changed—everything remained virtual, but running gave me an outlet to release my feelings and thoughts. Every day, I would tell myself I had to get work done and take time for myself. I started finding new ways to take care of myself, such as running, listening to records, reading a funny book, journaling, and taking baths. These new rituals allowed me to have balance. Even though I was practicing self-care more often, challenges were ever-present. One day, my advisor told me that he lost the research funding that I was going to receive for the spring semester. I was shocked and angry. How was I going to find remote work during this time as a graduate student? Luckily, I found a job ad that was looking for a Spanish-speaking student to conduct semi-­ structured interviews with the Lehigh Valley community for a research study. This was the perfect opportunity for me as a native Spanish speaker, a fluent English speaker, and for my experience with qualitative research. I was also interested in this opportunity because the purpose of the study was to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted communities of

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color in the Lehigh Valley area, and I felt a strong desire to be part of a team that would capture how resilient the Lehigh Valley community was. I was offered the research assistant position and became part of a multidisciplinary team at the university. At first, I was intimidated by the meetings since I was surrounded by many different professors across disciplines and expertise. Slowly, though, I felt more comfortable and valued. As I heard people’s stories during the interviews, I felt humbled and connected with members of the community. It was powerful that people trusted me with their stories about their experiences during the pandemic. Researching the global pandemic as it happened gave me perspective and confirmed one of my research interests in health psychology. More importantly, this research assistant position allowed me to meet a professor who would become a role model and mentor. To this day, I feel supported and guided by her. Additionally, seeing another woman of color in a position of leadership and power in academia gave me hope that one day I could be a professor at a prestigious university too. Throughout the pandemic, I learned how resilient I am and how all the hardships I had endured made me stronger and helped me value myself and my aspirations. Not only was my own personal and professional life impacted by the pandemic, but so were the events happening in society, from Breonna Taylor’s and George Floyd’s death to the Black Lives Matter protests happening all over the country. I needed to be with other people and let my voice be heard by going to a protest. Even though we were in the middle of a pandemic, I strongly believed in the power of protesting and expressing myself in the company of others. Even though there was a curfew in place and helicopters everywhere, I felt safe and, at the same time, had tears going down my face. I was releasing, I was yelling, and I felt connected to others, which I had not felt in a long time. Before, I was isolated in my apartment, working, adapting to all the changes, and not interacting with others. Going to the protest felt good, but at the same time, I knew there was much more we had to do, as a society, to create change. But in that brief moment, I was part of a movement that would slowly enact change, which gave me hope—hope that people can come together even during a pandemic, that we are all going to be alright, and that we can overcome any injustice. As I was fighting for racial injustices, I was aware of the impact that these injustices, and the presidential election, would have on me. As a young bisexual Latina, I feared for the future and hoped for change. Talking with others about what was happening made me feel safe,

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connected, and part of a community. I had weekly Zoom sessions with my family every Sunday, which made me feel grounded. By meeting with my family, our family grew closer and closer even though we were in three different time zones. We made it work. There were days when I was tired of staring at a computer screen all day, but I always thought about how happy it would make me feel to see my family. These were the moments I cherished during the pandemic, which brought my family closer and motivated me to continue pursuing my doctoral degree. I was not alone, and my family was right there with me. With love and support, I felt strong and believed that I could do this. Overall, the two years of the COVID-19 pandemic were among the hardest years of my life. The pandemic made me reconsider what resilience means, what self-care means, and what is important to me. The pandemic taught me to be patient, to fight in the face of adversity, to believe in myself, and to be grateful. The pandemic also helped me grow closer to my family and taught me that to overcome adversity, one needs the help and support of others. I am thankful for everyone who supported me, including my family, my partner, advisor, and mentors. Without them, I wouldn’t be where I am today. After two years of uncertainties, I was able to achieve many accomplishments. I have completed three half-marathons, have successfully defended my dissertation, and was matched for an internship. I am about to start my pre-doctoral internship at the New Jersey VA Medical Center, and I am excited to see where my path takes me. I will continue to work hard, help others along the way, and become a caring, honest, and social justice-­ oriented counseling psychologist.

Finding My Way Through a Never-Ending Storm: Leading, Mothering, and Coping with Loss Sienna S. Abdulahad

Leading Being a Black woman in higher education means embodying a series of contradictions. From the start of our careers in this field, many of us set out to prove we can thrive in an environment designed primarily for the success of White men. This is especially true at predominantly White institutions (PWIs). We have been socialized to meet deadlines in a fast-paced work environment with the goal of advancement through practice, research, and publication, all of which benefits our communities and campuses before ourselves. We often work beyond our scope to ensure everyone has what they need to thrive, sacrificing the time and energy necessary to care for ourselves. Additionally, we endure systemic oppression in the

In memory of Amber R. Pratcher, Jonave L. Snead, and Gabriel R. Serna.

S. S. Abdulahad (*) Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_16

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form of bias and discrimination at the intersection of race, gender, class, and the other identities we hold. In my experience, Black women who demonstrate a higher capacity for labor, both paid and unpaid, compared to their White counterparts, are susceptible to exploitation and poor health outcomes. I have lost dear friends and colleagues who did not live to see forty. I also know they had big hearts and prioritized everyone and everything before themselves and their own wellbeing. Given all that Black women endure working in higher education, I believe the very profession we have chosen could be causing us physical, emotional, and psychological harm. This is the first contradiction. Public health scholars have employed a weathering framework to explain the paradoxical nature of the experiences of Black women who encounter structural inequities at the intersection of race and gender (Geronimus et al., 2010). According to multiple studies, perceptions of racism are impacting our health outcomes. Much of the research on weathering lends itself to the concept of accelerated biological aging, meaning biologically, middle-aged Black women are older than their White counterparts by an average of 7.5 years. At the time of this narrative, I am thirty-seven years of age. I feel significantly older after living through a series of stressful events. I am an elder millennial who came of age around the devastation of the attacks on September 11, 2001, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I became a mother within a year of Hurricane Katrina and again after the Virginia Tech massacre. I completed my non-traditional undergraduate education during the great recession. Eventually, I would go on to endure the COVID-19 global pandemic and bear witness to the Black Lives Matter movement in response to the murders of Black people including Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless others. I know I am not alone in experiencing collective trauma. However, as a Black woman, I recognize the pressure we feel to act and address issues that affect our families and our communities. We are expected to save the world after each storm, live our best lives, embody Black girl magic, and carry out all our other duties as assigned. From the age of about sixteen, this environment has never been calm enough for me to truly relax or take a meaningful deep breath. I have simply learned to adapt and breathe as deeply as I can in the moments I have available. Since the start of the pandemic, researchers have asserted that Black women may be over-coping with increased stress in unhealthy ways due to carrying a high allostatic load. In other words, our bodies are

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experiencing wear and tear at a faster rate than our counterparts due to the impact of multiple stressors, including racism (Wakeel & Njoku, 2021). The very resilience required to navigate a global pandemic may have intensified the impact of weathering on Black women (Bryant et  al., 2022). Another possible contradiction that contributes to the weight many have been feeling. I was an early adopter when it came to rejecting the pre-pandemic version of “normal life.” Working on a college campus during the start of the pandemic, I knew we would be closing our office for an extended period time after rushing students off campus in less than ten days. In November 2019, I was aware of the possibility of a shut down after engaging with a few international students and learning of the impact of quarantine abroad. By January 2020, I adopted a mindset of cautiousness and started following global news coverage on the virus regularly. When the announcement came in March 2020, I had an idea of how long a lockdown could last and I started to prepare my team and work closely with my supervisor to ensure we were prepared for a long campus closure, despite everyone else’s expectation that the shutdown would last “a few weeks.” I called a meeting for our office to create a continuity of operations plan with the goals of protecting our team and supporting the most vulnerable students on campus. We collaborated with student organizations and the dean of students to establish a process for connecting students to resources ranging from travel funds to emergency housing for the remainder of the spring. Students faced economic, academic, social, and emotional challenges working in spaces that were not designed for distance learning. For those who remained in the city due to various constraints, we established an online group to offer consistent communication and resources. We worked tirelessly to maintain the same standard of care offered to our students on campus via the internet and mobile experiences. This required being accessible around the clock through the spring semester, without leaving my home. Life quickly became consumed with group texts, virtual meetings, and phone calls at all hours. It blurred the boundaries between work and home life. I was a recipient of the President’s Excellence Award at my institution as a result of my work during the campus closure. I received a small bonus for my contributions. As I look back on all that our office and division endured that spring, part of me feels proud of the resilience we demonstrated. Another part of me wishes that I had simply said “no” more often to conserve energy to cope with the never-ending storm of loss that awaited many of us. I will always wonder if I contributed to my

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own weathering by showing award-winning initiative when I probably should have been scaling back to preserve my health. This is yet another manifestation of those contradictory moments.

Mothering We value education in our household, so the idea of our children not attending school from March 2020 through the remainder of the school year was disappointing, to say the least. We managed to loosen the academic reigns and focus on skill building around the house to compensate for the lost time in the classroom without teachers. But I had to make a major shift and become more involved than I had ever been in the education of my children. Prior to the pandemic we were pretty engaged with our children’s teachers. During the pandemic, we knew they were susceptible to an achievement gap (Ladson-Billings, 2021). As parents we tried to support the move to remote learning and enrolled our children in a fully virtual school for the 2020–2021 school year. I felt like we had to keep up with test deadlines and exam schedules, provide culturally relevant supplemental materials, and support projects throughout the year well beyond what was necessary when the children were attending school in person. I became extremely stressed if they were underperforming, based on our expectations. I often blamed myself for not being more involved in helping them complete assignments and projects. In my mind, I was doing more for my students on campus to ensure their academic success than for my own children, despite being physically accessible at home. The guilt of working remotely while failing to be a fully present parent during the first half of the pandemic quarantine was emotionally stressful and extremely frustrating. It was a key contradiction as a Black mother to be other mothering when my children may have needed me more. We often read about imposter syndrome from a professional perspective, but feeling like you are missing the mark as a parent is how imposter syndrome was becoming salient for me. In her book, We Live for the We, Dani McClain (2019) wrote, “Black women know fear—how to live despite it and how to metabolize it for our children so they’re not consumed by it” (p.) It took me a year to metabolize the fear around my sons’ academic success in a productive way. I started to focus less on academic outcomes and more on autonomous learning, personal growth, and quality time. I began asking my teens about the lessons they learned from failure and how they would change their mindset to improve their own

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outcomes. I encouraged them to contact their instructors to learn about their academic status and how they could improve their grades. By the end of the academic year, our children matured as students and learned valuable lessons about independent learning and accountability. The following year they returned to school in person and did extremely well both academically and socially. They adopted a more balanced approach and sense of self-authorship over their academic experiences, while I learned how to metabolize fear in healthier ways.

Coping With Loss Prior to the pandemic I lost my grandfather. I had not experienced the death of a close family member in my adult life, so this was extremely challenging. I was fortunate to attend his funeral in person and emotionally support my family during that time. Since 2020, I have lost multiple family members and friends to various illnesses, including COVID-19. With each loss the grief compounded. What I experienced sparked my engagement in risky health behaviors. An example of this included an increase in smoking and consuming alcohol. I had gone from the occasional cigarette to about half a pack per day. I was also drinking more frequently after work hours and on weekends. This peaked in fall 2020 during the height of the shutdown. During that time, I lost my great-grandmother, and my father was in a coma due to a severe accident. It was at that point that I decided to take advantage of grief counseling through my employer. Fortunately, virtual sessions were available, and I was able to identify a health care provider who shared my identities over the course of a few weeks. After about five sessions, I discontinued the counseling due to scheduling and cost limitations. I will also admit I also did not want to address the issues of my family history while grieving for people who may have been the root of my own personal challenges. Contrary to the idea that stigma plays a key role in why Black people do not take advantage of therapy, lack of time, limited financial resources, and the fear of being retraumatized created specific barriers for me. Since about 5% of therapists in the United States are Black, scheduling with someone who shares my racial identity can be a major barrier. Alternatively, I was able to download an affordable, less intrusive app to work on my mental health. Eventually that app would be sold to a White-owned company, and I would discontinue my membership. By the end of 2021, I quit smoking cigarettes, exercised more regularly, and limited my alcohol

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consumption significantly. I am still grieving the loss of my loved ones, bearing witness to an increase in mass gun violence across the nation and fighting for bodily autonomy in a post-Roe society, but I have grounded myself and identified practices that allow me to center my wellbeing and remain grounded through grief.

Empowerment and Healing Throughout the pandemic there have been several changes that positively impacted my life. After realizing that weathering may be shortening my life, I made a conscious effort to reduce the number of contradictions I faced each day. I was determined to identify and advocate for the wins that established a healthier work-life balance once we returned to in-person work. A flex work policy was created on our campus as an employment incentive during the great resignation. As the director of my office, I started taking one day to work remotely each week. Everyone else on my team has two remote days per week. On my day, I get two hours for myself that would have been used to commute to work. I use that time to get additional sleep, journal, connect with my family, be home when my children get out of school, clean, do laundry, and recover from the chaos of the week. Reclaiming that time, energy, and money reduces my stress and gives me an opportunity to re-center my own health and wellbeing. Experiencing the pandemic while working in higher education has taught me a great deal about myself and given me information I can use to counter the impacts of weathering by centering my healing. Before 2020, I was focused on giving my career 125% daily. After enduring so many challenges before reaching the age of forty and coping with so much loss, I have since changed my outlook on work. My relationships with my partner and my children are paramount in my world now. I work to contribute to a quality of life that keeps us all safe, joyful, and well. I no longer need to carry the world on my shoulders at work to the point where I cannot carry myself out of bed in the morning. I have actively chosen for myself a healthier life. At one point, I was planning to pursue a terminal degree in education, and I no longer feel the need to accomplish that goal. I have left my role as a professional leading equity, diversity, and inclusion work to become a Co-Director for a Center for Social Innovation on campus. I do not have the desire to save the world from itself or serve as an institutional token of racialized or gendered representation. I just want to live comfortably, be healthy, live long enough to see my children thrive, and

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honor those I have lost with a life they would be proud of. I want a soft, carefree, long, and healthy life for myself. I want this for any Black woman in higher education who has had enough with putting her body on the line for various causes, without considering herself and her humanity. If weathering is connected to biological age, which essentially comes down to time, in the words of Maxine Waters, “I’m reclaiming my time” to pursue a joyful, well-lived, and free life.

References Bryant, C. M., Anderson, L. A., & Notice, M. R. (2022). Revisioning the concept of resilience: Its manifestation and impact on Black Americans. Contemporary Family Therapy, 44, 16–28. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-­021-­09621-­6 Geronimus, A. T., Hicken, M. T., Pearson, J. A., Seashols, S. J., Brown, K. L., & Dawson Cruz, T. (2010). Do US Black women experience stress-related accelerated biological aging? Human Nature, 21, 19–38. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s12110-­010-­9078-­0 Ladson-Billings, G. (2021, January 2). I’m here for the hard re-set: Post pandemic pedagogy to preserve our culture. Excellence in Education, 54(1), 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2020.1863883 McClain, D. (2019). We live for the we: The political power of Black motherhood. Hachette UK. Wakeel, F., & Njoku, A. (2021). Application of the weathering framework: Intersection of racism, stigma, and COVID-19 as a stressful life event among African Americans. Healthcare, 9(2), 145. https://www.mdpi.com/2227-­ 9032/9/2/145

PART III

Identifying Solutions and Best Practices: Strategies for Success

The Complications of COVID and Conduct Juhi Bhatt

I still recall my last day in the office in spring 2020. I went in on a Monday, during our university spring break, and had decided to take a few days off that week while the students were out of classes. I did not return to the office until August 2021. However, the issue of student conduct did not rest; rather, it shifted to address the adapting needs of the university. Historically, conduct policies have served as the way to address all student behaviors. Even with the shift of the Title IX regulations in 2020, many universities either wrote an addendum to address sexual violence matters that did not fall under Title IX policies, or these matters were addressed by already existing conduct policies. What was once seen as standard conduct matters, that is, alcohol use, marijuana use, and prohibited items, became things of the past. These matters, which I had become accustomed to addressing, were honestly matters which conduct professionals longed to return to, only because it

J. Bhatt (*) Fairleigh Dickinson University—Metropolitan Campus Dean of Students Office, Teaneck, NJ, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_17

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meant we had returned to a normal we understood and knew how to navigate. COVID-19 brought with it the need to address matters such as masking, social distancing, and quarantine/isolation violations. The code of conduct became, for many institutions, the umbrella policy under which these violations would fall for follow up. In the spring of 2020, institutions began to draft up social contracts or made addendums to the code of conduct in order to ensure compliance with COVID-19 policies on campus. For many, noncompliance ensured automatic removal from campus (Anderson, 2020). However, what also came with COVID-19 were the additional extenuating factors faced by staff and students. When the initial lockdown occurred in March 2020, college students specifically had to pack up and return to their homes; however, Lederer et al. (2021) mentioned that for some students, returning to their home environments caused more emotional and physical distress. Additionally, many students also found themselves without jobs, which had previously allowed not only for financial security but also for time away from home. This led to higher rates of housing insecurity (Lederer et al., 2021). The Office for Civil Rights (2021) highlighted at length the disparities faced by students of color due to the pandemic. These students faced higher impacts based on family members lost to COVID-19, a greater risk of contracting COVID-19, and an increased likelihood of working frontline positions while also possibly losing said positions at a higher rate. This also resulted in a heightened risk of homelessness and food insecurity. Moreover, this report went on to highlight the already dwindling enrollment due to the pandemic, which also affected students of color, specifically male students of color, more significantly. The Office for Civil Rights (2021) explained: In spring 2021, public colleges reported sharp declines in enrollment among Native American men (18.4%), Black men (14.3%), Latinx men (12.6%), White men (11.7%), Native American women (11.2%), White women (7.0%), Black women (6.9%) and Latinx women (5.1%). (p. 34)

Additionally, the disparities noted above faced by students of color due to the pandemic, lead to greater levels of food insecurity, which were oftentimes addressed by university offices and programs on campus. While many of these matters were addressed by students returning to campuses

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in the Fall of 2021, many were also threatened by the prospective removal of students from campus due to the violation of COVID-19 safety protocols. This, of course, began to disproportionately affect students of color. While student populations in general were faced with the same issues, students of color were also navigating other obstacles. Students of Asian and Pacific Islander descent were faced with issues related to discrimination while students of Black, Latinx, and Pacific Islander communities were also navigating issues with the quality of health care as well as less-­ than-­par working conditions (Lederer et al., 2021). The Office for Civil Rights (2021) wrote: More recently, a nationally representative survey of 2,251 individuals conducted in January 2021 found that Asian American respondents had ‘experienced the largest single year-over-year rise in severe online harassment in comparison to other groups’ surveyed, from 11% reporting incidents last year to 17% this year. (p. 17)

While these factors may seem unrelated to the student conduct process, they are inextricably intertwined, as these external, extenuating factors affect the ways in which students show up as well as the way in which they react to the situation at hand. For a student navigating illness of self or a family member, or the comments made by others due to their racial background due to the supposed origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, the failure to abide by the university’s social distancing protocols, one time, may not seem to be the most important matter at hand, or the sanctions for violations of the same may impact their lives in a multitude of ways. It then becomes, and has always been, the role of the conduct administrator to meet with the student alleged to have violated a policy to hear the narrative that underlies the behavior. Conduct administrators have always been tasked with listening to the three sides of the story: the student’s side, the university or victim’s side, and the truth, which lies in between. However, that narrative is more critical for the students of color who are disproportionately affected by extenuating factors, which oftentimes lead to their coming into the conduct officer’s office. Conduct offices were initially tasked with what was seen by many as a harsh and/or aggressive response to COVID-19 policy violations (Anderson, 2020). These policies began to shift as institutions received pushback from students, and as the federal and state guidelines began to change based on guidance from the CDC.  As vaccinations became

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available and the narrative began to shift regarding safety procedures for the pandemic, institutions began to revisit and revise their policies. However, at that point, many students had already been impacted by previous conduct policies, which resulted in separation from the institution, whether it be via a housing or from the university itself, and one can only wonder how many students of color were. The data for which populations were more severely affected by punitive conduct procedures due to necessary COVID-19 policies may become more widely available as more research is conducted. While we do not have that data, what we do know is the impact of perceived discrimination and/or bias based on race and/or ethnicity. Hussain and Jones (2021) reiterated via their study that “experiences of discrimination and bias contribute to a diminished sense of belonging to the college for students of color” (p.  67). Their findings indicated that this included “Latino, Black, and Asian students, highlighting that experiences of discrimination are similarly detrimental to the sense of belonging of students of various racially minoritized backgrounds …” (Hussain & Jones, 2021, p. 67). The BIPOC conduct officer is one that must remain mindful of their office’s perception by students of color on campus regarding the conduct process, particularly whether it is fair and equitable regardless of racial and ethnic background, as experienced narratives are shared among peers. However, the BIPOC professional also understands the need to balance and be mindful of the experiences of students of color, especially when assigning a more punitive sanction in order to ensure the student returns to the campus after the sanction is complete. It is for these reasons that it is necessary to advocate for more developmental, educational sanctions whenever possible in order to not separate the student from the institution. There are times when separation is necessary; however, all conduct officers aim to educate and move forward with the student remaining at the institution. Lancaster and Waryold (2008) stated that “the fundamental purpose of student conduct work is to promote growth and development in students while protecting the interests of the larger campus community” (p. 8). They go on to further mention that “in the student conduct process, students are empowered through counseling and/or helping skills to gain greater self-understanding, which in turn leads to accepting responsibility for their actions and changes in their behaviors” (p. 8). This is even more necessary when thinking of students of color during sanctioning. Indeed, BIPOC conduct officers have an additional framework from which they operate when adjudicating.

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Moreover, the BIPOC professional remains mindful of the fact that oftentimes, the narrative that surfaces during a conduct conversation is one based on additional factors related to race and ethnicity. Again, students of color have additional pieces within their narratives that may not be felt or experienced in the same capacity as white students. These narratives are often related to family, financial struggle, or hardship, and not only impact the student’s trajectory on campus but also impact the student greatly while going through the conduct process. Additionally, students of color who pause their studies, either by choice or due to other factors, are less likely to return to the collegiate setting to complete their studies (Office for Civil Rights, 2021). Any type of pause may cause issues with a student’s financial aid, or within their program of study due to course requirements and offerings, which may result in the student never returning to campus to complete their program of study. A conduct officer must remain mindful of this when a student of color goes through the conduct process. It does not mean that the student’s violation should go unnoticed but rather that the conduct officer is tasked with advocating for best practices for the profession as well as for the student. It is therefore critical to take in the narrative of the student in order to sanction in a way that does not create more hardship or burden for the student, if at all possible. As conduct officers responded to COVID-19 safety violations on their campuses, many universities also faced backlash for the strict policies in place. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) backtracked on the dismissal of an international student who had not followed the university’s mandatory COVID-19 testing policy after fellow students signed a petition on behalf of the student (Redden, 2021). UIUC is just one example of an institution that faced this type of scrutiny from its student population for the strict enforcement of the COVID-19 protocols. UIUC says to date it has dismissed 51 students for periods typically ranging from one to four semesters for covid-related violation, with grounds for dismissal including “leaving isolation or quarantine without permission,” “hosting large, unsafe gatherings,” “tampering with covid systems in order to bypass requirements” and “egregious testing noncompliance.” Repeat violations of less serious offenses also can be grounds for dismissal. (Redden, 2021, n.p.)

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Again, UIUC was just one of most institutions doing the same around the country during the first year back on campus after the spring 2020 shutdown. Indeed, Lehigh University “initiated disciplinary procedures for students accused of hosting or attending parties in violation of university policies” (Redden, 2021). Institutions did not begin to provide a bit more leniency until guidance from their state and the federal government began to change in the 2021–2022 academic year. Dismissed is defined as a separation for a determined period from the institution. In the case of the 51 students dismissed at UIUC, in my experience as a conduct officer, I’d assume that many may not have returned to the institution after their separation. Many conduct officers operate from a philosophy of educational development via their processes rather than the standard punitive measures of fines or separation from the university. However, COVID-19 brought with it the more punitive measures of fines for failure to comply with protocols and/or separation from the university, even though these measures may oftentimes result in a student’s inability to remain at the institution due to financial hardship or the students never returning to the institution following a separation. Indeed, oftentimes students do not return to the institution following university suspension and/or dismissal. As conduct officers, our internal philosophy and training in our work promotes a philosophy grounded in student conduct processes coming from an educational mindset, as evidenced by the various trainings via the Association of Student Conduct Administration (ASCA), the national professional organization for student conduct administrators in higher education. As such, the professionals in question may feel a tug internally between what they know to be true in their work versus the mandates required for compliance. I have been doing this work for more than 10 years. I have unfortunately had to suspend students from the respective college or university at which I have worked. As such, at one of my institutions, a student who had recently been released from juvenile prison had enrolled at the institution. My first interaction with that student did not go well, as he was upset when I was unable to meet with him immediately after receiving an incident report involving him. He proceeded, during that first interaction, to speak at a loud volume to me, while I maintained I would meet with him after receiving all the information. The following day, when we met, he began the meeting by apologizing. He advised that in his experience no type of authority listened to him and made judgments based on his past. He and I developed a relationship based on that conversation. During that

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conversation, he told me that being at the institution was his last chance to leave the environment from which he came. He stated to me that if he returned home, without this structured day-to-day environment, he’d fall into old habits which he could not escape. Unfortunately, after the student was involved in a second incident, my hands were tied with guidance from senior administration, and he was suspended from the institution. Incidentally, he was a student of color. He never returned to the institution. I often wonder about where that young man is today. I wonder if he fell right back into the life which he was trying to move away from. I did my best to advocate for that student but was unable to do much. I was unable to use my voice in place of his. I shortly thereafter left the institution, as well for multiple reasons, but my inability to use my voice in the process was one of them. Indeed, as found in this author’s dissertation (Bhatt, 2017), if conduct officers were unable to vocalize their prerogative or concerns in their role, they were also more likely to look for positions where they felt they will be heard. Indeed, many in higher education are leaving the field due to burnout, stress, low morale, as well as inflexible work environments, but these were issues prior to the pandemic which have only been exacerbated (McClure, 2021; Schroeder, 2021). However, one must wonder what other factors could also be impacting those choosing to resign. Could it be the inability to vocalize concerns with reference to written policy and response to the ongoing pandemic? Ultimately, ongoing research is needed to better understand the implications of the decisions made during the ongoing pandemic with reference to students of color navigating the conduct process. What remains consistently true is that students of color are greatly impacted by the external factors mentioned above. It is the responsibility of the professional in front of them, especially those that are also of color, to ensure advocacy for these students to not stall or impact their academic journey greater than it already has been.

References Anderson, G. (2020). Stay apart or stay home. Inside Higher Ed. https://www. insidehighered.com/news/2020/07/15/student-­conduct-­codes-­and-­pledges-­ promise-­good-­covid-­19-­habits Bhatt, J. (2017). A narrative inquiry to understand the impact of voice on a student conduct administrator’s role and retention in that role at community colleges

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(Doctoral dissertation). https://repository.saintpeters.edu/concern/peacock_ scholarships/7m01bk69s?locale=en Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. (2021). Education in a pandemic: The disparate impacts of COVID-19 on America’s students. https:// www2.ed.gov/about/of fices/list/ocr/docs/20210608-­i mpacts-­o f-­ covid19.pdf Hussain, M., & Jones, J. M. (2021). Discrimination, diversity, and sense of belonging: Experiences of students of color. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 14(1), 63–71. https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000117 Lancaster, J. M., & Waryold, D. M. (2008). Student conduct practice: The complete guide for student affairs professionals. Stylus Publishing, LLC. Lederer, A. M., Hoban, M. T., Lipson, S. K., Zhou, S., & Eisenberg, D. (2021). More than inconvenienced: The unique needs of U.S. college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Health Education & Behavior, 48(1), 14–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198120969372 McClure, K.  R. (2021). Higher ed, we’ve got a morale problem—And a free t-shirt won’t fix it. Ed Surge. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-­09-­27-­ higher-­ed-­we-­ve-­got-­a-­morale-­problem-­and-­a-­free-­t-­shirt-­won-­t-­fix-­it Redden, E. (2021). COVID conduct. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/02/23/colleges-­w ield-­c odes-­c onduct-­e nforce-­ compliance-­covid-­policies Schroeder, R. (2021). Higher education’s role in the era of the great resignation. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-­learning/blogs/ online-­trending-­now/higher-­education’s-­role-­era-­great-­resignation

Teaching the Calculus of Coronavirus-19 Gelonia L. Dent

On March 2, 2020, the first confirmed coronavirus case was reported near my town, and that person was the source of the first 100 cases in our county within 10 days! I enjoy apocalyptic fiction, and this real-life scenario was eerily like the opening scene of Contagion (a 2011 film). Was life imitating art? I have read about historic plagues and felt uneased about the potential horrific outcomes should the virus become widespread in this country (and it did). However, I understand the dynamics of disease spread, so I found the reality of witnessing the evolution and spread of a virus fascinating. Then, on March 16, 2020, New  York State’s education system went under lockdown, days after the World Health Organization declared the spread of SARS-CoV-2, which causes the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), as a pandemic. As a result, nationally, education systems underwent a paradigm shift and transitioned to remote online teaching and learning. As the pandemic unfolded and information about the disease began to dominate the news, the sciences of epidemiology, biology, public policy, and statistics were center stage. The newly knighted science reporters in

G. L. Dent (*) Department of Mathematics, Medgar Evers College, CUNY, Brooklyn, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_18

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newsrooms across the country incorporated phrases such as flattening the curve, incubation period, and fatality rates. They displayed complex graphical data to explain the spread of the virus to the public. How well did the public understand these words and phrases or the graphs? More importantly, did students concurrently studying calculus recognize the derivative staring back at them in the daily news reports even though no reporter ever used the term derivative? Could this real-time natural (repudiated by some) phenomenon be used to encourage my students’ interest in my favorite subject? I decided to try. A continuous challenge of teaching mathematics is convincing students that the subject matters, which is counterintuitive given that math underpins all physical-, biological-, and technology-related fields. Project-­ based learning is an approach of constructivism theory that proposes education depends on action and students construct their understanding based on their experience (Dewey, 1916). A cadre of educational researchers agrees that project-based learning emphasizes student initiative when they are engaged in authentic real-world problem-solving (Jumaat et al., 2017). I designed the “Calculus in Practice: COVID-19” project-­ based learning experience to teach calculus concepts within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The main objective of this project was to apply calculus to model the spread of the disease in each state. The first calculus course’s primary concept is the derivative or rate of change of a quantity (e.g., velocity is the rate of change of an object’s position with time). Typically, students’ takeaway is that the derivative is computed using hard-and-fast rules or formulas applied to manipulate standard functions or equations. However, the derivative also describes complex systems such as disease spread, and formulating real-world phenomena mathematically is not trivial. The Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered (SIR) classical mathematical model is used to describe infectious disease spread. It is a system of first-order differential equations that give the rate of change in the number of susceptible, infectious, and recovered individuals within a finite population (see Table 1). For the project, I randomly assigned each student to one U.S. state to investigate the spread of the COVID-19 contagion by completing tasks in four skill areas: data collection, modeling and simulation, data interpretation, and reporting. Only official federal and state government sources were permitted to collect data and validate results. Additionally, students addressed questions about the impact of the virus on the 2022

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Table 1  The SIR model differential equations and the definition of the derivative from calculus SIR Model Equations

The Derivative

dS dI dR  aSI,  aSI  bI,  rI dt dt dt a, b, r are the contact, contagious, and daily recovery rates.

dQ Q  t n   Q  t n1   dt t n  t n1 Q is the quantity that changes over time, t; Q(t) is the value of Q at time t, n is the timestep, and d/dt is the differential operator.

Table 2  Calculus in Practice (CIP) project participation per class over four terms. Two numbers indicate different sections of the same course in the term

Class Size No. Completed

Spring-20

Fall-20

Spring-21

Fall-21

Total

21 25 18 25

19

19

21

80

16

16

19

69

U.S. presidential election, on the distribution of vaccines, or used social mathematics to interpret the impact of adopted social policies. The scaffolded task aimed to demonstrate how the scientific method works, and satisfactory results were guaranteed by completing all the charges. The learning outcomes and skill development were evaluated in four areas: (1) organizational skills and research methods, (2) critical thinking (able to assess the validity of assumptions), (3) reasoning (able to derive logical conclusions from these assumptions), and (4) technical writing. Student participation in the project over four semesters was 86%, and all students were graded on their performance. However, the grade does not imply they completed all the project tasks. The project participants per class by semester are given in Table 2. In instances where the number of completed projects is less than the class size, the difference is the number of students whose project was incomplete or withdrew from the course. To describe the learning outcomes, consider all classes as one combined population whose members are divided into four archetypal students: Mars, Pluto, Venus, and Earth. The following self-reflection or observed behaviors of the archetypes provide insight into their interest level in the project and their gained knowledge of calculus.

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Mars, the best performer, expressed that before doing this project, he did not know how viruses spread, how to do modeling, or how to write a technical report. However, completing all the tasks, particularly the modeling, made him feel like a mathematician. Conversely, Pluto exhibited frustration with efforts to complete the tasks and never realized that the model equations, for example, were a form of the derivative (remember this is the topic of the course). Venus performed well in the data collection and secondary data analysis. For instance, she could correlate the social policies implemented with the infection and death rate data for her state. But her lack of interest in the simulation task was due to a belief that since the statistical information was readily available from government sources, that task was futile. She was unwilling to learn how to code because of the perceived high learning curve in mastering this skill. Lastly, Earth had experience in computer programming, so discovering that mathematical equations can be used to simulate the spread of disease was intriguing. Earth was able to simulate realistic results, but failed to interpret its meaning, indicating weakness in critical thinking. Suppose that her results revealed a steep decline in the infection rates over time in a state that reportedly had not implemented any stringent social policies, then she could have inferred that the population size was a factor or reported on its vaccination rates, but she did not. The correlation between students’ performance on the general coursework and the project was primarily positive. For example, Pluto’s performance was also mediocre on homework and quizzes. Hence, Pluto’s shortcomings were likely due to poor foundational knowledge or skill in math, lack of curiosity or motivation, or poor study habits (time management, organizational skills, resources, etc.). Overall, students whose understanding of calculus was evident by the course’s end, identified and applied their newly acquired calculus knowledge to the project tasks sufficiently. The students’ enthusiasm diminished with each execution of the project, which I attributed to online learning burnout (mine as well). Using the project-based approach made teaching abstract calculus concepts more attainable, suggesting that introducing real-world problems increases students’ interest in the subject. Most students gained an appreciation of the utility of mathematics which could impact their persistence in math. Furthermore, for students studying science who are underrepresented in the field, exploring culturally relevant societal content may increase their self-efficacy, close some of their knowledge gaps, and foster their sense of

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science identity. Mars’ acquired feeling of being a mathematician was a shift in his perspective. What makes students persist or not in learning or pursuing goals in general? Grit is necessary for outstanding achievement in any professional domain (Duckworth, 2016), but are there no prerequisites a person must possess before developing grit? Reflecting on the outcomes of the COVID-19 project, years of observing students’ learning patterns, and plenty of long conversations with colleagues, I believe that the prerequisite skills or qualities for grit are patience, motivation, curiosity, courage, and ability. A person on the path to high achievement must make a PACT—to be Patient in developing Ability and be Courageous in Trying—with themself. Factoring these traits into my observations of the archetypal students— Mars, Pluto, Venus, and Earth—better explains the differences in their learning outcomes. The outcomes imply that most students possess one or more of the qualities of patience, ability, courage, curiosity, or motivation. Mars had all the pre-grit qualities, so success in completing the project and learning calculus was inevitable. Whereas Venus (curiosity and ability) and Earth (motivation and patience) exhibited different pre-grit qualities that yielded their moderate performance on the project. Whereas Pluto lacked all the pre-grit qualities, indifference and failure were the only outcomes possible for learning the subject and completing the project. Teachable students are motivated to understand something, are curious to discover something, are courageous to try something, and are patient to achieve something. Mathematical knowledge inherently builds upon itself. Students who establish a systematic approach to learning will gain aptitude in the subject. How does this happen? I cannot recall when or how exactly I made it happen for me, but I did. Concerning student learning through the COVID-19 project, this  depended upon their desire to avail themselves of  the idea of  putting their newly acquired knowledge into practice. This brings to mind the proverb “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”. I have grown to accept that I can lead my students to a fountain of knowledge, but I cannot force them to think. I recognized that COVID19 as nature’s gift and I am proud that I was able to use it to create this  dynamic learning project  for my students. And I am proud of the students who genuinely engaged in the project because they gained an understanding of how scientists work. I gained a good insight into how my students process information  and what may or not motivate their

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interest in learning. So, I will continue to use worldly phenomena to teach math in the appropriate context.  Teaching calculus to my students through this project made me process the pandemic and the societal shutdown more analytically and less emotionally. I was concerned about the long-term impact the pandemic could have on humans and the planet if a significant number of people continued to refute or ignore the science. It is sad that we lost millions of souls in a year’s time; may they all rest in peace. In hindsight, I was comforted by the social mandates of masking and distancing, and I relished the quiet of the city’s streets. The time saved in commuting was repurposed to exercise, home improvement projects, and thinking. I reclaimed minimalism.

References Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. An introduction to the philosophy of education. Free Press. Duckworth, A. (2016). Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. Scribner/ Simon & Schuster. Jumaat, N. T., Tasir, Z., Halim, N. D. A., & Ashari, Z. M. (2017). Project-based learning from constructivism point of view. Advanced Scientific Letters, 23(8), 7904–7906.

It’s a Win-Win: Faculty-Mentored Research with Students of Color Anuli Njoku and Rochelle Felix

Introduction Since the year 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has enacted a tremendous burden on society, along with associated physical, mental, and socioeconomic tolls; corresponding racial, ethnic, and other inequities; civil unrest; and renewed attention to lingering issues such as police brutality and systemic racism in the United States (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022; Galea & Abdalla, 2020; Xiong et al., 2020). The hurried pivot response to COVID-19 in higher education interrupted teaching and learning, impacted workplace climates, revealed various levels of

A. Njoku (*) Department of Public Health, College of Health and Human Services, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected]; https://www.southernct.edu/directory/ njokua3#Biography R. Felix Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_19

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mental health trauma and racial disparities among students, and has intensified the pervasive trauma that typically exists for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) staff, faculty, and students (Harder & McGowan, 2020; Kim et al., 2022). During COVID-19, Black women in higher education had to face increased marginalization, financial hardship, racial fatigue, isolation, exhaustion, physical and emotional tolls, loss of loved ones, increased caregiving roles, a greater need to provide support to struggling students, and gender inequities in scholarship (Njoku & Evans, 2022). Furthermore, gender inequalities in research productivity during the pandemic have been aggravated for BIPOC women during this time (Oleschuk, 2020). While these challenges are many, they also create opportunities for mentorship, research, and improved chances for student success in higher education.

Importance of Equitable and Inclusive Mentoring Practices It has been shown that faculty and students perceive various benefits to undergraduate research, including the development of research skills, enhanced faculty-student relationships, improved communication skills, and increased interest in pursuing post-graduate education (Russell et al., 2007). Moreover, research has illustrated that mentoring from Black faculty increases academic engagement, attainment, and interest in graduate study among Black, non-Latinx undergraduate students participating in a summer research program, and that mentors from similar backgrounds are important to the academic self-efficacy of students of color (Davis, 2007; Syed et al., 2011). To address the pre-existing inequities among students of color in higher education that have been exacerbated during COVID-19, it is essential to promote mentored research and foster inclusive and equitable mentoring practices. Graduate mentoring in higher education can provide students with direction during their collegiate experience and help them to gain professionalism, research experience, and networking opportunities that are relevant to professional success (Almond et al., 2020). Such outcomes can also promote personal success. Furthermore, successful mentorships are particularly important for women and minority students as they can enhance academic satisfaction, persistence, and retention; help meet the desires for a transformative mentoring experience; keep students on track

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to graduate; and positively impact academic and career development of students and faculty (Almond et al., 2020). Exploring the perspectives of both mentors and mentees of color during COVID-19 can provide insights into the supports needed for equitable mentoring practices.

Collaborations Faculty Perspective As a mentor, my first faculty-student manuscript collaboration came during the height of anti-police brutality protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. An advisee of mine sent a group email to me and a few fellow faculty inquiring if an independent study project could be done on police brutality since the renewed attention to the issue greatly weighed on the student. One of the faculty did not reply to the email. The second faculty responded once and only after I had replied to the student, to concur with me that the student’s suggestion was a great idea. Ultimately, I seized the opportunity to fulfill this student’s request. Subsequently, I scoured the internet for relevant calls for papers, scheduled a meeting to further discuss this idea with the student, and proposed that we respond to a call and submit a manuscript. Ongoing meetings ensued to brainstorm ideas, process the ongoing news of anti-racism protests against police brutality, hone and refine research techniques, and put ideas into words. The result was a successful collaboration and a co-authored article on police brutality against Blacks in the United States, ensuing protests, and implications for social distancing and Black health during COVID-19. The finished product was both cathartic and inspiring. The article included two student authors, one of whom achieved their first publication. The following year, another of my faculty-student research collaborations resulted in a manuscript on structural barriers and racial and ethnic inequities in COVID-19 vaccination. Additional faculty-student collaborations included a poster presentation delivered at a local public health conference and focused on addressing inequities in COVID-19 vaccination among Black and Latinx communities and a published book chapter on COVID-19 and environmental racism. Other collaborative efforts included a co-authored publication and national conference presentation on comparing environmental policies to reduce pharmaceutical pollution and address disparities; these efforts were conducted with a senior leader at a national public health association. Another pertinent research project

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was a published journal article on Black maternal mortality, composed of a faculty-student research team of all Black women. Throughout these research activities, there were ongoing meetings to provide formal and informal check-ins, determine progress, and provide mentorship, encouragement, and support. Upon reflection, I have found the opportunity to mentor students of color in research during a pandemic, where gender and racial inequalities in research productivity are common, to be one of the most meaningful mentoring experiences I have had. I feel fortunate to have greatly benefitted from completing a pipeline program in college, and I see mentoring students in research as a great way to pay it forward. The pipeline program, in many ways, was life-changing for me and provided insight, perspective, exposure, and expanded networks. It also helped build enhanced analytical, interpersonal, and communication skills. While mentoring students on research during COVID-19 and on topics related to health disparities, social justice, and health equity, I have honed intercultural, interpersonal, and mentoring skills and embraced a sense of community and camaraderie. Seeing the increased enthusiasm, wonder, and confidence in students, and all the hard work from our collaborations culminate in publications and presentations, has been a defining moment. Furthermore, the collaborations have been an opportunity to reverse a trend in which students of color may not often be given opportunities to collaborate on research with faculty or attend conferences (Brunsma et al., 2017). These collaborations have allowed me to expand knowledge on health-related issues such as racial disparities in COVID, build mentoring and leadership skills, gain professional development, expand my network, disseminate knowledge through conference presentations and published manuscripts, and enhance my professional portfolio. Participation as a faculty mentor has also led to continued relationships after the research experiences, including inviting my mentees to speak to current students about their experiences, long-term goals, and career trajectory. Such invitations have provided my mentees with opportunities to hone presentation skills, provide advice to peers, build their resumes, and expand their networks. Student Perspective The pandemic took a toll on my mental health in many ways. For instance, I was no longer able to socialize or be on campus. The computer became my new friend and professor because I was now in a classroom alone, and

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that classroom was within the walls of my room. Things really shifted for us students during the past two years, but I got through because I had a strong support system, and I had projects to keep me grounded. The prevalence of major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder is higher among the undergraduate and graduate students who did not adapt well to remote instruction. Furthermore, the pandemic has led to increases in students’ mental health disorders compared to previous years (Chrikov et  al., 2020). Writing has always been something I enjoyed doing, so this experience became a coping mechanism for me during this pandemic. It is quite common for men to undergo research, while COVID-19 has hampered productivity for academic women, with Black women unfavorably affected (Oleschuk, 2020). As the United States continues to advance toward a majority-minority workplace, there is a need to support the development and career progression of women of color (Sims & Carter, 2022). Despite this fact, as a woman of color and a student, I got the opportunity to participate in a very promising research, thanks to an amazing professor. The journey to publish the article was very intense. It was tempting to give up, but we continued striving. There were a few sacrifices that needed to be made, like extra hours researching and typing the paper, but at the end of the day the hard work was all worth it. Although the process was not easy, and it was my first attempt at research, the end product was all worth the arduous work. When this opportunity landed on my lap, I experienced so many different emotions. I experienced disbelief, doubt, worry, and a few terrifying emotions, but with determination and self-preservation, anything is possible. After this article was published, my opportunities were endless. Immediately afterward, I got the chance to test my public speaking skills when I presented the research at a local public health conference. When students are given the advantage of working with faculty, wonderful things happen. My advisor is phenomenal, and because of her I got to do what I love. She did not just give me my first opportunity at publishing, but she was also my support system moving forward. She was there for me during my entire conference presentation experience. She helped edit my presentation, and when I wanted to walk away from it because of my nerves, she reminded me why I had to do it and why I would be good at it. She even made it her duty to be present during my presentation, although it was virtual. She continues to see the best in me. My first conference presentation was a challenge because I had to speak to a public audience, but it was

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also a stepping stone to greater things. Because of this experience, I continue to be more confident in myself and my love for public speaking. I am also looking forward to many more opportunities in both publishing and giving presentations.

Conclusion The impact of these research collaborations has led to deeper relationships between faculty and students of color across campus. We believe this is because students have continued to engage in research, demonstrated an increased interested in graduate studies, and had access to other leadership opportunities. These accomplishments reflect strategies for success and retention among underrepresented college students. The impacts of our research experiences are supported by research that has shown that the perceived benefits of research among faculty and students include the development of research skills, enhanced faculty-student relationships, expanded communication skills, and greater interest in pursuing post-­ graduate education. The widening inequities influenced by COVID-19 and related recruitment and retention challenges in higher education call for our increasingly diverse college campuses to foster inclusive and welcoming environments to promote the retention of underrepresented students. Exposing students to new opportunities through meaningful connections such as research and mentorship components can be a win-win for all.

References Almond, L., Hall, E., & Devore, E. (2020). Establishing equitable graduate mentoring in higher education. In Teaching and Learning for Social Justice and Equity in Higher Education (pp. 279–301). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­44939-­1_15 Brunsma, D.  L., Embrick, D.  G., & Shin, J.  H. (2017). Graduate students of color: Race, racism, and mentoring in the white waters of academia. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 3(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649216681565 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022). Cases, data, and surveillance. Risk for COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and death by race/ethnicity. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-­ ncov/covid-­data/investigations-­d iscovery/hospitalization-­death-­by-­race-­ ethnicity.html Chrikov, I., Soria, K.  M., Horgos, B., & Jones-White, D. (2020, July 1). Undergraduate and graduate students’ mental health during the COVID-19

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pandemic. Retrieved October 15, 2022, from https://conservancy.umn.edu/ handle/11299/215271 Davis, D. (2007). Access to academe: The importance of mentoring to Black students. The Negro Educational Review, 58(3–4), 217–231. Galea, S., & Abdalla, S. M. (2020). COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment, and civil unrest: Underlying deep racial and socioeconomic divides. JAMA, 324(3), 227–228. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.11132 Harder, W. L., & McGowan, B. L. (2020). Recognizing COVID-19 as trauma: Considerations for student affairs educators and faculty developers. https:// developments.myacpa.org/recognizing-­covid-­19-­as-­trauma-­considerations-­ for-­student-­affairs-­educators-­and-­faculty-­developers/ Kim, H., Rackoff, G. N., Fitzsimmons-Craft, E. E., Shin, K. E., Zainal, N. H., Schwob, J.  T., Eisenberg, D., Wilfley, D.  E., Taylor, C.  B., & Newman, M. G. (2022). College mental health before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: Results from a nationwide survey. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 46(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-­021-­10241-­5 Njoku, A., & Evans, M. (2022). Black women faculty and administrators navigating COVID-19, social unrest, and academia: Challenges and strategies. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(4), 2220. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19042220 Oleschuk, M. (2020). Gender equity considerations for tenure and promotion during COVID-19. Canadian Review of Sociology, 57(3), 502–515. https:// doi.org/10.1111/cars.12295 Xiong, J., Lipsitz, O., Nasri, F., Lui, L.  M., Gill, H., Phan, L., Chen-Li, D., Iacobucci, M., Ho, R., Majeed, A., & McIntyre, R.  S. (2020). Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health in the general population: A systematic review. Journal of Affective Disorders, 277, 55–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jad.2020.08.001 Russell, S. H., Hancock, M. P., & McCullough, J. (2007). Benefits of undergraduate research experiences. Science, 316, 548–549. https://doi.org/10.1126/ science.1140384 Sims, C. M., & Carter, A. D. (2022). Preface: Women of color and leadership. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 24(3), 155–162. https://doi. org/10.1177/15234223221101424 Syed, M., Azmitia, M., & Cooper, C. R. (2011). Identity and academic success among underrepresented ethnic minorities: An interdisciplinary review and integration. Journal of Social Issues, 67(3), 442–468. https://psycnet.apa.org/ doi/10.1111/j.1540-­4560.2011.01709.x

ACEing the Black Trauma of the COVID-19 Pandemic Marian Evans

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are traumatic events that happen between the ages of 0 and 18 years of age. They are preventable, extremely common, and related to many poor health outcomes and health challenges throughout a person’s lifespan (CDC, 2021a). ACEs can have a deleterious effect on social determinants of health and one’s potential for future income, housing, social and emotional intelligence, employment, income, and overall healthy life. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), along with Kaiser Permanente, performed a large study over two years that produced data on ACEs, their risk factors, and links to health outcomes, violence, social and economic burdens, and a host of health challenges (CDC, 2021a). Abuse, neglect, and dysfunctional families are some of the broad categories for them. Variations of the survey questions are used nationally today, and the Center for the

M. Evans (*) Department of Public Health, College of Health and Human Services, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_20

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Developing Child at Harvard University has developed an ACEs quiz for increased dissemination (Starecheski, 2015). People who take the quiz can be introduced to the broad categories and potentially gain insight into childhood risk factors and predictors that may or may not have an impact on their present or future health outcomes. During COVID-19, I came across this ten-question ACEs quiz. Reading the questions, I was overcome with the enormity of Black trauma contained in those ten questions. The quiz reflected my own story, as well as those of Black students, women, and families—traumas that were magnified by the impact of three pandemics: COVID-19, economic inequities, and systemic racism. Trauma as defined by “emotional responses to disastrous life events” like COVID-19 have both short- and long-term health consequences throughout one’s lifespan, like ACEs (APA, 2022). The ACEs quiz does not include all the questions from the original study, but it does give a score from zero to ten that can be a predictor of a user’s future risk. As I slowly took the quiz, I contemplated each question and what it might indicate in my life, as well as in the lives of countless other Black families that I had either known or encountered. Before your 18th birthday, the survey asked: “Did people act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?” “Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often … Push, grab, slap, or throw something at you?” or “Ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?” (Starecheski, 2015). I thought, What? Did the people who wrote the survey have older siblings? Did they know what whippings or spankings were? This question made me think of the ways Black families raise their children differently than other ethnicities in America to survive. I thought about the discipline that was enacted in my family; I was the second child out of four, and when I heard my parents or adult/guardians (older siblings) use the tone that meant “business” (meaning that they were serious), I knew that if I didn’t stop doing whatever I was doing, physical discipline would be next. I had used this same discipline in my youth to conduct responsible and accountable behavior as a big sister and auntie toward my younger brothers, nieces, and nephews as they tested the boundaries of their behaviors and my patience. We were taught that the world would not treat you the same as White people and that you had to understand when to stop and start, when to control your emotions, and how to maneuver to survive. I was the smallest person in my house. I was intelligent, had good common sense, and achieved financial acuity at an early age, and thus commanded the attention and respect of my brothers even as they grew taller

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than me (6′2″ and 6′3″) into large, hulking Black men. I still command their respect to this day, as well as that of my nieces and nephews and their children. The use of this type of discipline, for us, was necessary: understanding the tone of “don’t make me say it again,” or the look of “wait until I get you home.” I recall getting disciplined twice in my life, and I decided after the second time that it would not happen again. I also remember hearing about Dr. Spock growing up and the new ways to raise your children—as well as the following conversations among the adults about how that would not work in Black families and for Black children. I remember, too, when time outs and not hitting kids became en vogue because parents could risk going to jail and hearing many Black parents, especially at church, say they were going to jail for continuing the practice. White people could raise and discipline their children differently than Black people. The ACEs study results, however, do not take this into account. It instead said that corporal punishment and spanking increase one’s risk factors (CDC, 2021b). Instantly, I felt the words, “here we go again” and being annoyed that this study did not and would not take cultural, racial, or economic inequities into account for these behaviors. The individual and Black families would be the “blame” or reason behind why the practice of corporeal punishment and discipline was part of the problem with families of color. The quiz questions continued, “Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you ever … Touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way?” or “attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you?” “Did you often or very often feel that … No one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special?” or “Your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other?” (Starecheski, 2015). This reminded me of my own sexual abuse and revealed a generational, family history with cycles of sexual abuse that were treated as though they were normal. I thought of the secrets that people and families keep, and what that then does to an individual and to families. I became estranged from my family and older sister for most of her adult life because of the trauma of her abusive relationships and the violence of silence. Strangely, or not so strange for me, I thought about epigenetics and the possibility of people carrying and passing on generational trauma, the effects of toxic stress, and behaviors in those little proteins on the outside of their DNA; it could then manifest physically and emotionally across generations. In my youth, I contemplated, and had witnessed, physical bodily abuse, low confidence, and anxiety that

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manifested as alcoholism and drug use in my family, and decided as a teenager that I wanted out of the cycle of generational trauma. “Were your parents ever separated or divorced?” (Shonkoff, 2015). In my case, they were never together, so there was no separation or divorce. I had a stepfather, and I’m grateful that he helped support us and kept a roof over my head, shoes on my feet, and heat in the house; he also allowed me to have a private K-12 Catholic school education. My biological father was external to most of this until my adolescence. My life would have been different without my mother, stepfather, father, and family having that extra social and economic support. These things are designated protective factors according to the ACEs study results (CDC, 2021b), as well as vaccinations against economic inequities. “Was your mother or stepmother: Often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her?” or “Sometimes, often, or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard?” or “Ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife? Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic, or who used street drugs?” (Starecheski, 2015). This type of physical violence was the regular ending of our weekend house parties in my family for many years. It was the epitome of “living for the weekend.” I knew that there was something wrong with this lifestyle and its consequences, but as a child and teenager, I did not have the words to express the dysfunction and trauma. I also knew that I did not want a life like this. I wanted to retain the good pieces, such as consistent home cooking, lunch that was made at home, stable regular hours to eat together as a family around a table, consistent schedules for schoolwork and play, stable long-term housing, education, holidays, and safe friends, family, and dependable neighbors. In my early academic career, I was amazed to find that researchers studied these very specific topics. The ACEs study would indicate that the things I relished about family were all protective factors present at the individual, family, and community levels (CDC, 2021b); what the quiz can’t say is which factors are more important, overall, for well-being. Growing up, I vowed that, when I got married, I would not marry someone that drank alcohol, consumed drugs, or was physically abusive, all of which are listed among the ACEs risk factors. When I met my husband, I introduced him first to my best friend and my adopted extended family, whom the ACEs quiz would have called my protective factors. When my future husband said, “You didn’t like your family, so you went

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and got a new one,” he was correct. I did not know it at the time, as I was 14 and a freshman in an all-girl, predominantly White, Catholic high school, but I was building what I needed in my friends; that extended family has stabilized me for the last 40-plus years. I believe the ACEs study would call this a protective factor under social connections, and there was plenty of this with my extended family and its connections. According to the CDC there are six protective factors: nurturing and attachment, knowledge of parenting and of child and youth development, parental resilience, social connections, concrete supports for parents, and social and emotional competence for children (CDC, 2021b). The Black church, faith, and religion provided at least four or five of the factors for both parents and children. Religion was without a doubt a protective factor in my adolescence. This came to me directly through my best friend, who was an evangelic protestant, for my parents it was being Baptist, and African Methodist Episcopal (AME). I had been a lost Catholic prior to meeting my best friend, but after, the Pentecostal belief system gave me the structure and strictness that I needed as a teenager. I vowed that the dysfunction I grew up with would not be my life and that higher education, hard work, and God were my tickets to escape. I was a first-generation college student; I wanted to be far enough away from my family that they had to call me when they were coming, but close enough so that I could get home in less than six hours. I left for Swarthmore College, in Pennsylvania, as if my life depended on it, were the ACEs over? ACEs, by definition, dealt with minors aged 0–18, and I understand, as a former physician-scientist and researcher who has created clinical trials and interventions, that age ranges had to be established for the sake of study design. I also know that the 18 years of age cutoff does not mean that ACEs stop at adulthood, though we may need to call them something else, such as adverse adult experiences (AAEs); the risks and protective factors never stop undulating throughout our lived experiences. One such adverse adult experience was the COVID-19 pandemic. It brought the world to a halt in March 2020. I had been following the pandemic almost from the beginning in my PCH 202 Introduction to Public Health class at Gateway Community College. I worried about students with backgrounds like mine, those who saw college as an escape route to a better life. How would the closures, though necessary for public health, impact their ability to escape undesirable home or life circumstances? Did they even have a safe place to return to? Safety is an interesting concept,

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many associate the police as a symbol, however that is not the case in much of the Black community. George Floyd’s murder in May 2020 just two months after the COVID-19 lockdown, signaled an awakening around police brutality for many people. There had been countless others before him, but social media and real-time cameras made Floyd different from Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Bobby Seale, and the host of others who had no names. At first, I refused to watch the video. Why would I want to watch a man (another Black man) die at the hands of historically sanctioned blue killers? I heard the audio first, and a familiar sadness filled me. I don’t watch horror films because I believe we have enough real-world horror. Though I had initially avoided the video of Floyd, I saw it one day on the news, and the noise of trauma rose in me. It took me back immediately to an anger that rivaled my younger years. As an adult, I knew what I didn’t as a child: these emotions would have to be released, because they felt like pressurized venom. Floyd could not breathe, and neither could I, thinking about the three pandemics—COVID-19, economic inequities, and systemic racism. As difficult as the public loss of Floyd was, I was also experiencing personal losses as well, which the ACEs quiz might call risk factors: My oldest niece passed away in March 2020, my cousin passed away in April 2021, and my oldest sister passed away in May 2021 along with several other losses. There was a huge toll of COVID-19, and I turned to the arts to release the pain and the pressure. I wrote a poem for healing (an ACEs protective factor) entitled, “Ode to Breathe,” and wondered if other people wrote of their ongoing pain like me. ODE to BREATHE I’m exhausted, down-right bone tired It is just beyond me right now Breathe in (1,2,3,4), Hold … Breathe Out … Coronavirus—“I can’t breathe” Ventilators? Quarantining, social distancing, people distancing Death and Destruction Covid-19 Masks Breathe … Slavery to modern-day lynching

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Protest Anti-racism New normal, is NOT normal Undoing racism Allies, Advocates, Caucuses “I can’t breathe” Packed in ships, bottles, syringes Vaccines, Contact tracing Post-convalescence Double, Double, Toil and Trouble When will it stop? How do I make it stop? “I can’t breathe” Breathe … Will it ever change? Has it ever changed? Is there herd immunity from hatred, white supremacy, and racism? “I can’t breathe” Breathe in (1,2,3,4), Hold … Breathe out

I asked a bestie girlfriend, another Black woman faculty member and an artist in her own right (Dr. Gabrielle McLemore) at Morgan State University, to commission a work of art for this poem. Here is “Ode to Breathe” as Art with Words (Fig. 1). What ACEs score would George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Emmett Till, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and John Lewis receive? Floyd had risk factors for sure, but did he have protective factors? If he did, they were obviously not enough. As I contemplate the impact of COVID-19, which has no doubt spurred the onset of more ACEs, I am reminded that the risk factors will reverberate long after the country heals from the last four years and moves toward living with COVID-19 symbiotically. As Black faculty, it is imperative to recognize ACEs, their risk and protective factors, and their perpetual trauma in our own lives and in the lives of our students. To recognize and contemplate how they might manifest in the classroom and on campus. This is necessary to prevent further trauma and implement trauma-­ informed practices to counteract the damaging effects of ACEs and COVID-19 on our collective and future lives.

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Fig. 1  Ode to Breathe-Gabrielle McLemore

References American Psychological Association [APA]. (2022). Trauma. https://www.apa. org/topics/trauma#:~:text=Trauma%20is%20an%20emotional%20 response,symptoms%20like%20headaches%20or%20nausea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC]. (2021a, April 2). Adverse childhood experiences. Prevention: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/ aces/index.html Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC]. (2021b, January 5). Risk and protective factors XE “protective factors”. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/riskprotectivefactors.html Starecheski, J. P. (2015, March 2). Take the ACE quiz—And learn what it does and doesn’t mean—Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. Retrieved from NPR: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-­shots/2015/03/02/ 387007941/take-­the-­ace-­quiz-­and-­learn-­what-­it-­does-­and-­doesnt-­mean

Coping Resources and Self-care During COVID-19, Police Brutality, and Social Unrest Anuli Njoku

The COVID-19 pandemic has created incalculable losses and substantial burdens and has been deemed a global public health emergency (Sohrabi et al., 2020). Within the U.S., the pandemic has also competed with dueling afflictions of high-profile cases of police brutality against Black individuals, continued systemic racism, political turmoil, economic crises, and stark health disparities. U.S. racial and ethnic minority groups have borne a disproportionate burden of COVID-19-associated outcomes as Black or African Americans, Hispanic or Latinx persons, and American Indian or Alaska Native, non-Hispanic persons are more likely to become sick with, be hospitalized for, and die from COVID-19 when compared to non-­ Hispanic Whites (CDC, 2022). Even with growing supply and increases in

A. Njoku (*) Department of Public Health, College of Health and Human Services, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected]; https://www.southernct.edu/directory/ njokua3#Biography © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_21

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COVID-19 vaccination rates across racial and ethnic groups, structural barriers thwart vaccine access for these groups (Njoku et  al., 2021a). Disparities also exist in access to COVID-19 treatments and uptake of booster shots among Black and Latinx children and in health and economic tolls among racial minority and immigrant communities (Ndugga et al., 2022). Furthermore, Black Americans have been excessively affected by police brutality before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Global anti-racism protests against police brutality fueled by the horrific killing of George Floyd along with COVID-19 health disparities have illuminated centuries of socioeconomic disparities and racial and ethnic discrimination (Njoku et al., 2021b; Toure et al., 2021). The racial and ethnic inequalities in suffering and deaths from COVID-19 and the blatant, unabashed brutalizing and killing of Black individuals at the hands of law enforcement have deeply reinforced the stark truth that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities in the U.S. often suffer and die in larger quantities than Whites (Galea & Abdalla, 2020; CDC, 2022). In 2021, along with unparalleled calamities and deaths, an insurrection occurred on Capitol Hill. During this violent attack provoked by the highest level of leadership in the country, rioters attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election (Barry et al., 2021). The impact of these events has echoed widely within higher education. The immediate and abrupt response to COVID-19 included the quick pivot to virtual and remote learning. The COVID-19 pandemic has also taken a serious toll on college students’ mental health and highlighted various levels of mental health trauma and disparities. For instance, the upward trend in depression has been stronger in students identifying as Black when compared to White students (Kim et al., 2022). COVID-19 and its after-effects have also heightened the extensive trauma that typically exists for BIPOC students, faculty, and staff (Harder & McGowan, 2020). Faculty of color—especially Black faculty and Black women—are more likely to be coping with family illness, loss of loved ones, unemployment, caregiving, and homeschooling, while concurrently providing additional emotional support to struggling students (Mickey et al., 2020). Black women faculty and administrators have also had to teach and work in higher education while coping with physical and economic challenges, psychosocial tolls, emotional trauma, and civil unrest (Njoku & Evans, 2022). This necessitates examination into how Black women in academia can teach, work, and persist in higher education during times of uncertainty and trauma, locate resources for support, and maintain

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trauma-­informed practices with students and supervisees. Furthermore, there are action steps that academic institutions can adopt to support faculty, staff, and administrators who navigate these issues.

Reflections on COVID-19 and Police Brutality Navigating academia during COVID-19, increased attention to police brutality, and social unrest can produce a wave of emotions. Building a career based on a passion to address health disparities to promote social justice and health equity and then having increased research productivity due to greater attention to the lingering inequities that have plagued U.S. society can be a paradox of sorts. The increased call for proposals, papers, and grants to address COVID-19 disparities, the emergence of carefully crafted diversity statements, and the newfound willingness to directly name racism in publications, statements, curricula, and other sources can also trigger despair, sadness, and grief. The increased workshops and webinars on diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism can prompt the wonder of whether facilitators are preaching to the choir. These events may also evoke the feelings of illusion and cynicism and the wondering of why Black people always have the worst outcomes. Research has shown that the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black communities can create a secondhand trauma when African Americans continually witness pain and suffering of people who look like them (Sneed et  al., 2020). Moreover, the Black community can be traumatized by repeatedly viewing graphic images or videos of police brutality and police killings of unarmed Black Americans (Hawkins, 2022). The trauma of violence can be evoked when hearing of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Philando Castile, and others. It can be triggering to see these young lives extinguished and them reduced to the value of unfounded opinions, rather than them being seen as people who were dearly loved by their family and friends. Still, during these times, Black women had to show up to work to teach and serve. There might have been calls to develop courses on health disparities, social justice, and anti-racism. There might have also been feelings of walking a fine line when grappling with teaching about race so that one is not seen as a “race baiter.” Moreover, expanded duties for women in academia may have now included teaching, serving, mentoring, researching, supervising, homeschooling, and caregiving. There were still

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responsibilities to attend and lead meetings. During the endless virtual meetings, there was the additional mental debate of “Camera on or camera off?” and “What to do with my hair?” Or, hoping that if one showed up to teach class with their hair in its natural state that their students would not deem them as less qualified. Hair management among Black women was another mental note and an added layer on top of neverending responsibilities. It evoked feelings of “Maybe today, students will just have to take me as I am.” These instances implore the question: How can Black women cope in academia and provide self-care during times of COVID-19, police brutality, and social unrest? Below are individual- and institutional-level strategies to navigate academia during COVID-19 and times of unrest.

Individual-Level Strategies Practice Self-care • Self-care is a commonly used word that can mean many things, including promoting and ensuring one’s health. Promoting health can include walks creatively built into one’s schedule and regular checkups. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Black women were disproportionately affected by chronic illnesses like cancers, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease (Belgrave & Abrams, 2016). Obtaining checkups like a mammography or colonoscopy can detect issues early and save lives. Self-care can be seen as a radical form of anti-racism and may ultimately help to reduce the impact of structural factors on the health of Black women (Adkins-Jackson et al., 2022). Self-care can also include exercise, yoga, meditation, therapy to help one feel less isolated, massages, facials, and the utilization of university resources such as counseling programs. Writing may also be therapeutic. Basking in gratitude and journalling can help manage stress and cope with challenges (Kalinowski et  al., 2022). Black women in higher education should also give themselves the permission to rest (Gray & Brooks, 2021). Block Out Time • Given the gender and racial disparities in productivity and scholarship observed during the COVID-19 pandemic (Oleschuk, 2020),

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intentionally blocking out time for writing may help to spur productivity. Moreover, while writing, citing the published scholarly and creative work of Black women can promote representation and equitable knowledge production (Cite Black Women, n.d.). Days to block can include Fridays or the days in the week of a particular holiday. One can make use of their own personal assistant (literally or figuratively). If one doesn’t have a personal assistant, they can be their own assistant. Time can also be carved out for beach weekends or excursions with family and friends. Planning ahead can help save time and money. Connect with Your Circle • Humans are interpersonal beings. In terms of uncertainty and disruption, it is essential to connect with one’s circle. This can include taking campus walks with colleagues and friends. Walking with others may help one walk longer and feel less self-conscious. There can be lunches and check-ins with friends and peers, even if virtually, for the purposes of collective upliftment, sharing of interests, and discussing career trajectories. Ultimately, there is a beauty in sharing. Seek Professional Development • Professional development can be a form of self-care and may also address the gender inequities in scholarship seen during COVID-19 (Oleschuk, 2020). Seeking professional development can include attending webinars, trainings, workshops, and conferences. Such venues can provide an opportunity to gain and share knowledge, stay current on latest research and network, and keep oneself marketable. In-person conferences can provide opportunities for travel, a change of scenery, and rejuvenation. Disseminating one’s work can occur internally and externally. It can be done with colleagues, peers, and community members and through social media, meetings, conferences, publications, and community briefs. Additionally, obtaining certifications and maintaining memberships to professional organizations can keep one marketable and current.

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Institutional-Level Strategies Institutions can also employ strategies to bridge cultural and racial gaps in the classroom or workplace and foster diversity and inclusion in academia during times of COVID-19 and social unrest. Authentically Commit to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion • Institutions that genuinely commit to diversity, equity, and inclusion should foster frank conversations about oppression, power, and privilege (Walton et al., 2021). Academic institutions must also actively recruit and retain faculty and staff who have diverse experiences with racism, ensure cultural humility and mentoring knowledge among current faculty, and be committed to recruiting, and graduating, students from diverse backgrounds (Diggles, 2014). Institutions should also openly acknowledge and alleviate the “minority tax” burden among historically underrepresented faculty and internationally study and address how anti-Black racism functions in academia (Williamson et al., 2021; Bell et al., 2021). Offer Flexibility • There is a need for greater flexibility for academic employees during the era of COVID-19. Recommendations include delaying the tenure clock, limiting meetings, waiving nonessential services, and pausing unneeded scholarship (Walton et  al., 2021). Other strategies include integrating more holistic teaching assessments to acknowledge the influence of racial and gender biases in student evaluations and providing more telework options to help employees successfully manage home and work duties (Mickey et  al., 2020; Gray & Brooks, 2021). Fund Professional Development • As COVID-19 has adversely affected faculty members’ careers, interrupted research activities, and contributed to gender inequities in scholarship, institutions can foster professional development to support employees during this time. If there are a surplus of funds due to less conference travel among employees during COVID-19, the

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unused funds can be rolled over to support future conference travel. Additionally, such funds can be used to support travel to academic conference and maintenance of professional memberships and certifications among faculty and staff. Acknowledge Increased Caregiving Demands • Institutions must acknowledge that the COVID-19 pandemic has altered the personal and professional lives of academic employees, has taken significant physical and economic tolls, and has adversely affected employees’ work. Notably, there are increased caregiving demands among women faculty members, which can unfavorably impact their work. Institutions can address this need by allocating emergency funds for caregiving assistance, including eldercare and childcare (Mickey et al., 2020). Other strategies include promoting the availability of mental health and counseling services, conducting campus events to build morale and relieve stress, and providing enhanced academic, social, and emotional support for students to ease the workload of administrators and faculty. Incorporate Trauma-Informed Practices • The COVID-19 pandemic can be considered a traumatic and disruptive event to many individuals. During times of instability and turmoil, a trauma-informed approach to pedagogy for students and adults can create a culture of health and resiliency within a campus community (Wynard et al., 2020). Trauma-informed pedagogy practices can include checking in with students, staff, or faculty; maintaining flexibility when possible; valuing engagement of all types; and establishing a sense of belonging throughout the institution. Such approaches should be implemented and acknowledge as being of the utmost importance during this pandemic.

Conclusion The epidemics of COVID-19, racial and ethnic disparities, policy brutality, civil unrest, and structural and institutional racism have heightened the trauma that normally exists for BIPOC students, faculty, and staff. Faculty of color—especially Black faculty and Black women—have been adversely

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impacted by physical, emotional, and economic tolls that impact their ability to perform in the workplace. This necessitates exploration into how faculty and staff can teach and work in higher education during times of trauma and uncertainty and locate resources for support. Individual-level strategies include practicing self-care, blocking out time, connecting with one’s circle, and seeking professional development. Moreover, academic institutions should genuinely commit to diversity, equity, and inclusion; provide flexibility to employees; recognize increased caregiving demands; incorporate trauma-informed practices to meet the needs of students, faculty, and staff; and promote equity, inclusion, and anti-racism.

References Adkins-Jackson, P. B., Jackson Preston, P. A., & Hairston, T. (2022). ‘The only way out’: How self-care is conceptualized by Black women. Ethnicity & Health, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/13557858.2022.2027878 Barry, D., McIntire, M., & Rosenberg, M. (2021, January 9). ‘Our president wants us here’: The mob that stormed the capitol. The New  York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/us/capitol-­rioters.html Belgrave, F. Z., & Abrams, J. A. (2016). Reducing disparities and achieving equity in African American women’s health. American Psychologist, 71(8), 723–733. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000081 Bell, M.  P., Berry, D., Leopold, J., & Nkomo, S. (2021). Making Black Lives Matter in academia: A Black feminist call for collective action against anti-­ blackness in the academy. Gender, Work & Organization, 28, 39–57. https:// doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12555 CDC. (2022). Cases, data, and surveillance. https://www.cdc.gov/ coronavirus/2019-­ncov/covid-­data/investigations-­discovery/hospitalization-­ death-­by-­race-­ethnicity.html Cite Black Women. (n.d.). https://www.citeblackwomencollective.org/ Diggles, K. (2014). Addressing racial awareness and color-blindness in higher education. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 140, 31–44. https://doi. org/10.1002/tl.20111 Galea, S., & Abdalla, S. M. (2020). COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment, and civil unrest: underlying deep racial and socioeconomic divides. JAMA, 324(3), 227–228. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.11132 Gray, K. J., & Brooks, L. B. (2021). Give yourself permission to rest. Genealogy, 5(1), 17. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy5010017 Harder, W. L., & McGowan, B. L. (2020). Recognizing COVID-19 as trauma: Considerations for student affairs educators and faculty developers. College Student Educators International. https://developments.myacpa.org/

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recognizing-­covid-­19-­as-­trauma-­considerations-­for-­student-­affairs-­educators-­ and-­faculty-­developers/ Hawkins, D.  S. (2022). ‘After Philando, I had to take a sick day to recover’: Psychological distress, trauma, and police brutality in the Black community. Health Communication, 37(9), 1113–1122. https://doi.org/10.108 0/10410236.2021.1913838 Kalinowski, J., Wurtz, H., Baird, M., & Willen, S. S. (2022). Shouldering the load yet again: Black women’s experiences of stress during COVID-19. SSM-Mental Health, 2, 100140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmmh.2022.100140 Kim, H., Rackoff, G. N., Fitzsimmons-Craft, E. E., Shin, K. E., Zainal, N. H., Schwob, J.  T., Eisenberg, D., Wilfley, D.  E., Barr Taylor, C., & Newman, M. G. (2022). College mental health before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: Results from a nationwide survey. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 46(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-­021-­10241-­5 Mickey, E., Clark, D., & Misra, J. (2020, September 4). Advice to academic administrators for how to best support faculty during the pandemic. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2020/09/04/advice-­ academic-­administrators-­how-­best-­support-­faculty-­during-­pandemic-­opinion Ndugga, N., Hill, L., Artiga, S., Haldar, S., & Parker, N. (2022, July 14). Latest data on COVID-19 vaccinations by race/ethnicity. Kaiser Family Foundation. https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-­c ovid-­1 9/issue-­b rief/latest-­d ata-­o n-­ covid-­19-­vaccinations-­by-­race-­ethnicity/ Njoku, A., & Evans, M. (2022). Black women faculty and administrators navigating COVID-19, social unrest, and academia: Challenges and strategies. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(4), 2220. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19042220 Njoku, A., Joseph, M., & Felix, R. (2021a). Changing the narrative: Structural barriers and racial and ethnic inequities in COVID-19 vaccination. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(18), 9904. https:// doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18189904 Njoku, A., Ahmed, Y., & Bolaji, B. (2021b). Police brutality against Blacks in the United States and ensuing protests: Implications for social distancing and Black health during COVID-19. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 31(1–4), 262–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/10911359. 2020.1822251 Oleschuk, M. (2020). Gender equity considerations for tenure and promotion during COVID-19. Canadian Review of Sociology (Revue canadienne de sociologie), 57(3), 502–515. https://doi.org/10.1111/cars.12295 Sneed, R. S., Key, K., Bailey, S., & Johnson-Lawrence, V. (2020). Social and psychological consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in African-American communities: Lessons from Michigan. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12(5), 446. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0000881

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Sohrabi, C., Alsafi, Z., O’neill, N., Khan, M., Kerwan, A., Al-Jabir, A., Iosifidis, C., & Agha, R. (2020). World Health Organization declares global emergency: A review of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19). International Journal of Surgery, 76, 71–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijsu.2020.02.034 Toure, K., Langlois, E. V., Shah, M., McDougall, L., & Fogstad, H. (2021). How George Floyd and COVID-19 are highlighting structural inequities for vulnerable women, children and adolescents. International Journal for Equity in Health, 20(1), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-­021-­01540-­0 Walton, Q.  L., Campbell, R.  D., & Blakey, J.  M. (2021). Black women and COVID-19: The need for targeted mental health research and practice. Qualitative Social Work, 20(1–2), 247–255. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 14733250209733 Williamson, T., Goodwin, C.  R., & Ubel, P.  A. (2021). Minority tax reform— Avoiding overtaxing minorities when we need them most. New England Journal of Medicine, 384(20), 1877–1879. https://doi.org/10.1056/ nejmp2100179 Wynard, T., Benes, S., & Lorson, K. (2020). Trauma-sensitive practices in health education. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 91(9), 22–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/07303084.2020.1811622

Spaces to Heal: Providing the Table and Seats Anuli Njoku and Marian Evans

Reflecting on the journey to publish an edited book on the perspectives and strategies of women of color who navigated academia during COVID-19, the authors share the following insights.

Getting to the Root (Cause) of Imposter Syndrome Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) women who navigate the White- and male-dominated spaces of academia often have to wrestle with several challenges including institutional and interpersonal prejudice in facets of their teaching, research, service, and mentoring; racial, ethnic, and gender biases; being assessed based on “White standards”; experiencing racial battle fatigue; being subjected to constant microaggressions; having greater levels of stress and anxiety due to bearing higher workloads than their White colleagues; and being devalued or overlooked based on their scholarly interests (Lin & Kennette, 2022; Corrigan & Vats, 2020; Johnson-Bailey & Cervero, 2008). Other barriers can include a lack of

A. Njoku • M. Evans (*) Department of Public Health, College of Health and Human Services, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1_22

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mentoring and support, having one’s legitimacy questioned, feeling unappreciated, degree envy, and feeling invisible (i.e., ignored) or hypervisible (i.e., overly scrutinized) (Brooks, 2022; Roberts et al., 2022). These circumstances can create insecurity among BIPOC women scholars even when they are experts in their own discipline, reflecting White supremacy at its best, in which it creates feelings of inadequacy and imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is an increasingly used term to explain or cope with feelings of not belonging, not only in higher education but also in other workplaces as well (Breeze et  al., 2022). It can involve one’s academic legitimacy being called into question and the resultant feelings of non-belonging, shame, and fear (Morris et al., 2022). While editing this book, we observed and reflected on the ways imposter syndrome revealed itself in this process. It included personally experiencing and hearing contributors cite writer’s block as a reason for not making forward movement on tasks or meeting deadlines. This prompted the wondering of whether writer’s block was a euphemism for academic procrastination and the interactive effects of stereotype threat on achievement goals (Deemer et  al., 2014). It included the pleasant surprise of hearing fellow authors say this was their first book chapter, which made us wonder whether this was due to the authors not having previous invitations to this table. Contributors also lamented a lack of mentoring, which may have prevented them from producing scholarly research. Some reported extra service requirements that did not allow them time to focus on research. What fuels these feelings of inadequacy among BIPOC women scholars? How can these challenges be addressed? Feelings of ineptitude can occur when peers, colleagues, supervisors, and external critics devalue BIPOC women’s research and prescribe what is deemed valuable research. These scholars’ arduous work may be dismissed and called predatory because they had the ingenuity to utilize a resource, such as a conference or journal, that was not on the radar of others who lacked the insight and foresight to pursue it. Just because it was unattainable to others does not mean it was unattainable for you. This goes in line with the saying, “Don’t knock it ’til you try it.” The devaluing of BIPOC women scholars’ research can taint their character, particularly when the offender does not have insight into the demanding work, determination, initiative, proactivity, and trepidation involved in putting oneself out there. Others may not be aware of or value how such scholarly efforts can provide opportunities to sustain, mentor,

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thrive, expand one’s network, grow personally and professionally, earn, and learn. Such endeavors can bring visibility to a scholar’s institution and provide opportunities to sustain their livelihood. Such efforts are not always adequately evaluated in promotion and tenure manuals or committees. Therefore, the devaluing of their scholarship is one of various challenges faced by BIPOC women in higher education (Hairston & Allen, 2022). Other challenges may include being passed over for opportunities, the underestimation of one’s research and teaching abilities, and being held to unrealistic or unfairly applied rules (i.e., double standards). Research is a requirement to obtain tenure, and statistics show that Black female professors with tenure, for instance, are few (June & O’Leary, 2021). These challenges influence recruitment, retention, and the overall success of BIPOC women in academia. The good news is that these obstacles can also be turned into opportunities.

Turning Rejection into Affirmation How can BIPOC women scholars in academia cope with the rejection and devaluation of their scholarly work? When their work is dismissed in this fashion, these women lose opportunities to be authentic and autonomous and develop their voices to construct their own existence in academia (Johnson, 2022). One way to approach this problem is to turn rejection into affirmation and turn devaluation into appreciation. While editing this book, we fully embraced the opportunity to turn challenges into opportunities. We relished the chance to reassure, uplift, mentor, invite, and make collaborative spaces for BIPOC women to express their feelings of vulnerability, unease, and, ultimately, hope. The journey has been insightful, cathartic, fulfilling, and fruitful. We created spaces where authors could write to heal, invite, and find natural (or silent) mentors, and make up for lost time with mentoring and research. This book started with the idea to submit an abstract to the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education. Upon acceptance and presentation of the abstract, we were buoyed by the positive response to our research and were inspired to present the work at the Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education (formerly the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators or NASPA) Multicultural Institute: Advancing Equity and Inclusive Practice. The ensuing idea to simultaneously submit a book proposal and prepare a manuscript felt daunting, exciting, and inspiring. It was an opportunity to illuminate the voices of BIPOC women who were

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assuming invisible burdens compounded by the trauma of a devastating global pandemic; it seemed timely, energizing, and therapeutic. Through this book, we provided the table and seats for ourselves and others who had not previously received such invitations. We saw a cumulative effect in which future collaborations were borne from this project. Ideas for more conversations, articles, and presentations ensued. Contributors’ voices were validated, and their experiences authenticated. We observed how often scholars and experts in the field felt imposter syndrome; many people talking about the imposter syndrome were talking about the feeling of being a scholar and expert in their field and discipline. Therefore, this book aimed to validate the experience of imposter syndrome and affirm the writers who submitted by providing an opportunity to amplify and validate their voices about existing inequities magnified by COVID-19.

COVID-19 Impacts The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic echoed widely and has been felt in higher education especially. The pandemic also highlighted several levels of mental health trauma and disparities for certain groups including BIPOC communities and BIPOC women in academia. For example, racial and gender differences in risk for certain mental disorders were identified during the pandemic, with students identifying as Black having elevated risk for major depressive disorder when compared to White students (Kim et al., 2022). Furthermore, international, sexual minority, first-generation, first-year, and racial and ethnic minority group students faced increased barriers to their mental health during the pandemic (Lee et  al., 2021; Song et  al., 2021). COVID-19 and its repercussions have also compounded the pervasive trauma and pre-existing inequities that normally exist for BIPOC staff, faculty, and students, all of whom have had to contend with rising racial tensions due to high-profile cases of police brutality against Black individuals, mounting protests, and political turmoil (Harder & McGowan, 2020; Gopalan et al., 2022; Njoku et al., 2021; Toure et al., 2021). Moreover, faculty of color—especially Black faculty and Black women—were more likely to face family illness, loss of loved ones, unemployment, caregiving, and homeschooling while concurrently providing more emotional support to struggling students (Mickey et  al., 2020). Black faculty and administrators have also had to teach and work in higher

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education while coping with these additional physical and economic tolls, emotional trauma, and civil unrest (Njoku & Evans, 2022). Asian women in academia may have had to contend with the anxiety of hate crimes and negative biases against Asian Americans during COVID-19 (Tessler et  al., 2020). BIPOC women faculty with children may have encountered added challenges including feelings of isolation, guilt about their productivity, and additional pressure to prove themselves in the academy (Lechuga-Peña, 2022). The COVID-19 associated physical, psychosocial, and emotional tolls call for strategies for surviving and thriving among BIPOC women in academia.

Sisterhood as a Strategy for Surviving and Thriving in Academia (Social Support) Many BIPOC women in academia do not recognize how it feels to be supported, held in high regard, or have colleagues genuinely concerned for their well-being. Most were alone or in isolation in the academy. Support and genuine concern are just some of the things that define “sisterhood.” A community or network of women who come together in solidarity that have common interests and share mutual esteem, experiences, concern, and support for each other (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2023). When embarking on this project, we realized that many BIPOC women have not and do not experience social support in their career in academia. This is especially true at predominantly White institutions (PWIs). It was a sobering realization. Watching women come together to encourage and, at times, coax each other to carry on is the epitome of “surviving” versus “thriving.” One indicates the day-to-day struggles, and daily onslaught of microaggressions, versus the ability to cheer each other on and feel authentic excitement for yourself and other BIPOC women’s achievements. During COVID-19, thriving took place through simple things such as intentionally building necessary spaces at physical or Zoom tables to have sisterhood catch-up conversations, prior to dealing with the daily tasks at hand (writing, researching, production of scholarly products, and paying double and triple mentoring taxation). The poet and feminist Adrienne Rich has a famous quote about contemplating the dynamic need for spaces and places at tables. She stated, “There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and be counted as warriors” (Rich, 1983). BIPOC women

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need a safe place where they can expose their vulnerabilities and come together to form alliances of strength, courage, and creativity with the knowledge that it is normal and acceptable to cry; we are stronger for it. The myth of the superwomen is, and always has been, bad for our health and well-being. We do our current selves a disservice when we do not tap into or acknowledge our present and full humanity. Creating and cultivating sisterhood as a strategy for surviving and thriving is the ultimate form of self-love and self-preservation in an academy that has normalized structural and systemic racism. Unless we counteract it, this system will keep BIPOC women in a perpetual state of self-doubt (or imposter syndrome).

Self-preservation in Academia Building tables and providing seats create spaces to heal. Having, sharing, and creating opportunities to share helps lift the load, both personally and professionally. Assisting others, especially those who thought they were alone, is self-preservation in action. Recognizing the importance of creating opportunities for belonging and inclusion lessens invisibility. A place to air wounds and levels of weariness, and explore themes such as “quietly quitting,” provides the strength BIPOC women in academia need to get through another day, write another manuscript, and take on another mentee. Acknowledging that our experiences matter, and that our unique differences as BIPOC women in academia are also important, is a powerful strategy that creates new tables, seats, and spaces to heal. This understanding of the power of collective action is the essence of self-preservation that needs to be taught and modeled. Our self-preservation in academia is the highest act of anti-racist resistance.

References Breeze, M., Addison, M., & Taylor, Y. (2022). Situating imposter syndrome in higher education. In M. Addison, M. Breeze, & Y. Taylor (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of imposter syndrome in higher education. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­86570-­2_1 Brooks, D. S. (2022). Black women vice presidents of student affairs at community colleges leadership pathways and barriers. Dissertations. Paper 219. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/diss/219/

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Corrigan, L. M., & Vats, A. (2020). The structural whiteness of academic patronage. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 17(2), 220–227. https:// doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2020.1770824 Deemer, E. D., Smith, J. L., Carroll, A. N., & Carpenter, J. P. (2014). Academic procrastination in STEM: Interactive effects of stereotype threat and achievement goals. The Career Development Quarterly, 62(2), 143–155. https://doi. org/10.1002/j.2161-­0045.2014.00076.x Gopalan, M., Linden-Carmichael, A., & Lanza, S. (2022). College students’ sense of belonging and mental health amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The Journal of Adolescent Health, 70(2), 228–233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jadohealth.2021.10.010 Hairston, K.  R., & Allen, T.  G. (Eds.). (2022). The ivory tower: Perspectives of women of color in higher education. Rowman & Littlefield. Harder, W. L., & McGowan, B. L. (2020). Recognizing COVID-19 as trauma: Considerations for student affairs educators and faculty developers. ACPA Admin. https://developments.myacpa.org/recognizing-­covid-­19-­as-­trauma-­ considerations-­for-­student-­affairs-­educators-­and-­faculty-­developers/ Johnson, A. (2022). Grown Black woman voice: A Framework for existence, persistence, resistance in higher education and beyond. Journal of African American Women and Girls in Education, 2(2), 86–100. https://doi. org/10.21423/jaawge-­v2i2a116 Johnson-Bailey, J., & Cervero, R. (2008). Different worlds and divergent paths: Academic careers defined by race and gender. Harvard Educational Review, 78(2), 311–332. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.78.2.nl53n670443651l7 June, A. W., & O’Leary, B. (2021, May 28). How many Black women have tenure on your campus? Search here. The Chronicle of Higher Education. www.chronicle.com/article/how-­m any-­b lack-­w omen-­h ave-­t enure-­o n-­y our-­c ampus-­ search-­here. Kim, H., Rackoff, G. N., Fitzsimmons-Craft, E. E., Shin, K. E., Zainal, N. H., Schwob, J.  T., Eisenberg, D., Wilfley, D.  E., Barr Taylor, C., & Newman, M. G. (2022). College mental health before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: Results from a nationwide survey. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 46(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-­021-­10241-­5 Lechuga-Peña, S. (2022). Navigating pre-tenure and COVID-19: A testimonio of a BIPOC junior faculty mother. Affilia, 37(1), 13–19. https://doi. org/10.1177/08861099211048432 Lee, J., Solomon, M., Stead, T., Kwon, B., & Ganti, L. (2021). Impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of US college students. BMC. Psychology, 9(95). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-­021-­00598-­3 Lin, P. S., & Kennette, L. N. (2022). Creating an inclusive community for BIPOC faculty: Women of color in academia. SN Social Sciences, 2(11), 246. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s43545-­022-­00555-­w

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Mickey, E., Clark, D., & Misra, J. (2020, September 4). Advice to academic administrators for how to best support faculty during the pandemic (Opinion). Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2020/09/04/ advice-­a cademic-­a dministrators-­h ow-­b est-­s uppor t-­f aculty-­d uring-­ pandemic-­opinion Morris, C., Kadiwal, L., Telling, K., Ashall, W., Kirby, J., & Mwale, S. (2022). Restorying imposter syndrome in the early career stage: Reflections, recognitions and resistance. In M.  Addison, M.  Breeze, & Y.  Taylor (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of imposter syndrome in higher education. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­86570-­2_14 Njoku, A., Ahmed, Y., & Bolaji, B. (2021). Police brutality against Blacks in the United States and ensuing protests: Implications for social distancing and Black health during COVID-19. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 31(1–4), 262–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/1091135 9.2020.1822251 Njoku, A., & Evans, M. (2022). Black women faculty and administrators navigating COVID-19, social unrest, and academia: Challenges and strategies. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(4), 2220. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19042220 Rich, A. (1983). Sources. Heyeck Press. Roberts, L., Nkrumah, T., Migueliz Valcarlos, M., & Agosto, V. (2022). Black Women acting against the extremes of visibility in the academy. Journal of African American Women and Girls in Education, 2(2), 116–137. https:// jaawge-­ojs-­tamu.tdl.org/JAAWGE/article/view/118 Sisterhood. 2023. In Merriam-Webster.com. Retrieved January 8, 2023, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sisterhood Song, B., Zhao, Y., & Zhu, J. (2021). COVID-19-Related traumatic effects and psychological reactions among international students. Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health, 11(1), 117–123. https://doi.org/10.2991/ jegh.k.201016.001 Tessler, H., Choi, M., & Kao, G. (2020). The anxiety of being Asian American: Hate crimes and negative biases during the COVID-19 pandemic. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 45, 636–646. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s12103-­020-­09541-­5 Toure, K., Langlois, E. V., Shah, M., McDougall, L., & Fogstad, H. (2021). How George Floyd and COVID-19 are highlighting structural inequities for vulnerable women, children and adolescents. International Journal for Equity in Health, 20(193). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-­021-­01540-­0

Index

A Academia, 27, 35, 46, 58, 62, 68, 71, 81, 86, 107, 150–152, 154, 159, 161–164 Achievement gap, 112 Administrators, 36, 38, 79, 80, 121, 124, 150, 155, 162 Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), 141–147 Advisor, 83, 100, 103–106, 108, 137 African American, 4, 82, 149 Aiyana Stanley-Jones, 151 Alaskan Native, 31, 35, 82, 149 American Indian, 4, 6, 31, 35, 82, 149 Anti-racism, 150, 151, 156 Anxiety, xv, 8, 18, 25, 28, 39, 45, 75, 137, 143, 159, 163 Arbery, Ahmaud, 9, 151 Asian, 25, 35–41, 82, 121, 122, 163 Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI), 36 Asian/Pacific Islander, 82 Asian women scholars, 35–41 Attention economy, 46

B Baldwin, James, 10, 11 bell hooks, 13, 14, 16, 18 Bereavement, 27, 30, 31, 100 Bias, 86, 110, 122 Bilingual, 84, 85, 106 Black, xiii, 3–6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, 31, 35, 82, 89, 91–93, 95, 107, 109, 110, 112, 113, 115, 120–122, 134, 135, 137, 142, 143, 145–147, 149–155, 159, 161, 162 Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, 4, 122, 123, 134, 150, 155, 159–164 Black Lives Matter, 93, 107, 110 Bland, Sandra, 110 Brown v Board of Education, 82 C Calculus, 127–131 Castile, Philando, 151 Chairperson, 86 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 59

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Njoku, M. Evans (eds.), Navigating Academia During COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35613-1

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INDEX

Chitimacha, 4 Chronic illness, 152 Closure, 62, 105, 111 Collaboration, 135, 136, 138, 162 Conduct officer, 121–124 Conference presentation, 137 Coping, 40, 110, 114, 137, 150, 163 COVID-19, 5, 6, 13, 22, 27–32, 39, 44, 51–56, 58, 68, 71, 73–80, 89, 90, 97, 98, 100, 101, 104, 106, 108, 110, 113, 120, 121, 123, 124, 127, 128, 131, 133–138, 142, 145–147, 149–155, 159, 162–163 D Discrimination, xv, 5, 37, 39, 110, 121, 122, 150 Dissertation, 16, 57, 103–105, 108, 125 Diversity, xvi, 4, 36, 37, 39, 40, 82, 114, 151, 154, 156 Doctorate, xiv, 52–54, 56, 60, 103–105, 108 E Eid ul' Fitr, 21–26 Elementary school, xvi, 73, 76, 79 Ellis, Manuel, 11 Empathy fatigue, 52 Equity, xiii, xvi, 5, 10, 79, 114, 136, 151, 154, 156 Ethnicity, 31, 85, 122, 123 Evers, Medgar, xiv, 146 F Faculty, xv, xvi, 18, 24, 35–40, 69, 81, 82, 84–86, 104, 134–138, 147, 150, 154, 155, 162, 163 Financial aid, 123

Floyd, George, 8, 9, 11, 12, 31, 93, 107, 110, 135, 146, 147, 150, 151 Food insecurity, 120 Funeralization, 28, 30 G Gandhi, Mahatma, 147 Gender, 5, 16, 36, 39, 40, 54, 62, 110, 134, 136, 152–154, 159, 162 Generational trauma, 143 Google Classroom, 74, 78 Graduate school, 84, 86, 99, 104 Graduate studies, 105, 138 Grief, 27–32, 71, 97, 99, 100, 113, 114, 151 H Higher education, xiii, 35–40, 82, 109, 114, 124, 125, 133, 134, 138, 145, 150, 152, 156, 160–162 Hispanic, 31, 70, 82, 149 Homeless, 120 Homophobia, 90 Housing insecurity, 120 Hybrid teaching, 77 I Iftar, 22, 24 Imposter syndrome, 86, 112, 160, 162, 164 Inclusion, xiii, xvi, 10, 114, 151, 154, 156, 164 Influenza epidemic of 1918, 28 J January 6, 2021 attempted coup, 93

 INDEX 

K King, Martin Luther Jr., 147 L Latinx, 31, 35, 51–56, 81–86, 107, 120, 121, 134, 135, 149, 150 Learning specialist, 51, 52 Lewis, John, 18, 147 Lockdown, 43, 111, 120, 127, 146 M Malcolm X, 146, 147 March, 11, 12, 93 Martin, Trayvon, 147, 151 Mental health, 6, 31, 53, 77, 100, 113, 134, 136, 150, 155, 162 Me-Too Movement, 93 Microaggressions, xiv, 16, 37, 38, 86, 159, 163 Millennial, 110 Mothering, 112 Muslim, 21–23, 47

169

Parents, 21, 23, 25, 26, 54, 70, 71, 73–78, 80, 83, 85, 90, 91, 106, 112, 142–145 Post-Roe, 114 Prejudice, 159 Professional development, 153 Professor, xiii, xiv, xvii, 13, 31, 51, 82–84, 89–91, 94, 95, 107, 136, 137 Protective factors, 144, 145, 147 Public health, 5, 6, 68, 70, 93, 101, 135, 137, 145, 149 Public welfare, 93 Publishing, 137, 159

O Ontology, 11

R Race, 16, 31, 36, 39–41, 62, 69, 85, 110, 122, 123, 151 Racism, 6, 16, 18, 37, 86, 110, 111, 133, 135, 142, 146, 147, 149, 151, 152, 154, 155, 164 Ramadan, 21–26, 47 Recruitment, 82, 138, 161 Religion, 145 Resilience, 40, 58, 89, 90, 108, 111, 145 Retention, 82, 134, 138, 161 Rice, Tamir, 110, 151 Rich, Adrienne, 163 Running, 23, 25, 70, 106

P Pacific Islander, 121 Pandemic, 12, 14–16, 22–25, 28–31, 39, 43, 46, 47, 51–53, 55, 57, 71, 73–80, 90, 92–95, 97–99, 101, 103, 104, 106–108, 110–114, 120–122, 125, 127, 128, 131–133, 136, 145, 149, 150, 152, 155, 162

S Seale, Bobby, 146 Self-care, xv, 14, 106, 108, 152, 153, 156 Sexism, 90 Staff, 8–11, 24, 69, 74, 78–82, 84–86, 120, 134, 150, 154, 155, 162 Student research, 135

N Native American, 3–6, 120

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INDEX

Students, xiv, xvii, 10–12, 15, 17, 18, 24, 31, 36–40, 51–56, 58, 67–71, 73–82, 84–86, 91, 94, 95, 99, 100, 104, 111–113, 119–125, 128–132, 134, 136–138, 142, 145, 147, 150, 152, 154, 155, 162 Support, 17, 18, 31, 40, 46, 53, 54, 58, 68, 74, 78, 80, 104, 105, 108, 112, 113, 134, 136, 137, 143, 150, 154–156, 160, 162–164 T Taraweh, 22 Taylor, Breonna, 9, 11, 93, 107, 110, 147, 151 Teachers, 8, 18, 24, 74, 76, 78, 80, 85, 112 Till, Emmett, 146, 147 Title IX, 119 Tokenism, 40 Trauma-informed practices, 147, 151, 156 Tuskegee, 6

U The United Houma Nation, 5, 6 United States Constitution, 96 V Vaccine, 5, 71, 92, 95, 101, 121, 144, 150 Virtual teaching, 15, 24, 74, 79, 91, 127 W Weathering, 110–112, 114 White, 3–6, 35, 54, 82, 84, 85, 94, 95, 109, 110, 113, 120, 142, 143, 150, 159, 160, 162, 163 Work-life balance, 114 World Health Organization, 27, 73, 127 Z Zoom, 9, 24, 25, 52, 53, 91, 104, 105, 108, 163