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Editor’s Note: After each Board of Trustees meeting, Western Today provides a recap of decisions and discussion.  

Trustees Hear Update on Western’s Response to Pandemic 

Western’s Board of Trustees on Friday, April 17, heard reports on how the university has responded to the coronavirus outbreak. 

Board Chair Earl Overstreet, on behalf of the trustees, expressed “empathy and solidarity with students, faculty and staff of Western whose academic, personal and professional lives have been disrupted by the pandemic.” 

Overstreet also expressed the trustees’ “admiration and gratitude for the resilience of the Western community and the extraordinary efforts that have been made to keep Western running as well as possible under very difficult conditions and timelines. 

“Faculty have worked incredibly hard over the past few weeks to get ready to engage in a new instructional model, on very short notice. Staff has also made herculean efforts to prepare for remote teaching, helping students transition to a remote learning environment and transforming services, processes and policies to adapt to this new reality. Students have been gracious and understanding through the most turbulent times any of us have lived through,” Overstreet said. 

Melynda Huskey, vice president for Enrollment and Student Services, said that the University developed an Incident Command Structure (ICS), to respond to the many challenges of the coronavirus outbreak. ICS is a structure developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to effectively and consistently respond to large-scale emergencies and disasters. Huskey and Rich Van Den Hul, �������� vice president for Business and Financial Affairs, are co-incident commanders. 

Since Western’s ICS was formed the first of March. a group of about 60 Western employees have logged over 10,000 hours responding to the pandemic. Huskey, who has served during smaller ICS emergencies before, said that this ICS response was “without question the best prepared, the most collaborative, most flexible and most committed group of folks I’ve ever worked with in the context of an emergency.” 

That work and effective outreach efforts by Admissions likely paid dividends, as initial enrollment projections for spring quarte are only 2.3 percent less that enrollment in spring 2019, Huskey said, adding that university officials were concerned about a bigger drop in response to remote learning this spring.  

Provost Brent Carbajal said shifting to online instruction in so short a period of time was something he never could have imagined, noting that while most faculty were familiar to some degree with Canvas, Western’s course management system, many faculty members had to learn on the fly to use online tools such as Zoom. Carbajal also thanked the Faculty Senate and faculty union for their cooperation. 

Faculty Senate President Jeff Young praised the efforts of faculty who worked very hard to make the transition to remote instruction, often collaborating within and across departments. “I think we’re off to a very good start,” Young said.  

 Huskey also lauded the efforts of ATUS Director John Farquhar and Justina Brown for their leadership in helping faculty and the university transition “with lightning speed” to remote instruction. 

Farquhar said of the many responses by ATUS, one key issue was to ensure that “technology remained in the hands of students,” including making several hundred laptop computers available for loan to students for spring quarter. Farquhar said the ATUS help desk has been working remotely, answering many inquiries. Brown said they provided training for academic departments and college groups, and to “hundreds of people” as they supported the shift to remote instruction.  

The Student Health Center did coronavirus testing until running out of supplies, Huskey said. The health center shifted to telehealth, seeing up to 80 student patients a day. The Counseling Center likewise has shifted to remote service for students. Also, plans are under way to establish a separate respiratory clinic in the former lock shop in the Campus Services building where student patients with respiratory symptoms can be seen separately while the Student Health Center would eventually accept in-person patients on a limited basis to start. The former lock shop is separate from the rest of the building and has its own separate HVAC ventilation system. 

Huskey said Western’s ICS has been working “side by side” with Whatcom Unified Command and several Western staff are working with and volunteering with Whatcom Unified Command, which is jointly overseen by the Whatcom Sheriff’s Office and the Whatcom County Health Department. 

President Sabah Randhawa said the university also is working cooperatively with local officials, including the county executive and Bellingham mayor. 
Donna Gibbs, vice president for University Relations and Marketing, said communications efforts in response to the pandemic included creation of the university’s heavily visited coronavirus website, with information on how the university is responding as well as extensive FAQs (See: ) and a Spring Guide (See: ) created to ease the transition to spring quarter’s remote teaching and to serve as a resource for faculty and students. She said the Spring Guide will transition to serve as a summer session resource as well. Gibbs also noted numerous regular email communications from ICS to students, faculty, staff and families. 

Gibbs said that the pandemic crisis comes at a critical time in Western’s fall 2020 recruitment cycle, and so division marketing efforts have supported Admissions on a proactive paid advertising campaign designed to engage undecided seniors and admitted students in a virtual tour event held April 17 (during which about 1,000 admitted students signed up) and to remind prospective students that “We Are Here for You” via a video that includes both President Randhawa and wife Uzma Ahmed  The campaign builds off this video from our homes to student homes and will be activated on Facebook/Instagram, YouTube, display retargeting and IP targeting of yield lists. Gibbs also said that they had recently refreshed creative on out-of-state and in-state campaigns targeted at high school sophomores and juniors with a new series of ads called “Find Space in the PNW” featuring an undergraduate research team and recent alumni engaged on the Mars Rover 2020 project.  

Becca Kenna-Schenk, executive director of Government Relations, said that the state budget will likely be severely impacted by the pandemic as the state economy suffers, especially since the state government depends heavily on sales tax revenues. She said this will be softened somewhat by the state’s current large reserves and federal funding to states, including from the CARES Act. 

Van Den Hul and Faye Gallant, executive director of Budget and Financial Planning, also briefed the trustees on the financial impact of the coronavirus on Western. Gallant said that self-supported auxiliaries such as University Residences, the bookstore and parking have taken significant hits on revenue.  

Van Den Hul noted the uncertainty of financial planning during the coronavirus, mentioned money-saving efforts under way by the university such as freezes on travel and hiring, that the university has an adequate reserve now, and described financial contingency models under various scenarios, such as potential state budget cuts.  He said all public universities in the state are facing similar financial impacts but added that Western was in as good a shape or better than the other public universities in the state. 

In other business, the trustees: 

• Approved summer session tuition and fees. See: . Provost Carbajal said that even after summer session increases Western still is charging considerably less than what the University of Washington and Washington State University are charging for summer session, though in line with the other regional public universities in the state. 

• Associated Students President Lani DeFiesta briefed the trustees on recent activities of the AS, including hosting a recent AS virtual forum on tuition and fees in the current changed learning environment. DeFiesta thanked Hunter Stuehm, student trustee and AS communications director, for his efforts with the virtual forum. In addition, the Student Senate also was planning virtual forums for students at Western’s individual colleges. DeFiesta also read a statement from AS Vice President for Diversity Yesugen Battsengel, who outlined a number of concerns about university support for undocumented students, a demographic hard-hit by the pandemic. 

• Approved awarding several construction projects, including: to replace siding at the Birnam Wood Apartments; for structures and an elevator for the new Interdisciplinary Science Building (ISB); and for fire protection and early mechanical, electrical, and plumbing for the ISB. See: .   

• Approved appointment of the Washington State Auditor’s Office to perform an audit of fiscal year 2020 financial statements for Western Washington University, Housing and Dining, and the Wade King Student Recreation Center. See: .   

• Heard a report on Western’s Student Success Committee from Trustee Mo West, who described presentations the committee heard on the university’s various response to the pandemic, noting how impressed she was by the rapid work of ATUS, academics and other units shifting to or supporting online learning. 
           

The next regular meeting of the Board of trustees will be June 11 and 12. Meeting documents are available at the Board of Trustees website at .