FORWARD TOGETHER
'I LEARNED I'M CAPABLE OF pretty Much anything'
As the UC Merced community prepares for fall semester and transitions to various levels of in-person activity, Inside UC Merced reached out to faculty and staff to share their thoughts and memories about life amid a pandemic and what “normal” might look like in the months to come. Click on the names below to view their responses.
Tips on Handling Change from an Expert on Stress
Change can be stressful, even when it involves going back to how things were. The return to in-person learning, living and working at UC Merced for fall semester is exciting and, in many ways, crucial to the university’s mission. But it still can be test of our emotions.
Professor Matthew Zawadzki has made a career out of studying stress. As director of the Stress and Health Lab in the Department of Psychological Sciences, he researches how our thoughts function as a mechanism to create and extend stress responses.
In a conversation with Inside UC Merced, Zawadzki talked about how the pandemic reshaped our lives and how we can better adjust from months of working and teaching remotely to being on-site.
“We have a lot of things going on, big and small, but don’t have much say over them” Zawadzki said. “That can lead to chronic stress-building.”
We have a lot of things going on, big and small,
but don’t have much say over them.
Professor Matthew Zawadzki
The pandemic and loss of control: The worldwide crisis came with a long list of stressors. Upended lives and schedules. Anxiety about health and safety. Governmental or occupational guidance that seems to change by the week. All of these boil down to loss of personal control.
“We have a lot of things going on, big and small, but don’t have much say over them,” Zawadzki said. “That can lead to chronic stress-building.”
The effect of a shared experience: Zawadzki was living in Queens when the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred. The days and weeks that followed were filled with sorrow and uncertainty, but the shared experience allowed New Yorkers to open up to each other like never before. “People were able to talk about how they felt,” he said. “They didn’t feel embarrassed.” The pandemic can have a similar effect as the campus community reconvenes. “If you’re struggling with going back to being in-person, tell a co-worker because there’s a chance they’re going through it, or maybe they’ve figured it out.”
Incorporate time for enjoyable activity: Zawadzki’s research includes studying the benefits of leisure activities. Doing something you like to do can distract you from stressful things and put you into calmer state where you can work on long-term skills like acceptance and empathy. Zawadzki, for instance, looks forward to resuming walks around campus to clear his head or chat with colleagues.
Try some meditation: Mindful meditation can be overprescribed as a treatment for stress, Zawadzki said, but might be just the thing for this situation. “It’s a really powerful way to train us to be non-reactive. So when we hear bad news we don’t get revved up immediately, or when we face uncertainty we don’t get into an anxiety spiral.”
It is what it is: Meditation also can help with acceptance, which can make it easier to keep moving forward. “This is the reality. If you accept that as the starting point, your next step can be to ask: 'What can I do about it?'” Zawadzki said. “'What are ways in which I can maximize my life?'”
Positive change doesn’t always work the first time: People who try to quit smoking, eat healthier or exercise regularly often fail at their first attempt. And sometimes their second and third. The important thing is to accept failure, then try again. “As we think about trying to establish a new normal, it’s not always going to work out perfectly the first time,” Zawadzki said. “But it will work out. We learn by failing because we learn what doesn’t work for us and start figuring out our stable base. It’s important to have self-compassion when we make those mistakes so that we are willing to try again.”
We work hard to forge new normals: When we face change, the anticipation is often more stressful than the transition itself, Zawadzki said. He calls this stress forecasting. And more often than not, people adjust to new conditions more swiftly than they expect.
We don’t know what a new normal is going to be. And we’re thinking it’s going to be awful. And it might be at first as we learn how to deal with people in person again. But we’re going to figure it out really quick. With help from friends and others, we’ll find a routine that works. We have to trust that we can get there, and get there quickly.
Professor Matthew Zawadzki
#BobcatsAreBack
Here’s How to Stay Informed
Fall semester is around the corner. Faculty, staff and students are returning to campus. The energy of a young research university can be felt again. At first glance, it may look like nothing happened.
But of course, it absolutely happened — a spike-armored virus that, as of early August, had claimed nearly 4.3 million lives worldwide and sickened tens of millions more.
Now, 17 months after the COVID-19 pandemic curtailed in-person operations and sent hundreds home to remote work and instruction, the UC Merced community is coming back — carefully. The late-summer rise of the virus's Delta variant has led to extra precautions and health guidance.
The primary home for information about what to do, what to expect and who to contact with questions is our Campus Ready / Do Your Part website. Please bookmark and refer to it regularly. Meanwhile, continue to do what we raised to high art during the pandemic: Watch out for each other.
Why It’s Important to #TakeYourShot
Vaccination against COVID-19 is required for anyone who learns, lives or works on campus or any UC Merced facility. That said, the decision to get inoculated is often a personal one (and certain exemptions are considered). Here’s what some members of the campus community said when asked why they were vaccinated.
It was important to me to get vaccinated because ...
... I wanted to protect myself and others. By taking this simple precaution, I take a step toward normalcy (whatever normal is these days!).
Allison Jones, undergraduate student
… I want to be responsible for myself and my surrounding family, friends and community for preventing the spread of COVID-19.
Professor Michele K. Nishiguchi Department of Cell and Molecular Biology
… it offers protection to both me and others. The likelihood of me getting infected is reduced, and so will the likelihood of me spreading infection onto others. Should more people get vaccinated, more lives will be saved.
Daravuth Cheam, graduate student
… as an immunologist, I know that vaccines work to prevent or lessen the severity of communicable diseases in a population. History and scientific studies have proven the effectiveness of vaccines.
Professor Jennifer Manilay Department of Cell and Molecular Biology
… it’s one of the ways I can do my part to ensure that my community is safe!
Erika Murillo Candelas, undergraduate student
Some Faculty MIGHT Feel THE Pandemic’s Effects for Years
How has the COVID-19 pandemic been felt by UC Merced’s academic community, and how significant is the return to in-person instruction this fall semester, along with the ramping up of on-site research? Inside UC Merced turned to Professor Robin DeLugan, the 2020-21 Academic Senate chair, for some answers.
There have been more than enough challenges to go around.
Professor Robin DeLugan
From your point of view, what has faculty and the academic community learned about themselves during the pandemic? I know the word may be a little overused, but we learned how resilient we are. There have been a lot of heroes during the pandemic, but it’s faculty who kept the university going by immediately switching their classes to an online format. I’m sure for most of them it was a first-time experience. And we didn’t have the luxury of setting up a modality plan for teaching online. We just had to make it work. Some faculty, those who might not have young children at home, used the time to get some writing done. Also, despite the pandemic, the number of grants submitted and awarded has been very robust. So some people were able to make lemonade out of lemons. What were the biggest challenges the pandemic has posed for faculty? How did they respond to it? For most of faculty, teaching is just one leg of a three-legged stool. The other legs are research, along with service to our department, university and profession. This is the work they are expected to do, and they are evaluated on it. People were unable to get into their labs or perform other responsibilities. I’m an anthropologist. I couldn’t do field research; I couldn’t travel. When you're unable to do research at a research university, it’s like losing your central core. And then there was the sudden switch to teaching online, along with the overall stress about family health and well-being. There have been more than enough challenges to go around. The younger, untenured faculty have been the most vulnerable. They're new on their career trajectory and have a tight timeline — six, seven years — to meet the high expectations for tenure at a campus like ours. If you can’t do your research, your clock is still running and you’re feeling the stress. This is going to impact their careers for three to five years. In addition, many of our junior faculty have families with young children. There have been discussions about bridge funding for these faculty or figuring out how to decrease their class load over the next two or three years to help them catch up.
The pandemic has had a deep impact on education nationwide. In what ways specifically did it affect a young research university like UC Merced? There’s so much we value in a UC Merced education. We value the personal connections, the things that happen around us — not just in the classroom but in conversations in office hours, in community building. It’s the opportunity to bring up new ideas and get new ideas flowing. That just doesn’t happen as easily in a Zoom environment. It’s too constrained.
We did a few things systematically to make it easier on students, knowing the stress and uncertainty they were experiencing, the concerns about their family’s health. We facilitated the pass/no pass policy. It was quite a juggling act. How could we ensure the students have a good experience in the spirit of learning while very much appreciating the fear and anxiety — and even loss —many were experiencing? It was definitely uncharted territory for us. Some students say they prefer classes online. But that’s not the best way to learn. It’s not the best way for first-generation students who are coming from under-resourced backgrounds. Other universities might give you online degrees, but that’s not a University of California education.
The rise in positive coronavirus case due to the Delta variant exemplifies the pandemic’s unpredictability. How does this inform the academic community’s response and actions as fall semester begins? You know, President Drake is a medical doctor. He follows the science very closely. We also have UC Health. We’re lucky to have a lot of experts among our faculty and UC leadership. And of course there’s the CDC and the state and county public health departments. The goal is to get everybody vaccinated so we can keep the infections and hospitalizations low. But we don’t yet how the Delta variant will affect all of this. I think the COVID-19 response has been shared governance at its finest. We have faculty and administration working together to ensure we are addressing what’s going on in the classroom, in research, and with our staff. As fall semester begins, what advice for adjusting to another “new normal” do you have for the university’s academic community? The first thing is: get vaccinated. Then we need to take the time really value our campus community and to listen to each other. What did we learn? What was lost, and how can we bring it back? How will this impact our faculty and grad students three, four, five years from now? And let's not lose sight that we’re a community of people, a caring community. This pandemic has affected people in different ways; we need to be sensitive to that, and be cognizant that some people had a much harder time than others. We're not out of the woods quite yet. But there's a lot to commend, recognize and celebrate in the hard work we all took on over this last year and a half.
Head of COVID Response Center Cheers Our ‘Extraordinary Resilience’
In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, Andy Boyd, executive director of the Center of Institutional Excellence, was appointed to lead the university’s response to the threat of COVID-19. Inside UC Merced asked our Chief Resilience Officer to reflect on the campus community’s journey through this challenge.
The past 17 months have challenged us all. Each of us has our experience through the pandemic that has had us exist in ways that were previously unimaginable. We faced a tremendous challenge and succeeded in our mission to serve students, support our colleagues and fulfill our obligations to the Merced community.
Here are some examples that won’t do full justice to each of our experiences:
- Students had to learn away from campus, often without the benefits of private space.
- Instructors had to revamp courses for the remote modality. Some taught from their bedrooms or garages.
- Some of our staff had to continue to maintain a physical presence on campus while others tried to figure out how to establish a home setup conducive to work while navigating new platforms such as MS Teams to work collaboratively with colleagues.
- Each of us had to juggle this with family members and roommates also adjusting, all the while trying to avoid the COVID-19 illness.
- And not all of us could avoid illness, either to ourselves, immediate family or friends. Most sadly, some of us lost loved ones due to the pandemic and have had to do all of the above while grieving.
I share these to say that each of us has shown extraordinary resilience through these challenging times. What I’m most proud of is how our campus community remained focused. While the implementation of our COVID-19 response had its challenges (see above) and individuals at times may not have felt heard, the intent of our collective efforts were to put our people first and focus on our community’s wellbeing.
- Our university launched the Dens Program in record time to help the incoming students that had never set foot on our campus.
- The People First workgroup brought numerous issues to leadership’s attention and championed numerous ways for us to acknowledge and navigate the stresses of the moment.
- Our campus created more than a dozen workgroups (when counting sub-groups) inclusive of our expert faculty to help understand the situation and do our best to organize our response.
- We used more than 70 staff throughout the campus across all divisions to help manager our nascent Pandemic Recovery Team, which included the COVID Response Center, Daily Health Check-In and Asymptomatic Testing Center, to name a few operations.
- Our UC sister campuses created workgroups to share world-class information and resources across all 10 campuses.
- We partnered with Merced College, UC Health, Dignity Health and Merced County Department of Public Health to offer a large pop-up vaccination clinic for the Merced community during the early phases of the vaccination rollout.
I believe our resilience starts with each of us and compounds exponentially as a community.
As we move forward into this new academic year, each of us is flooded with different emotions as we continue to navigate these unchartered waters. Our situation has improved in some respects and become more nuanced in others. As a community, we are far better off this year with the availability of rapid testing and vaccination programs. We have key teams in place that were only in development a year ago. We’ve also learned which situations create risks and how best to mitigate these risks when they are unavoidable.
As the effects of the UC COVID-19 Vaccination Program take shape, our risk profile as a campus community will become greatly improved, enabling us to focus on what we do best – produce world-class research and instruction while engaging the community through various partnerships and educational opportunities.
Although things have improved, we are far from done with the pandemic. But with our individual and collective resilience, we will navigate this next phase as we always have – as a community.
