Chris Fiorentino has been the president of West Chester University for almost four years, but this is his first time running an institution of higher education during a global pandemic. Meeting the needs of students and faculty alike via screens and monitors has not been easy, and there is still a lot to be learned and change as the pandemic progresses. On Nov. 15, he took the time to answer a few questions from Emma Bickerstaffe (EB) and Caroline Helms (CH) regarding the future of the university during a time when everything is unknown. As the near-completed remote fall semester bleeds into remote learning in the spring, Fiorentino talked predictions of an in-person Fall 2021 semester, the re-adaption of the alternative grading policy and the current round of retrenchment sweeping PASSHE universities. The interview has been edited for clarity.
EB: With the remote fall semester coming to a close, can you tell us your feelings on how it went?
PF: This is not an ideal state of the world for any of us. I know that the students are exhausted and Zoomed-out, and I can tell you that the faculty are Zoomed-out, and the administration and the staff are Zoomed-out. We’re all living through this experience together, and generally speaking, we’ve tried to keep track of how the students are doing and how they’re managing through their courses. We know that it’s stressful; social media is an interesting tool, and we hear your concerns being raised, but then, through some of our survey work, we’re hearing significant satisfaction with how things have gone, generally.
We hear some people hate asynchronous classes, and other students love asynchronous classes — it’s hard to generalize. Obviously, when you take many students who have not participated in online classes — whether synchronous or asynchronous before — and if you have faculty who have chosen not to teach this way, there are going to be adjustments for everybody, learning curves for everybody, and that certainly has been the case. I can tell you that the faculty has worked very hard. We have many programs that were already structured to be online, so we have a lot of faculty who have significant experience with online classes and many who are really doing it for the first time, and they’ve been pressed into action. Everybody is learning as they go; we’re continuing to encourage people to work with each other and identify best practices. We can always learn; no matter where we are in life, we can continue to improve — what works, what doesn’t — and learn to get better.
Generally, I’m pleased with how the semester has gone… We’re very sensitive to the pressures that the students are under, and we’re trying to do everything that we can to help them get through. Our belief from the start was that this is something we all have to survive, and students are going to be better off if they can hang in there and earn credits towards their degrees rather than stepping back and losing a semester-worth of time. Frankly, most students stayed with us. Our enrollment was up a little bit in the fall compared to the previous fall; we weren’t quite sure what to expect, but that was a good thing. Another good thing — we encourage students not to take quite so heavy a load, because again, the remote delivery is tricky, and we gave students the opportunity to take winter and summer courses for free. We’re very pleased to see that the number of students enrolling in the winter is about twice as much as what we had last winter. A lot of students are taking advantage of that opportunity.
Our belief from the start was that this is something we all have to survive, and students are going to be better off if they can hang in there and earn credits towards their degrees rather than stepping back and losing a semester-worth of time.
EB: What are some changes that will be implemented for the spring semester with the university having completed a full-term remote?
PF: We’re taking a look at what we’ve done; we’re reassessing. We have some classes that have been meeting face-to-face on a very limited basis; we’re reassessing that, we’re trying to get a sense of whether other programs did not opt to have face-to-face classes, but now they have labs or something like that, and if it would be better if they were more face-to-face. We’re trying to see what we can accommodate in the spirit of keeping everybody safe, socially distanced and so forth.
For spring, we’ve heard a lot of concern being raised primarily for the first-year students, who anticipated being on-campus and have not had that experience. We’re now communicating with them; we’re looking at how we can house more students in the residence halls and still keep people safe but give them more of the campus experience. Obviously, we’re going to continue remote classes, but we do feel that there are benefits to being on campus — even on a limited basis. Being able to interact with other students, being able to have the library available, having robust connectivity available, good computer monitors — all of the things that maybe a number of the students don’t have great access to at home. There are a lot of benefits associated with being on-campus, even if we’re not able to have the classes face-to-face.
For spring, we’ve heard a lot of concern being raised primarily for the first-year students, who anticipated being on-campus and have not had that experience. We’re now communicating with them; we’re looking at how we can house more students in the residence halls and still keep people safe but give them more of the campus experience.
In the spring, we’re taking a good, hard look at whether we can bring athletics back. The Athletic Board has voted to allow spring athletics, so now we’re working with the Athletic Director, coaches and others regarding how we can keep everybody safe. There were significant cost implications of testing that we have to be realistic about — testing costs money. These are some of the big things that we’re looking at for spring.
EB: What do you say to the displeasure that students have expressed over course instruction, tuition prices and the university’s choice to go remote, rather than employing a hybrid method?
PF: As far as instruction, again, we heard more positive than negative about the instruction. And frankly, we heard complaints about instruction even in normal semesters, so it’s hard to say whether it’s worse or better. I think that the upper-division students are probably in a better position to adapt to this, and we are hearing from a lot of the juniors and seniors that the asynchronous classes give them the flexibility that they like. Probably the first-year students are the ones who are in the most difficult position. Transitioning to college for the first time and then going into this kind of a mode — not what they expected, they were hoping to be on campus.
We understand the frustration, but in terms of the remote-classes, we’re required by the government to socially distance. In a typical semester, we have 3,500 classes, and when you’re social distancing in a classroom that’s intended to have 25 or 30 students in it, you’re lucky if you can get eight or nine. How do you run those classes? Break it into three? … It’s just not an ideal circumstance, but it’s what we’re stuck with. You get a place like Penn State; they have a lot of big lecture halls. It’s easier for them to spread out in bigger spaces, but that’s not how WCU operates. We’re a campus that has relatively small classes, and so, in a situation like this, that tends to work against us in terms of being able to spread out.
We’re anticipating a full return back to campus in the fall; we’re planning aggressively for that — full occupancy in the residence halls, elimination of social distancing. We’re hearing very encouraging news about vaccines and therapeutics; we’re getting ourselves in line to try and get our at-risk population here vaccinated as soon as possible so that we can turn things around. Those are some of the things we’re working on.
We’re anticipating a full return back to campus in the fall; we’re planning aggressively for that — full occupancy in the residence halls, elimination of social distancing.
As far as tuition — we still have to run this place; we still have to pay people. We reduced the fees; the overall tuition and fee charge for in-state students was dropped 11%. That’s what we felt we could afford to do and still operate the university. People have to make a choice — if that’s not satisfactory, then I understand. People have to make a choice, and if they decide that they don’t want to come back because they don’t like it like this, well, I don’t like it like this either. We’re just trying to make the best of it and do the best job that we can to provide the education that we’re here to provide and keep students moving towards their ultimate goal.
If some miracle occurs and we get everybody vaccinated by the end of January, then we’ll step back and rethink things a little bit, perhaps. Realistically, that doesn’t seem to be what’s going to be happening. You’re all seeing the same news that I am: the virus is ramping up. We haven’t heard any changes related to Chester County at this point, but we’re prepared to keep moving forward and keep our campus community safe. There were some concerns raised on Friday after I had stated in the Town Hall meeting that as a public institution, we’re not permitted to require testing… Testing is a tricky thing — if we bring students to campus and test them, and then Thursday night comes around and they go to a party on Walnut Street, that test is no good anymore. How much testing can we do and how fast can we get the results? It’s not a realistic way to try and keep the community safe. I can tell you that we’re regularly reassessing everything and asking questions: are there ways that we can do this better, are there things that we’re missing? I take no satisfaction in having to make announcements like, ‘we’re continuing operating remotely,’ but we’re dealing with the constraints that we have, and we’re doing the best that we can to deliver high-quality education programs with as much student support as we can provide online.
There were some concerns raised on Friday after I had stated in the Town Hall meeting that as a public institution, we’re not permitted to require testing…
CH: WCU has been largely unaffected by the current round of PASSHE retrenchments. Do you have any fear about WCU’s enrollment numbers for next semester?
PF: We’re lucky that [our enrollment] has been growing, but we’re careful about the deployment of faculty, making sure that we have the right number of faculty for the enrollments that we have. Even though our numbers are growing, some programs grow, and some programs shrink, so you have to be careful about re-deploying faculty. We have done more than just grow — we have managed our faculty complement carefully so that we make sure that we’re getting the most out of our money at all times.
As far as next semester, we’re carefully monitoring the scheduling that’s going on. It’s a little behind pace, but not by an alarming amount. If we do find that not as many students come back, we do have the ability to make adjustments in the faculty complement. Obviously, within a certain range, the classes could just be a little smaller. But if we have a significant decline, we do employ a number of faculty on temporary contracts, and if we don’t have as many students, we don’t have to hire as many faculty. We maintain that flexibility, but as of now, we’re expecting to be at least pretty close to the anticipated enrollments for spring. Spring enrollments are always lower than fall enrollments because we do graduate a significant number of students in December, and we don’t bring in that many new students. So, we anticipate that the numbers will be smaller, and where we’ll end up remains to be seen.
As far as next semester, we’re carefully monitoring the scheduling that’s going on. It’s a little behind pace, but not by an alarming amount. If we do find that not as many students come back, we do have the ability to make adjustments in the faculty complement.
CH: How will retrenchment in other universities affect WCU? Will WCU look to take on the retrenched faculty from our sister universities?
PF: As far as retrenchment, West Chester is one of fourteen universities. Our enrollments are robust, a lot of the other schools have been dealing with enrollment declines, and retrenchment occurs because they have not been able to adjust the size of the faculty by attrition, retirements, resignations as the enrollments have declined. And so, they find themselves in a position where they have to make adjustments in the faculty complement, which is something that is designated in the collective bargaining agreement with the faculty. If any of the schools find themselves in such a position, there’s a process to retrench faculty. There’s no reason to anticipate that West Chester is going to face retrenchment. We’re very careful about deploying faculty, and if we do start to see enrollment declines, we will adjust immediately. Every year we have a number of retirements and resignations, and we have to make decisions about whether to replace them or not. These are things that we constantly pay attention to, and if we see a program that has had enrollment declines, and it has a retirement, then we don’t replace that retiring professor.
What the retrenchment article of the contract — the collective bargaining agreement — requires is that faculty retrenched at any of the campuses have preferential hiring rights at all of the other campuses. So, yes, as we have positions open and advertise new positions, those professors have preferential hiring rights for those positions. They do have to have the right qualifications. But we do work with the other campuses; we announce positions that we have open, we make the retrenched faculty aware of them. We’re working collaboratively to try to maintain employment for as many of the retrenched faculty as we possibly can. If a position opens up at a school where somebody has been retrenched, the retrenched person would be brought back prior to another new person being hired. It’s very structured, and we try hard to find as many ways as possible to not have to retrench; there’s some language that enables faculty to transfer from one university to another. It’s very complex; all of the schools work together to try to provide as many opportunities as possible for the retrenched people, nobody feels good about the faculty losing their employment. But, retrenchment occurs because we don’t have enough students for those faculty to teach.
CH: Recently, WCU announced that it will return to the alternative grading method you used during the 2020 spring semester. What factors led to this decision?
PF: It was a very vocal Student Government leadership. You should give them a pat on the back; they came to me and said that students felt that this was unfair, that the grading system used in the spring was more understanding of the pressures that the students were under. I can tell you that the thinking at that time was that we changed the game in the middle of the semester and, therefore, everybody agreed that it was a fair thing to do. Going into this semester, the faculty felt that there was lead time, that the students were aware that we were going to be operating remotely, and so they felt that it was reasonable to have a slightly different grading model. It was not back to normal, but it was not as generous as what we had done in the spring. The Student Government leadership complained; they felt that wasn’t fair, that a lot of students felt that wasn’t fair. I encouraged them to speak with the Faculty Senate, and the Faculty Senate president then spoke to the Curriculum and Academic Policy Committee leadership, and I spoke with the Provost and the Deputy Provost. Ultimately, the faculty leadership got together, and they felt that the argument that the students were making was a sound argument and that the decision made for fall was not the right decision. They decided to go back to what we had done in the spring to try and reduce the pressure on the students. We’re trying to keep the students working towards their goals. One of the interesting considerations that we had to look at was that if we have students who are doing well and earning A’s in classes, we don’t want to move to a complete pass/fail model and have them not get their A’s. There was a lot of thought that went into how that was going to be structured. Ultimately, the decision was made to continue that grading policy from now into the summer. Thank your local Student Government leadership — they advocated aggressively on behalf of the students and they were successful in doing so.
At this point in the conversation, President Fiorentino began asking us some questions about our experiences this semester.
PF: Thank you both for the opportunity to fill you in. How are the two of you doing in your classes? What are your experiences?
EB: I’m an out-of-state student, so personally, I think that I’m paying a lot of money for classes that aren’t nearly the quality of what they were [in person]. I also have learning disabilities, so it’s a very difficult learning environment for me.
PF: I don’t know if you were aware of this, but we receive state appropriation that covers a portion of the tuition for in-state students. The problem is that we’re not able to utilize the state appropriation to support the out-of-state students — that’s why the tuition has to be higher. It’s not anything other than that. We were able to give a somewhat larger discount to the out-of-state students this year, but we don’t get the state appropriation for them. Again, we’re still paying the salaries of the faculty and all of the costs associated with running the operation. I understand what you’re saying and I hope you’re working through your classes and will come out on the other end.
…we receive state appropriation that covers a portion of the tuition for in-state students. The problem is that we’re not able to utilize the state appropriation to support the out-of-state students — that’s why the tuition has to be higher
CH: It’s definitely been an interesting experience, but I don’t think it necessarily would have been made better if it were in-person. I live very close to Penn State and I have a lot of friends who go there. They’re paying a lot of money to live on-campus and do pretty much the same thing that we are. I resound that notion — it’s not ideal, but I do understand how we are where we are.
PF: Are either one of you graduating?
EB: I will be in the spring.
PF: We are planning to have a commencement; we’re going to figure out how to do it. We’re going to do it in small enough numbers to make it work. Back when we delayed last spring, we were really hoping that we were going to be able to do something in the summer, but, of course, things did not unfold favorably. But we’re trying to catch up on that commencement over the course of the spring and then hold commencement for the students who are graduating in May.
We are planning to have a commencement; we’re going to figure out how to do it. We’re going to do it in small enough numbers to make it work.
Overall, I wish I had better news, but we’re all living through this crazy time together. What I would say to all of you: those of you who have gone through college during this time and weathered this storm, you’re going to have great stories to tell when you’re going through job interviews. We talk a lot about resilience, and you need to really be able to step back and reflect on how this has impacted you: not just in the negative ways, but in the potentially positive ways as well.
Emma Bickerstaffe is a fourth-year English Writings major with a minor in Journalism. EB891492@wcupa.edu
Caroline Helms is a second-year English major with minors in Political Science and Journalism. CH923631@wcupa.edu