Fall semester begins with mix of anxiety, determination

It’s Monday morning on the North Campus, the first day of classes and start of the new COVID-19-aware semester. Consider the campus a mix, a hybrid of old and new.

Students walked between buildings, wearing masks. They opened doors with signs telling them they needed masks to enter, and passed ever-present hand sanitizers mounted on walls.

They sat in class six feet apart, wearing masks and listening to a professor, who also wore a mask. They waited in line in the Student Union, separating themselves from other students. They sat at tables with “safe” signs that instructed them to flip the sign when they were done so the table could be sanitized.

Welcome to fall 2020, where the UB community took its first step toward what President Satish K. Tripathi described as UB’s commitment to “providing our students with an exceptional education that prepares them to lead in our 21st-century world,” while also “ensuring the health and safety of every member of our university community.”

Megan Callahan, a freshman pharmacy major from Starpoint High School, sat in the Natural Sciences Complex at 9 a.m. watching an online chemistry lecture before going to class at 10:20. Between the normal transition from high school to college, and now social distancing precautions, she admitted feeling a little “weird.”

“It’s exciting, but nerve-wracking,” said Callahan. “The distance-setting is not the setup you were expecting at college. But I’m mostly hopeful things will work out.”

Tripathi expressed the same awareness and determination in an email message Monday morning to the UB community.

“Today, as our faculty, students and staff embark on a semester unlike any in our institution’s 175-year history, I would like to assure you all of this: Despite the unprecedented circumstances we face, nothing about UB’s mission and vision of excellence changes,” he said.

 “We are prepared. We have adapted to, and innovated for, this new — albeit temporary — reality.”

Many students were happy to be in a more traditional setting, rather than online.

“I haven’t been in a classroom since March, and it’s good to be on campus,” said Emily Geiger, a freshman in Chad Lavin’s “The Writing of Food Politics” (ENG 199), meeting in Room 218 of the Natural Sciences Complex. “I just learn better in person.”

Lavin will teach his course mostly in person for the first three weeks, then switch to remote learning.

“I hope to give freshmen an in-person experience at least for a couple of weeks so they can see my face, or at least part of my face,” said Lavin, former interim chair of the Department of English. “I also want one myself. I’ve been locked in my house for six months, too.”

He discussed the course’s syllabus and reviewed safety procedures with his 24 students, all sitting apart from each other. He said that if everyone made a “good faith effort, we can make it work.” He told jokes and made it clear he would be available when his students needed him.

After class, Geiger said it seemed mostly like a “normal class,” but she felt bad Lavin had to lecture wearing a mask.

“It’s fairly uncomfortable and will take some getting used to,” he admitted. “It’s difficult to breathe, and I had a hard time hearing students saying their names.”

Carl R.F. Lund, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, opened the fall semester with a 9:10 a.m. class in kinetics and reaction engineering in Fronczak Hall. The junior-level class has 80 students, but only 25 were in the classroom. The rest learned remotely, an example of a “hybrid” course format.

“It felt great to be teaching a class, even at reduced size,” said Lund, who also serves as chair of the Department of Engineering Education.

Clearly, there were fewer students on campus. Overall, the number of students in classrooms at 10 a.m. on the first day of classes dropped from 6,800 in fall 2019 to 890 yesterday on the North Campus. The scene resembled a UB summer session more than the fall, with the addition of all those masks and signs.

Across campus that same morning, Mark Snyder, art resource manager for the Department of Art, met his six students taking “Introduction to Sculpture” (ART 229) in B-14 in the Center for the Arts.

“I’m excited,” said student Yiwen Feng. “I like school. I like studying.”

“Everyone seems chill. I think it’s going to be a good class,” said Snyder. “They are not going to have access to some of the equipment and projects we typically do. But this presents us with an opportunity to explore other types of projects we normally wouldn’t touch on. They’re actually going to have a set of skills other students might not typically get.”

Over at the Student Union Welcome Center, student manager Nick Arroyo said students were doing their best to wear their masks and stay apart.

“It’s as good as it can be,” Arroyo said late Monday morning. “No one wants to go home. Everyone wants to do what they can to stay at school.”