Cordie
I work at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin, as an assistant
professor of geoscience.
Charbonneau
Perfect. When did you start there?
Cordie
I started in August of 2019.
Charbonneau:
What courses is your department currently offering?
Cordie
Our department offers introductory courses in geoscience; so “Physical
Geology,” and another intro course called “Oceans and Atmosphere.” We
offer a GIS (Geographic Info Systems) class, environmental geology, and
then for upper-level classes. We offer a Paleoecology class and a
historical geology class.
Charbonneau:
What modes of teaching are you employing with your faculty?
Cordie
All the classes are fully in person, so no standard remote choice.
Situations do come up where that happens sometimes, but it is not a
standard. One class is offered as a blended option where 50% of the
class is done asynchronously online and 50% is done synchronously in
person.
Charbonneau:
Are you doing weekly laboratory sections or field work?
Cordie
Yes. All, except for the one blended class, are all in person. For the
intro level classes that have labs, we do the labs in person and
discussion in person.
If there is a situation where someone is not in person, we usually just
reschedule that person to do a makeup or something like that. We do not
have any separate asynchronous labs that they would go off and do on
their own.
Charbonneau:
What is your mode of field work you are conducting?
Cordie
Our intro classes all have at least one day in lab that is an outdoor
field lab. We usually just pile people in vans or have the students meet
us at the location. They are always close. I think the furthest one we
go to is about 20 minutes away. So, either transporting students there
and doing work, and then coming back, or just having the students meet
us there in the field.
Charbonneau:
What COVID policies are currently in place for your work?
Cordie
In the fall it has been announced that the only real change is going to
be that faculty have the discretion to require masks in their classroom.
There is no college wide mask requirement. We were masked last year,
last spring, I should say. I think in the summer, I did not teach. I am
not teaching this summer, but I think this summer I had the same rules.
It is going to be informed to the students that the instructor can need
masks.
I do not know how many faculty going to do that, but there is no college
wide program. Other than that, there is not any social distancing or
vaccine requirements. I know all students do have to reveal their
vaccination status and faculty do as well, but there is no like specific
restrictions anymore.
Charbonneau:
What level of virtual integration has been incorporated into your
instruction?
Cordie:
I adapted more virtual tools since the pandemic. I think the biggest one
for me is that I have started doing weekly quizzes all online as opposed
to on paper. So just like short five question quizzes. Usually, students
get a couple chances at it, but those I usually did in a different
format in person, now they are all online.
I also have started using more online discussions for short assignments.
Just posting up an article or sometimes a follow up to something we did
in class, like post a couple comments on the discussion space and I use
our class learning management system, Blackboard.
Those are the two important things. More use of those online quizzes
during the pandemic. I did do full exams online. I have stopped doing
that for assorted reasons, but the shorter assignments that are daily
points in a way that can be time consuming to grade, but are not worth a
lot, I think those I tend to use more virtual platforms now. Everything
that is online is going to be through Blackboard.
Charbonneau:
What has the student response been to that shift using Blackboard?
Cordie:
With the quizzes it is becoming more expected in a way that there is
faculty talking to students, and it seems like it is close to 50/50
split, where all exams are entirely on Blackboard.
It is getting to the point where you do have to specify to the students
what is on Blackboard. Some of these are going be in person now. Because
of the pandemic everything was on Blackboard. They almost assumed that
quizzes might be on Blackboard. You must tell them this one will be in
person if it is not that. So, in terms of the quizzes, I think that if
it is online, they do not blink an eye. They are like: “OK, yes, I know
exactly how that works.”
When it gets to finals, they prefer them to be online because it means
they can leave for home a week earlier and do everything online. But
yes, it is still not universally adapted. It is just because it is a
mix. It sometimes is a little confusing to students where it is like:
“Oh, I want this online, but not all faculty are doing that.” But when
you tell them it is online, they never have problem with that, and some
I think prefer it.
At my institution, the sciences are not doing finals online, like pen
and paper. I know our chemistry staff; they do a lot of like
diagramming. They said that doing it online just is not possible for
them because they must draw structures and stuff like that, which is not
easy online. It seems like in the sciences, no one’s doing online
finals, but in all the other divisions, it seems like it is online. So
that is the confusion where a student who is not a science major must do
this in person. It is a mixed bag in terms of what they want, but they
are not surprised by anything that is online or not anymore. In geology
we have rock samples we must find. I am not doing that online.
Charbonneau:
What strategies has your department used to like recruit and keep
students? What strategies are you doing to integrate everybody coming
back to whatever the new norm is going to be?
Cordie:
I do not know if this is due to pandemic or just due to the last
staffing changes that we had. We had a lot of staffing changes starting
to happen right as the pandemic happened. It is a little blended
together, but we have an entirely new like admission staff over the last
two years and they have completely revamped the student intake process.
From the point of they say they are coming to Edgewood.
When they come to Edgewood, they completely revamped that. They have
turned it into more in-person stuff. Their philosophy is that if they
come and physically meet us, they are more likely to come to our
institution.
I think a big part of that is because we share a city with the
University of Wisconsin, Madison, which is a massive university. I will
not say poach, but they take a lot of our students off the wait list. It
seems like a lot of Edgewood students apply to us and Madison. If they
get waitlisted on Madison, they say: “OK, I will go to Edgewood.” Then
when they get accepted, then they jump ship.
We have shifted to combat that. The strategy has been to get them on
campus at Edgewood and meet faculty and other students. We even do a
mini class to show them how college is and that kind of stuff. Now that
the pandemic is lessened, we have obviously that ability and have been
focusing more on person-to-person interaction to try to get people to
come to campus.
This is the first year we have done it. I was a part of it during the
summer and I was a part of a bunch of sessions. Hopefully, it works and
keeps people. But I thought it was very engaging. I hope it is effective
as well. That was our selling point at Edgewood, that we are small, and
you get to meet your faculty. That is what we are trying to emphasize
before they even come on campus.
Charbonneau:
What impacts has the pandemic had on your staffing levels?
Cordie:
Unrelated to the pandemic we did a shrink in size. The pandemic did not
affect us beyond that. We currently only have two faculty. Only one, I,
is full time. We are exceedingly small, but we have some other faculty,
like chemistry faculty, teaching some ancillary geoscience classes as
well. But we do not have any currently active faculty searches and the
pandemic did not cause our staff to change at all.
We have lower enrollment than we did. This is before I was at Edgewood,
but the number of incoming students is not as high as it was, so we lost
faculty and a lot of departments, not just geoscience but and the
two-geoscience faculty that were there before me, both retired. Then I
was hired, two people retired and only one was hired back, which was me.
Charbonneau:
So, you are the most recent hire?
Cordie:
Exactly. Yes. We have a part-time person who has since picked up too,
but in theory, we are going to hire that part-time person to full time
in the future. But that is not exactly on the horizon.
Charbonneau:
Are you traveling, doing your own field work, or research? What academic
endeavors are you currently involved in?
Cordie:
I am going on a research project next week to Pennsylvania to do field
work. I know, Liz, the other faculty member, she did some field work
last month at some point. I am not exactly sure what or where, but I
know she was away for a while. This summer we have not been restricted
in any way. I know last summer, I had to ask for permission to take
students to do a field research project. Which did end up going fine.
But this year there has not been any kind of restrictions in terms of
what we can do for research.
Last year I had to write to the Dean and explain what we were doing and
who is coming with us. It was not an official policy, but they did say
that we should all be vaccinated before leaving and getting on a plane
at that point. That was pre-delta wave. So, I do not think there was not
as much concern at that point with different variants. I know now there
is a little different behavior. This year there has not been anything in
terms of requirements we must do beforehand.
Charbonneau:
Did your departmental budget change during the pandemic?
Cordie:
I do not believe it has changed very much. It is based on how many
students we get into our program paying lab fees, and those have been
consistent. It has dropped a little bit, but I do not think it is really
changed much at all.
Charbonneau:
Have you noticed any major skill gaps in your students due to the
pandemic?
Cordie:
I do not know if this is necessarily a skill gap, but it is a little bit
of a social skill gap. We have a harder time getting students to come to
programming outside of the classroom. We would put on these social
meetings to meet other people in your major things, and I am told that
the numbers of people attending those things has gone down. We feel like
that is an important aspect of socializing. Stuff like that has gone
down. We are still thinking about how the how to fix that.
In terms of like actual skills, like textbook skills, discussions are a
little bit more difficult just because there was a year where you could
discuss with people without looking at people. We use Webex for our
virtual classrooms. No one turns their cameras kind of thing. I think
that has been an adjustment. This past spring, I taught upper-level
classes, and we did some discussions, and that went well. I do partially
attribute that to all those students who were in college before the
pandemic. They could go back to that mode a little bit easier. But I
cannot think about any obvious skill gaps that I have seen.
I think that does go back to the social aspects of it, where they would
get together outside of class. I did get a request to write a letter of
recommendation for a student that was in my class during the pandemic.
It is like, I do not really know them that well because I never met
them. That is a deficiency from the pandemic, not a textbook skill based
one.
Charbonneau:
How are you addressing some of these social deficiencies?
Cordie:
I am a part of the admissions efforts. I am teaching this first-year
class this upcoming spring. I was a part of these recruitments efforts
where we brought the students on campus and helped them register for
their classes. They were already signed up for their first-year class. I
was there as I am one of your professors. It is to meet people and help
them navigate the registration process.
We try to have like one science person, one like humanities person, and
one art person to help give a little bit of insight into those different
areas of classes to sign up for. Our department has not done anything
specific, but the college has put some effort into that.
We are an exceedingly small department. Our department is chemistry,
physics, and geoscience all-in-one. My department head is a chemist. We
run very collaboratively.
Charbonneau:
What core geoscience professional skills do you really try to
incorporate in your courses?
Cordie:
In a lot of the intro classes, we focus on big, broad issues of science
about the scientific method and data interpretation. I emphasize a lot
of graphs reading and graph making since that is a skill that is needed
by the Gen Ed students that are in there. That is something that they
should be able to take away from it.
I have tried to incorporate more Excel work and even just paper
graphing. Just so that they can see graphs and interpreted data that
comes from that. That is something I emphasize a lot, data
interpretation, data analysis, and some Excel skills as well. That is a
widespread use program. I think a lot of people should know about.
Charbonneau:
How proficient are they once they complete your program? After they
complete your program, what do you see most of your students end up
doing?
Cordie:
I think in terms of data analysis that is something that I know all the
sciences emphasize and I think they do get skilled at that side. A lot
of my intro students have never opened Excel, have no idea how it works
and by their senior presentation, they all are presenting data in not
just Excel but in other formats using other packages. We do well. We
have a whole class that they take that is research design. That is where
they get a lot of that.
Then they must do a project for their senior experience. They do an
excellent job. A lot of students end up going into like environmental
assessment. I know that it is a common way to work for a conservation
project. I know some recent graduates. One guy just got a job as an
environmental assessment firm. Another just got a job at the National
Forest Service, and that seems to be where most of our students want to
go. Something like the National Forest Service or like a national or
state level conservation organization. We get a lot of students that
want to do things like that.
We are successful at getting students into the Department of Natural
Resources as well. That is another big one. We get a lot of students
into not geoscience specific, but more environmentally focused roles. We
did have a crop of students that got into geoscience graduate programs,
but I think the main is environmental assessment and environmental
technician type work. That is our most common outlet.
We do not train a lot of pure geologists at Edgewood. I have one student
who is now in graduate school for geophysics. I am told that that is not
common, again because I am new. We do not get a lot of students that go
those routes, but more of the broad environmental, which includes the
chemical, geological, and biological aspects of the environments.
Charbonneau:
What kind of changes did they have to implement into the curriculum to
help students who were struggling during the pandemic?
Cordie:
I know the since all students must do a final project. I know quite a
few students in that pandemic year they were allowed instead of doing
actual research projects to do reviews for their final project. We do
not have like a specific requirement in any of our majors. We encourage
them to do a field course. Everyone does in practice but here is no
like: “You must do this field course.” The field courses were obviously
all canceled during the pandemic. The biggest change was in the types of
projects allowed for that final, which was done more in a
faculty-by-faculty basis.
Some students did not really need to change because their work was
already pretty much review based. But some students had to change
heavily. So, there was no like formal documented changes in any of our
programs. But there were some informal like adjustments that had to be
made when it came to their senior experiences.
The changes were temporary because I know the crop of students we had
this year, many of them were back in the field doing field-based
projects. I do not think we wanted to keep the lit review style file
projects for any more than we needed to. They were temporary.
Charbonneau:
Did Edgewood fully close during the pandemic? How did you navigate peak
restrictions?
Cordie:
Nothing closed to my understanding. All the classes kept running. We
switched to fully online during March 2020. Lab classes had to change a
lot. We did everything as virtual labs at that point for the rest of
that semester. I know that in many of the classes, students all had
options to take classes as pass/fail, which was a substantial change.
That was just to mitigate the stress and the change that was undergone
during that transition.
But nothing was closed. There was one class that had like a big
community outreach effort. I do not know what they end up doing since
they got totally messed up by that. But to my knowledge no classes or
programs fully closed because of that.
Charbonneau:
Did the number of students who graduated change during the pandemic?
Cordie:
There are more students disrupted. We did get some data for the past
year about the number of students who were failing classes and number of
students who are struggling. I forget the exact numbers, but we had a
presentation that was said it was three times the number of students had
D's and Fs compared to the same time in previous years.
We did get several students that took a semester off. I do not have
exact numbers. I know I have one personal advisee that took a semester
off to just deal with the change and that resulted in their delayed
graduation. So, I do not know how widespread that was. That is just like
one example, but I am sure just with the number of D's and F's that
were being reported that had that slowed down some students. I do not
know how many students did not graduate, but I can imagine just based on
the numbers that it increased.
Charbonneau:
Was the only impacted part of your research just the fact that you had
to make sure you followed all the travel rules?
Cordie:
We did delay our field work last year. Normally geologists would try and
get out the second classes are out because it is hot in Nevada in the
middle of the summer. If you are not done with field work, by the end of
May, it becomes increasingly difficult. We decided at my colleague that
we would delay that summer field work because we did not know what was
happening. That was the very beginning of the vaccine drive. Waiting
like this is not something we normally do. We wait until the end of
summer to do the Nevada work. We pushed it off to August, and we knew it
would be a problem. It was just so hot.
We had to really change our schedule. We ended up getting up at like
6:00 AM to get out in the field by like 7 to try and do field work in
the morning. We had to stop by noon because it was over 90 degrees. We
also had a day that we lost because there was a wildfire, and the smoke
was blowing from California and blowing into us. It was just choking. We
could not really do anything.
That field season was augmented because of the choices we made to delay
it. It turns out cases were much higher in August than they were in May.
So, hindsight is 20/20, but we decided to delay it because of
uncertainty with COVID. It was more difficult to do it in August as
expected than it was in May.
It is stifling. We were saying that 2:00 o'clock was our drop-dead
time. We cannot be outside after 2:00 o'clock. I think as the week went
on; noon would become the drop-dead time.
Charbonneau:
Has any of your work been altered permanently by the pandemic or do you
think nothing has really changed too much?
Cordie:
When it comes to the research we are back to normal. There are no added
requirements we must check off or do anything like that. Students want
full experiences still. I have not had any problem getting students to
want to go out into the field. I know my colleague has the same
experience on his end. I do not think in terms of research, anything has
really been permanently affected. There was a literature review project
I started during COVID because field work was not possible. But that is
something I would have done anyway. It was more convenient to do it
then. So no, I would say nothing has been permanently altered in
research.
Charbonneau:
What have been your best strategies to overcome some of the
COVID-related obstacles you have encountered?
Cordie:
I think having video conferencing has made things a lot easier for
student meetings. As part of the first-year class I taught, there is a
requirement that every first-year student meet with their faculty for a
little time during the first month. I did those during the pandemic, and
I liked that. Now I have shifted my office hours to being flexible and
they can either be virtual or in person. When I do other things that
require me to meet students, I always offer up the virtual choice and
often they take me up on that. I think that has increased the ability to
meet with students one-on-one.
Having that virtual choice is nice, since everyone is much more
comfortable now with like Webex and Teams. Those are the two platforms
we use. It does seem to have made a difference in that students are more
willing to log on to Webex for five minutes and meet with me and ask me
a question quickly as opposed to like walking down to my office and
going out of the building. Even though we are a small campus, so that is
not exceptionally long walk.
I do think that there is a little bit of a barrier that has been removed
in that it is much easier to just click a few buttons and meet with
someone because I have even taken meetings with students while they are
in the library. I assume that like working on it, they get stuck, and
they know it is my office hours, and they will meet with me and ask a
question. That is something I never would have considered doing pre-
pandemic, but once it became a thing, it was an easy change. That is a
permanent feature now. If you want to meet with me, just send me an
e-mail and tell me to jump on to Webex and do that.
Charbonneau:
What new opportunities have become available to you due to the pandemic?
Cordie:
I did a virtual conference last summer, and that is offered virtually
because of the pandemic. It is permanently virtual now because I saw an
ad for it this year and it was still virtual. That was nice because that
was a conference that was a one-day conference, and it is in California.
Not something I would have gone to just for one day if I had to fly up
to California. That was nice to have that choice. I hope that other
small conferences like that do similar things. Big conferences I think
are different, but for small, short conferences I hope that opportunity
continues.
The one class that is blended that I mentioned before, that is 50% in
person. That was a COVID change that has stuck around. We discussed
doing that before the pandemic, turning one of our two intro classes
into a blended choice to increase student flexibility.
Then the pandemic hit, and we had to do anyway. I took the initiative to
fully implement that idea that we have beforehand, and we have kept that
around. That was induced by the pandemic, but we already wanted to do it
anyway. I taught last term a blended choice, and it has pros and cons in
how it is run with the blended choice. I am going to keep tweaking it
before assessing it to see if that is how we want to keep it. It is
something that we have done since the pandemic.
There have not been any wholesale changes for our department. But there
are these trivial things here and there like some meetings will be
virtual every now and then. There is a greater willingness of some
faculty use some of those Blackboard tools, the discussions are sort of
a post and leave comments kind of activity.
It has not been my sense that there have been major wholesale changes,
but there have been these little things here and there. Even like a
website that is helpful for doing some activity. We did a virtual lab in
my physical geology class, and I found this website that was good, and I
have kept that bit around because it is a really good tool. Even though
we are in person, there is that one activity that I tell them to all log
on to their computers to do.
It is it is a groundwater activity. They must physically draw out
bedrock and stuff like that. It has different permeability rates so they
can see how water flows through the subsurface depending on
permeability. It is the same thing as those ant farm groundwater models.
It is that, but virtual. I like it because they can like manipulate it,
as opposed to having one of those models in front of the class, everyone
has their own.
Charbonneau:
What piece of advice would you give to somebody entering your field of
work?
Cordie:
The thing I picked up most in my couple of years now is appreciating
that all students are quite different in a way that it was not obvious
to me when I first started. There has been a lot of situations that are
related COVID that I just did not imagine that a student had this need.
I never would have thought I had to plan for that need. There was one
student, I know they were not deaf, but they grew up in a deaf
household, and so they had trouble with certain discussion formats.
The skill I learned from that is that you do not have to necessarily be
fair to all students in the sense that you do not have to offer the same
resources to everyone. Just because that choice was not offered to
someone else does not mean you cannot offer it to the student in this
situation.
It is an equity versus equality distinction that you can supply an
opportunity to a student that is not provided to others in the sense of
giving them the same opportunity to succeed. That was not a mentality I
had beforehand. I think I had them very much though that I could only
make these special arrangements if it is offered to everyone. But now I
do not really follow that so much. If I feel like it is a proper
accommodation to make.
It is a very subtle. It almost sounds weird. When you tell people like
you do not have to be fair to students, but then you explain, like in
this situation, that is what I mean kind of thing.
Charbonneau:
What is your biggest take away from your pandemic experience?
Cordie:
In March 2020 when we switched over to fully remote and then when we
came back in the following fall, we did a “HyFlex” model where students
could be in person or remote. You had part of the class in person, part
of class remote. After a while just started telling students that this
is how we are going to have to run things. Even though this is not ideal
we are going to try it this way. We kept telling them: “I am not sure if
this is going to work, but we are going to try it.”
I do remember getting some feedback at the end of the term like: “I know
things were tough, but you did the best you could with the situation,”
kind of thing. At least it seems like with our students at Edgewood,
because we were close connection with our students because of the small
classes, you can be open about whether you think an activity is going to
work or not.
Then they will tell you if they do not think this is working, or if they
are not understanding from that standpoint. If something is working and
then you can get that feedback and do with it what you need to do. I
think they knew at that point that they are trying to learn. They know
that it is not the best situation. They must give us added feedback to
help them, helping us give them the best opportunity to learn. It is a
transparency skill that I think is important.
Charbonneau:
Is there anything else you would like to add to your oral history?
Cordie:
The pandemic is tough. “HyFlex” was not my preferred method of
delivering a class. I think many faculty felt like in person is the
preferred method. Remote is not bad if you plan for it, prepare for it,
and know what you are doing ahead of time. But “HyFlex” I do not think
it works well. Trying to do a little bit of have people simultaneously
in person and not in person. Certain activities most activities could
not work with so in terms of like different teaching modes, I have
learned the “HyFlex” is not what I want to do.
