In this month’s missive from a member of the University’s leadership team, Vice President of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management, Christine Wilson, writes about the challenges of leading during a pandemic.
Dear UMF Community,
I am fortunate. I found a fulfilling career in higher education and have dedicated the last 33 years to students and their college experiences. I greatly enjoy being in the classroom. I have taught leadership studies classes to graduate and undergraduate students for over 20 years. I have taught classes in leadership challenges. I have even taught classes in crisis leadership.
I also appreciate working outside of the classroom. I have had the privilege of being a staff member and administrator at seven different universities. Managing crises is a daily part of the work, and I have dealt with many types, from natural disasters to student deaths to technology failures to student homelessness. I was even part of a team that worked to prepare for managing an outbreak of H1N1 on campus.
Along came Covid-19
At first, in my shock and mounting anxiety, I feared nothing had prepared me to serve UMF as one of the leaders who would manage the response to Covid-19. And then, with the help of my loved ones, I realized that, in fact, everything had prepared me: my teaching, my work experience, and life in general. Even my hobbies: I love dystopian literature, scrapbooking, and I can organize just about anything into a chart. All of this has been helpful as I continue to strive to be a positive and helpful member of the Covid-19 leadership team. And while everything before Covid-19 helped me approach Covid-19, over the past year, I learned some Covid-19 specific leadership lessons. Please let me share those with you.
Striving to be unconditional
As our response to Covid-19 at UMF began to take shape in February 2020, I decided that no matter how anyone approached me, I would respond with unconditional acceptance and no judgment. No one knows how they will react in a crisis; crises can bring out the best and the worst in all of us. I would assume that everyone was acting out of fear or uncertainty, and seek to respond accordingly: striving to act with understanding and sympathy, and focusing on the impact and solution. I found that most folks were gracious, patient, and problem solving-focused.
See the profound humanity and strengths in your community members
As the crisis continued into summer 2020, managing pandemic-related tasks helped me get to know students, staff, faculty in completely different ways. Hierarchies and structural divides melted. UMF community members demonstrated new ways of thinking and planning. Individuals stepped up to volunteer in every aspect of campus life. To be sure, both our individual and collective challenges and talents have been exacerbated during the response to Covid-19. But I am in awe every day of the acts of kindness, criticism, and communication—behaviors that hold us together as a community—in an environment of policies, procedures, and paperwork (and more paperwork…and charts!)
Works of justice. Works of mercy.
And now that I can reflect on a year of helping to manage Covid-19, I believe much of the work in leading through a crisis can fall into one of two categories: works of justice and works of mercy.
Working for justice calls us to center the right perspectives and the right issues as we go about our work, and also to work to be consistent without being draconian. Who will this decision impact and what are the disparities in impact? How can we address the different ways folks will experience this crisis? Have we asked the right folks to share their perspectives? This was (and continues to be) messy work. It was awkward and time-consuming and wildly iterative. But it was necessary given we did not have a map, and were often building infrastructure from scratch. Efficiency was not our goal. Expedient inclusive effectiveness was.
Working for mercy is also essential. Covid-19 impacted everyone differently. For many of our community members, this meant the loss of family members or friends, loss of employment in families, child and eldercare challenges, food or housing insecurity, illness, losing contact with family and friends, isolation and loneliness, missing cultural milestones, and grieving the loss of opportunity. One sees acts of mercy every day on campus. We have a generous leave policy and work flexibility for folks who have family caretaking responsibilities. Individuals made and donated masks. Staff and faculty check-in with students to see how they are doing. A group of folks raised money to buy gift cards for students who needed groceries. Thousands of dollars were donated for students with financial challenges. Sodexo made special meals for students in quarantine over the holidays. Staff deliver goodies and supplies to students in isolation. I am inspired every day by great and small acts of mercy in our community, those that are actualized in policies, and those that are visited upon others by thoughtful individuals taking initiative.
Continuing to manage the response to Covid-19
I have high ideals for what leaders can and should do on college campuses, here at UMF specifically, and my own leadership aspirations. I must be honest: it is challenging to live up to these ideals and aspirations. During the management of the response to Covid-19, it was important for me to pause, reflect, and remind myself of the goals of our work and who we were serving. It always seems easier to just lean into malaise. But the collective goodwill, care for the community, and dedication to ensuring the best experience for our students, demonstrated by my colleagues every day, encourages and uplifts me in my role. I am confident in UMF’s ability to keep moving forward together.
As I alluded to earlier: nearly everything in life can help us prepare for and deal with crises. I would love to host a meeting to hear about your experiences managing Covid-19 related issues so we can learn from each other as we move forward during these ever-changing times. If you’re interested in sharing your lessons-learned, let’s talk!
Most sincerely,
Christine Wilson
Vice President for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management
christine.wilson@maine.edu
Dr. Christine Wilson comes to UMF from the University of Connecticut, where she was assistant vice president for student affairs, director of student activities, and an instructor in the university’s graduate program in higher education and student affairs. Wilson has more than 25 years of strategic leadership experience in student affairs, including administration of Title IX programming and student activities. Her other roles in student affairs include serving as assistant director for student leadership at the University of Rhode Island and an instructor in the school’s master’s in college student personnel program, director of student activities at the University of Baltimore, assistant director of residential life at SUNY–New Paltz, and coordinator of residential life at The Pennsylvania State University. She received her Ph.D. in education from the University of Rhode Island and her master’s in college student personnel and bachelor’s in political science from Indiana State University.