Dylon Harrison
Managing Editor
ISU President Kevin Satterlee discusses COVID-19, the university’s budget deficit, mental health and more in this one-on-one conversation with The Bengal’s Managing Editor.
How was the decision made to reopen campus this semester?
Well, you know, it was many months of decision, and although the university can never eliminate all risks, we have a team of professionals. One of the great things about being the state’s health science leader university is that we have professionals that are experts in public health, that are experts in things like disease spread and pandemics. So we have a team of professionals that were really working non-stop in the end of the spring semester and really all summer to ensure that we could build a system with the right protocols to safely welcome our students back. Even though we can’t eliminate all risk we thought, “Can we make it safe?” You know what some of our efforts are. We’ve moved our small classes into our medium-sized classrooms, our medium into our large, our large classes into the student union ballroom, etc. In total, we had to relocate over 1,500 classes to get them in larger sized rooms so we can get the distancing. We get the six-foot distancing plus we’ve done the mask requirements. We’ve done the social distancing requirements, the increased sanitization and cleaning of our classrooms. So, when we put all that together, and we ran all those plans by the Southeast Idaho Public Health Department. We ran them by our own public health safety experts and decided that we could set up a classroom experience that was safe. Now, we couldn’t have done that in the spring, because in the spring, we didn’t have time to react when COVID hit. We basically had a week. So at that point, the decision was basically, “Online or open?” Clearly, it had to be online, but we were able to take the summer, work through all of these procedures, to set up the safe environment. That was the key. If we thought we could do it safely, then we could be open, but there was one other factor. In talking to students over the last several months, we learned and we overwhelmingly heard, not all students of course, but overwhelmingly, they were eager to continue their education in person. In fact, our Bengals have told us that they were willing to adapt to the environment, wear the masks, do these things and wear the face coverings and physical distancing if it meant that we could get them back in class, and that’s what our students wanted for the most part. If we thought we could do it safe, that’s how we got to that decision. We met literally two, three times a week all summer long reviewing these plans. Can we do this? How can we do this? So, it wasn’t a point in time we made this decision. It was all along. Can we do this, and what will it take?
Given current campus COVID rates, how likely does it seem that classes will be able to remain in person for the rest of the semester?
Good question. Well, there’s so many factors that could play into this that I’m not going to try to predict the future. That wouldn’t be fair, because that includes things that are happening not on our campus and in our surrounding community. Keep in mind that we have campuses in Idaho Falls, Twin Falls and Meridian as well, so we have multiple communities we have to factor in. The good news is, we’re five weeks in. We’ve completed five weeks of the term. If we can complete nine more weeks, we’ll be to Thanksgiving. Then we’ll have online finals afterwards, so it feels like, if we can make it for five weeks, and we’ve been able to do it, even while there’s some increased spread in some of our communities, if we can make it for five weeks there’s a real potential that we can make it through the semester. So the focus, though, in order to make that happen, we have to focus on maintaining our mix of the in-person and online instruction, the hybrid classes. Faculty, staff and students alike have to adhere to our safety guidelines. As long as we can keep campus spread down and keep up those efforts, right now I think we could continue through the end of the semester.
How is ISU handling the current budget deficit?
There were a lot of factors that led to that. COVID was just one of them. We have state budget holdbacks changing with COVID, some other things, the loss of activities and events that generate revenue. So, in total, it’s been a big issue we’ve had to deal with. So, last spring, we brought everybody together, went through every department on campus, both academic and administrative, and it was really a comprehensive effort to balance this budget. So, through that process we had every unit propose what it would look like if they had budget cuts up to four, five or six percent, and we tried to make it so the administrative units took a higher percentage of budget cuts so the academic units would have a lower percentage of budget cuts to try to keep that core mission. The number one, primary goal in making our adjustments that we sent out was to limit the impact to students, limit the negative impact on students or student services. So, through that effort where everybody came together and made their proposals, we were able to eliminate a little over 11 million dollars in budget cuts that will take place over the next two years, this year and into next year. While none of us want that, and some of those cuts really hurt, and they hurt some people. We lost some people. We had to lay off, which was not good, not fun, but we did it because it was necessary. So we’re continuing to look for more efficiencies. We want to reach a stable financial system going forward. Really, it was everybody campus-wide coming together to get to those cuts is how we got that far.
You’ve said before that the first day of classes is your favorite day of the year. What was that feeling like this year?
It’s really hard to describe. It really is my favorite day. You know what campus is like in the summer. It’s sleepy and quiet. Then all of a sudden, first day of school, it fills back up and there’s a lot of energy. This year was honestly, and I’m not just saying this for the sake of an interview, it was better than ever. We had been almost six months without any students on campus except maybe one or two here and there. Then all of a sudden when a bunch of students are on campus it just totally changed things. It just felt great to have students back on campus again. You know, when we transitioned to distance-based instruction, campus felt pretty empty. So to see our students come back, it was a great experience. And knowing that even through this pandemic, we’ve, our students and our university, have been able to have the tenacity and grit to overcome these challenges and make sure we’re offering this education, honestly, I loved it. I loved the first day this year.
This pandemic has been difficult for all of us. How are you, personally, handling it?
Honestly, I’m doing pretty well, you know, no worse off than anybody else impacted. We have an amazing team here at Idaho State, just really dedicated people and I’m really fortunate to work with people who have responded the way they have. As for myself, honestly and candidly, I’ve been mindful about trying to do things to keep my mental and physical health in shape. We all have mental stress from all of this. So I think we need to recognize that, bring that out and not try to suppress that. Talk about mental health in society and on campus. So I’m trying to be mindful about things for my mental health and even my physical health. I’ve never been a runner, for example, and I started running about five months ago in the middle of the pandemic. I started out real slow, and I’ve been running. I try to run through campus in the early mornings, and that’s been really helpful. So I think I’m getting by probably as well as anybody.
What are your goals for the rest of the semester?
The primary goal remains the same, to provide our students with an excellent education that we’re known for. You’ve heard me say this before. We’re trying to prepare students to go out in the world and better their lives through education, achieve their dreams and honestly have an impact on the world around them. That’s our primary goal. That remains the same. It’s the center of everything we do. Our students are the “why” behind it. Let me give you something more specific than that. We’re going to continue our efforts to respond to the pandemic, obviously. I mean, the meeting I was on right before this, that was the whole topic, this week’s COVID response. So that will obviously stay at the forefront, but in addition to that, it’s the other continued improvements we want to continue to make to the university. For example, continuing the work on recruitment and retention. Recruiting our students, and once they’re here, retaining them, and making sure they have the resources and the support, the services to get through school. We’re going to continue to promote our identity and culture. We’ve seen the benefits of the school spirit and school pride. We’re becoming more known state-wide with some of our brand strategy that we’ve been doing. Continue the work on our culture, the student-centered culture on campus, and continuing to work on our efficiency and effectiveness because our budget, you know, is not getting any larger. So we have to continue to be efficient in these times.
