During Covid-19, One College’s Virtual Chat Offers Hope for the Fall

Well before 7 p.m. Central time on Tuesday, Katie Jansen set up her laptop in a corner of her basement and made sure the built-in camera was working. She positioned the lights just so, hoping not to look ghost-pale. Butterflies flitted in her stomach. She was about to connect via video with dozens of teenagers who would see her but whom she wouldn’t be able to see.

Jansen, an admissions counselor at Drury University, a campus of 1,500 undergraduates in Springfield, Mo., likes talking with people — a lot. So she was well suited to her task: moderating a virtual panel discussion for prospective students and their parents. Three Drury students set to join her on screen would be the stars of the show.

Waiting to go live, Jansen felt … strange. A thoughtful 22-year-old with dark-brown hair and a loud laugh, she had always seen admissions work as human work, a job in which one-on-one conversations often matter a lot.

Coronavirus Hits Campus

As colleges and universities have struggled to devise policies to respond to the quickly evolving situation, here are links to The Chronicle’s key coverage of how this worldwide health crisis is affecting campuses.

• Here’s Our List of Colleges’ Reopening Models
• Why Is Gettysburg College Giving Up on ‘The Gettysburg Review’?
• Fall-Enrollment Trends in Distance Education: a Snapshot

But the pandemic canceled countless on-campus events that help colleges secure their first-year classes. It shut down the face-to-face interactions admissions officers so often have on the front lines of recruitment. In a spring of social distancing, communication with prospective students must flow through monitors and phones. For now, each campus must transmit its personality through pixels.

Drury held the live chat on the last day of March, a month in which the coronavirus disrupted every aspect of American life. So it was fair to expect that the conversation would reveal just how high-school seniors were feeling about college during this unprecedented crisis. The concerns of prospective students matter a great deal to admissions officials, who don’t yet know how much Covid-19 and a crumbling economy will affect their college’s bottom lines this fall. For understandable reasons, the prospect of imminent disaster is the Topic on Everyone’s Mind.

Or maybe not everyone’s, at least not all the time. Though Jansen braced for prospective students to ask tough, even unanswerable, questions about how the pandemic might change Drury or wreck their college plans, her hunch was that they would want — really, really want — to talk about other things. Things that young adults on the threshold of a new, mysterious campus life have always talked about.

Jansen was about to find out if she was right.

At 6:59 p.m., prospective students typed the names of their hometowns in a message field.

“Seattle!”

“Liberty, Mo.”

“New York!”

St. Louis, Mo.”

Then, just after 7, the discussion began. Jansen and the three Drury students appeared on screen, each occupying a square on a grid. Like the Brady Bunch squares, Jansen thought.

“Hi, everyone!” she said, smiling at unseen faces.

Prospective students were invited to submit questions, which popped up one by one in the message field that viewers could see on their screens. First a student named Ben asked the big question: “Will classes be in person this fall?”

Jansen handled that one. “Nobody really knows how long things are gonna last. However, we’re planning on them being in-person in the fall.”

After that, nearly all the questions had nothing to do with the deadly virus dominating the news.

“I’m nervous about leaving my rural area for a larger town,” a prospective student named Julia wrote. “Are any of you from a small town?”

Emma Abbott, a sophomore majoring in graphic design at Drury, described how she had grown up in a small town, too. “Springfield is perfect, in my opinion, just because it does have, like, a city vibe,” she said, “but it’s still way more of a smaller-town feel as compared to St. Louis or Kansas City.”

A prospective student named Dawson wrote that he lived near Drury. “Should I save money and live at home,” he asked, “or do you think the college-dorm experience is worth the money?”

Tim Anzalone, an architecture major at Drury, answered first. He recommended living on the campus, but assured the student that one could have a good experience either way: “If money’s an issue, I would choose to stay home if I had that option.”

Mosha Clyma, a senior at Drury who plans to become a nurse, chimed in: “There’s something good about starting out on campus as a freshman, because it kind of, like, brings you all together … it helps you grow as a person.”

“Nice,” Jansen said, smiling. “Beautiful, guys.”

Cost. Majors. Distance from home. Many factors might pull a high-school student toward one college and away from another. But for those lucky enough to have a choice, it’s often a feeling — warm and immeasurable — that sways them in the end.

Growing up 20 minutes away from Drury, where her father is a biology professor, Jansen thought the university was the last place she would ever go. Then one fall day, while walking under a blaze of orange, red, and yellow leaves on the campus, she saw herself being happy there.

“I was drawn to it,” she says.

Jansen got a job in Drury’s admissions office the summer after graduating from high school. Her first official tour of the campus was one she helped lead. Listening was important, she learned. On the best tours, families said almost as much as she did.

After Jansen enrolled, the small campus enfolded her. On her first day, the power went out on campus, and young men sang and played guitars in the darkened hallways. She liked that everyone soon knew her name, the feeling of accountability that came with that. When she overslept one morning during her sophomore year, a professor called her from class — on a speaker phone — to see where she was. Everyone could tell by her voice that she had just woken up.

“That kind of embarrassment,” she says, “can only happen once.”

Jansen, who majored in biology, finished college at the end of 2018, and then walked in her cap and gown last spring. After taking a temporary job in the admissions office, she got a full-time position that requires her to recruit in Kansas City (Mo. and Kan.), Chicago, and Iowa. New England — that’s her territory, too.

There’s a reason why admissions officers call themselves road warriors. But the term doesn’t tell you much about a job whose core is about relationships. At least that’s how Jansen sees it.

At each high-school visit, at each Starbucks appointment, she tries to connect with prospective students and parents. She likes seeing the shocked-but-relieved expression that sweeps across teenagers’ faces the moment they realize that Drury — a private institution with a $40,000-a-year sticker price — is a real possibility for them.

The possibility of college, though, looks a lot different than it did a month ago. As the virus shreds the economy, layoffs and furloughs are hitting the nation hard. In March, more than 10 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits. Financial hardship could force many families to rethink their college plans — or tear them up.

Recently, Jansen had a conversation with an anxious mother of an admitted student who said she and her husband weren’t getting paid. I can’t put down a deposit, the woman said. I want to make sure I can feed my kids first.

Jansen told her not to worry, Drury would save a spot for their daughter. Let me know what I can do.

Over the past week or so, Jansen contacted 50 or more admitted students to ask if they wanted to discuss their financial-aid awards. She made a point of acknowledging the upheaval they might be experiencing. How’s your family? Everyone healthy? How’s the shift to online classes going?

Some students seemed stressed out, for sure. Others, not too much. Many lamented canceled proms. Some relished sleeping late.

A couple of students told Jansen that they didn’t think they could still attend Drury because of a sudden financial hardship. Some said they were coming, but needed more time before committing. A few sounded shaken up and weary.

Yet Jansen often heard resilience in their voices. Many teenagers still talked about their future as if it were certain, as if the world would not unravel. They could see themselves walking right through a tunnel of doubt and onto a campus this fall.

Maybe that made them naïve. Or maybe it made them human.

“They’re yearning for someone to talk to them about something that isn’t Covid-19,” she says. “They’re talking about ‘What size sheets do you need for a dorm bed?’”

The questions kept coming. Drury’s live chat, which was supposed to last 55 minutes, rolled well beyond that. Sixty-seven students and 11 parents participated, submitting nearly 100 questions.

The conversation had an off-the-cuff feel, lighter on rah-rah stuff you often hear on campus tours. Jansen deadpanned between sips of peppermint tea. She praised thoughtful questions and said “beautiful” a lot. At one point, Cricket, her black-and-white Aussiedoodle puppy, climbed into her lap.

A prospective student asked about preparing to rush a sorority in the fall: “I wasn’t sure if I would need reference letters or anything like that.”

No, said Clyma, the nursing student, “just come be who you are.”

Another student asked what she should bring to her dorm room: “Is there anything that you did not have at first that you wish you had had?”

Abbott, the sophomore, recommended reviewing the lists of recommendations on Pinterest. She confessed to having packed wrinkle-release spray and a tiny sewing kit: “A lot of people might say my style of living is a little extra.”

One question came with a cheeseburger emoji: “Please tell me more about … the food scene.”

Anzalone, the architecture major, called the campus cuisine “pretty decent.” He declared his love for the “wings and things” served at the cafeteria on Fridays. And the food options in downtown Springfield, he added, were “pretty poppin’.”

Belonging. Shelter. Sustenance. Many students asked about those fundamentals. And about learning, making friends, and finding a purpose, too.

Their questions loosed many answers from the Drury students. Yes, they felt safe on the campus. No, the university didn’t feel too small; its size allowed you to “get noticed.” Really, it was fine to call Robert Weddle, the dean of the architecture school, “Bob.”

The university announced on March 19 that it was transitioning to remote learning. On Tuesday night the three Drury students participating in the chat logged in from three different locations.

After someone asked what they missed most about being on the campus, Abbott, the graphic-design major, described the difficulty of replicating one-on-one time with professors: “It’s just really hard to communicate over a computer screen, you know?”

But the Drury students did their best to overcome that limitation. Though they answered some questions (“finding a major that fits me … any tips?”) more fully than others (“What is diversity like on campus?”), they conveyed feelings as well as information. They described the energy of “Pantherpalooza,” when students gather at the end of orientation weekend to watch fireworks. They explained the joys of “late-night breakfast,” when faculty members and administrators cook bacon and eggs for students during finals week. They laughed.

As the chat neared an end, Jansen tried to stifle a chuckle of her own when Cricket started growling at her squeaky-duck toy. After one last question, the hosts from Drury waved goodbye with both hands.

Jansen felt tired but happy. At a time when so much is upside down, the discussion conveyed a sense of normalcy. Nearly all the questions were ones high-school seniors might have posed last year or the year before.

“Is there a club for softball?”

“What does roommate matching look like?”

“Is it worth it to have a car on campus?”

Even during a crisis, Jansen thought, people needed to sit and embroider, to read books that weren’t important, to ask what kind of laptop they needed for college.

Jansen noticed the phrasing several students used. “I was worried there would be more ‘If I get to college …’” she said. “But it was ‘When I’m a student there.’”

No one can say how much that certainty might wane in the months ahead, or if the economy will tumble all the way down. No one can say how much the spreading virus will devastate the country, or when Drury University will reopen its dorms.

Still, an admissions counselor has relationships to carry forward.

The morning after the live chat, Jansen received a text from the mother of a young woman in Kansas City, Mo., who had chosen Drury over a bigger university. The counselor knew them both well.

“Good morning, Katie girl!” the message said. “We watched last night, you were wonderful. How are you doing today?”

“Hello!! Thanks so much …,” Jansen wrote back, pasting a photo of Cricket in her text.

The mother texted a hopeful reply: “We’re excited to meet her in the fall!”

Jansen paused.

In the fall.

That sure sounded good.