The NileView

Going back to campus is a great feeling, but everyone needs to be careful and thoughtful.

The first time I stepped foot on the campus of the American University in Cairo (AUC) was back in early September 1983 as an undergraduate student walking through the gate of the main campus at Al-Sheikh Rihan street. Since then, I have been part of this gem institution as a student, teaching assistant, faculty member, or administrator doing different things; each one was a great learning experience, effectively contributing to my professional career and personal development. During that period, I have never been away from AUC, whether the downtown campus from September 1983 to July 2008 or the new campus from September 2008 until February 2020, except for the usual spring breaks and winter and summer holidays, and even those periods were usually interrupted with regular visits to my office.

However, all that categorically changed in the first quarter of 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Sunday 8 March was a long and typical day in the office packed with back-to-back meetings. It was the only day that week I was planning to spend at the new campus, as for the rest of the week, I had meetings at the downtown campus. Besides, Thursday 12 March was officially announced as a holiday by the government of Egypt due to projected heavy rains. However, what happened next was unexpected, to say the least, and disrupted different societies and economies around the world. 

In the afternoon of Thursday 12 March, the university leadership, after a thorough analysis of the repercussions of the pandemic –which hit Egypt with the first reported case on Friday 14 February– decided to move entirely online. There were so many decisions taken instantly at the time, including shifting the spring break, training faculty and staff on operating online, and developing guidelines for various operations. Accordingly, for me, Sunday 8 March 2020 was my last day in the office. Initially, I thought it would only be a few months before I am back on campus, probably in September for the fall semester. However, with the developments of the pandemic and the imposed curfews, lockdowns, restrictions, and limitations coupled with my personal decision to take all the possible precautionary measures until I am fully vaccinated, I have been away from my office for a very long time. In fact, with the university leadership decision to return to campus offering face-to-face in-class teaching as of tomorrow –Sunday 5 September 2021 marking the start of the academic year 2021/2022– I will finally go back to my office for the first time in 1 year, 5 months and 29 days.

AUC is not alone in such an endeavor. With the rollout of the vaccination process, many universities and higher education institutions worldwide are welcoming back their students, faculty, and staff this fall. However, since March 2020, many universities, including AUC, have used different hybrid models to navigate the various pandemic waves while preserving the health and safety of the community, mitigating the risks caused by this challenging environment, and offering the best possible student-centered learning experience. For AUC, this included operating using a low-density campus model for some time where most courses were offered online, and some selected courses were offered face-to-face, especially the ones where learning would be significantly affected, including science labs and studios. 

Since the pandemic hit, for AUC, the key objective that was driving the entire process and led to all the decisions taken and amendments made to the operations aimed at exerting every possible effort to protect the health, safety, and well-being of the students, faculty, staff, and the entire university community. In parallel, this was coupled with supporting an uninterrupted rewarding, and effective students’ academic journey, showing institutional resilience and adapting to a different and changing mode of operation while leveraging the opportunities enabled through digital transformation.

Since March 2020, some of my fellow faculty and staff have been to campus a few times, some more than others, but the vast majority have hardly been there. Therefore, tomorrow will be the first time for many of the university community to be back on campus for such a long time. It will be the first time for the freshmen students who joined the university during the academic year 2020/2021 and the faculty and staff recruited during the same year. This must be a fascinating time for this group of students, faculty, and staff who joined the institution over a year ago and were not able to visit until now. However, there is still a high degree of uncertainty, and too many unknowns and plans of moving back to campus might still change with the emerging variants of the virus that constantly come up and keep disrupting our transition back to normal life. Consequently, close monitoring of the number of Covid-19 cases on campus and in Egypt at large will be a critical factor in deciding whether the university continues operating face-to-face or entertain shifting back to online learning or a hybrid model. Therefore, AUC has devised a plan for both face-to-face and online scenarios so the campus would be ready to transition faster and easier.

Naturally, there is much eagerness and motivation to go back to campus for administrators, faculty, staff, students, and parents alike. A move that will help realize the university’s educational mission and learning objectives, fulfill its invaluable societal role and support the next generation of leaders, professionals, and entrepreneurs across different disciplines to engage in learning and research activities that can help them become agents of change and make a difference to society.

The pandemic has caused various changes to the lives of so many people and societies around the world, including the academic community and its different stakeholders, with everyone reacting differently. While some have managed to adapt quickly and have shown resilience, others have struggled with various challenges, some related to their learning experience, managing remotely, interacting with people through digital platforms, and others being socially isolated for long periods due to lockdowns and the stress associated with the pandemic and more. Today, even with the fully vaccinated requirement and the excitement to go back to campus, the expectations still include wearing a mask, preserving social distancing, and regularly testing to ensure everyone is safe. Therefore, the move back to normal life is still work-in-progress.

It is essential to understand that the transition back to campus needs to be smoothly handled since adaptation will mean different things to different people. There will be mixed feelings; some will be anxious, others will be excited, and accordingly, there needs to be a complete understanding of what people feel, which will vary from one to the other. There is no one size fits all. Therefore, listening to the thoughts and ideas of the university community would comfort them and support the seamless transition back to campus for everyone.

In my view, AUC has done a fantastic job navigating these difficult times by engaging the university community on and off-campus in an ongoing conversation. A process that started back in March 2020 and has been going on non-stop since then through regular communications, deliberations, surveys, focus groups as well as campus-wide committees and task forces addressing different aspects of the implications of the pandemic on the university in an attempt to capture the ideas, inputs, and thoughts of the community to be able to effectively continue to carry its mission and strategic objectives.

I sincerely hope that with the vaccination process in place, the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic is behind us, and we can all look forward to a new norm with a future driven by many lessons learned over the past period. It is imperative not to let this unprecedented crisis go to waste and lose an opportune moment to rethink and revisit the future of learning. Undoubtedly, in-class teaching and learning coupled with social exposure and interaction on campus are invaluable. However, can innovative models and approaches be introduced so that the campus experience for all concerned constituents, including students, faculty, and staff, is improved? Can digital transformation play a more significant role? Can more flexibility be introduced, allowing more hybrid models? Would digitalization enable more collaboration among faculty in academic teaching, research, and service? Should we be offering more flexible and inclusive learning opportunities? We need to keep asking these challenging and forward-thinking questions. It is part of the continuous improvement process that each university and higher education institution should keep asking to better serve its students and learners. This conversation will continue for the foreseeable future within different campuses across the globe, AUC included. It is not just about offering more technology-based solutions, but it is also about being driven by innovation and creativity to deliver the best possible learning experience.

I reiterate I am incredibly excited to be going back to campus, sit in my office, meet my colleagues from faculty and staff and interact with our beloved students. It is a privilege to be part of a community that worked relentlessly together to pave the way for a safe and secure return to campus. However, while returning to campus is awesome, and everyone is looking forward to it, we simply cannot go back to doing the same things using the same conventional ways we used to back in March 2020. Today, we are dealing with digital natives and an environment that is increasingly being affected by innovative technologies; accordingly, the global higher education community should work together to rethink and redesign the future of learning in light of the transformations caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

About the author: Sherif Kamel is a Professor of Management and Dean of the School of Business at The American University in Cairo.

4 September 2021
Issue #16