We had a good system, but my mind keeps returning to the great people here who were willing to make this work.
Just before the 新型冠状病毒肺炎 p和emic shut down most of the country in March 2020, including in-person teaching at BSU, Dr. 克里斯托弗·弗雷泽 had just finished a professional development exercise involving contagious outbreaks.
However, even that couldn’t have prepared him for what was on the horizon.
和大多数人一样, I thought the virus sounded concerning, but frankly it didn’t sound as concerning as a measles outbreak on campus,” said the executive director of BSU’s 健康中心.
It soon became apparent that COVID was something altogether different. 很快，博士. Frazer 和 his 工作人员, along with a group of volunteers that grew in number as the p和emic stretched from months into more than a year, ramped up what became a successful response to the health crisis.
“At first, we thought, how are we going to do this?他说. Not only did the 健康中心 工作人员 和 BSU administrators have to find a way to keep students, 员工, librarians 和 教师 safe, study tours were also in progress, 和 those students had to be safely brought home. While the campus transitioned almost immediately to remote learning, Dr. Frazer 和 his 工作人员 put together a plan.
The plan included training for his 工作人员, an intense program of testing 和 contact-tracing, educating members of the BSU community about hygiene 和 the importance of wearing a face mask, recruiting 和 training volunteers, 和, 最终, the opening of a regional vaccination center on campus. Weekly meetings with the president 和 the cabinet were also instituted for the purposes of planning 和 to facilitate communication.
为博士. Frazer 和 his 工作人员 of 11, along with volunteers from across campus, there were many long days. 例如, if in the early morning hours test results arrived showing that someone tested positive for the virus,
Dr. Frazer 和 his team had just a few hours to notify everyone who’d been in contact with that individual 和 get them to quarantine.
“It became kind of an around-the-clock operation,他说. Dr. Frazer figured that Kelsey Gauthier, assistant director of events management, 最多1个,500 calls last year in an effort to notify students about test results 和, 有时, the need to quarantine.
The six-day work weeks 和 12-plus-hour work days paid off. In the end, the campus experienced a positive test rate of less than 1 percent. Only one student ended up hospitalized, 和 that may have been for
非covid原因.
总的来说, our students recovered very well 和 were able to convalesce in a manner that didn’t perpetuate the spread of the illness,” Dr. 弗雷泽说,. “We had a good system, but my mind keeps returning to the great people here who were willing to make this work.”
Those volunteers who went above 和 beyond, he added, were:
测试: 格雷格DeMelo, G’11; Kathie Manning; Nick Burns, ’15; Kyle Bueno, ’18; Cathleen DeSimone; Eva Gaffney, G’01; 和 Jeanne O’Brien.
跟踪: Kelsey Gauthier, Jacklyn Walsh, Denise Diliddo 和 Shirelle Gurley.
健康: Cindy Calderon, Beth Archambault, Sara LaPlume 和 Lynn Grabau.