Jon Margerum-Leys, Dean of Education & Human Services at Oakland University, spoke to us about college education in the pandemic.  As you may recall, we had Pontiac Schools Superintendent Kelley Williams speak about students and covid-19 in the K-12 grades, now we get another perspective of how college students are handling education in the pandemic. 
 
 
Jon explained that like most schools and universities, they had to stop and pivot to a new way of teaching last March.  Oakland University was teaching at 80% face-to-face and 20% online learning, and those percentages were going flip.  Already having 20% online learning was an advantage for them, now they just had to figure out how to get the rest of the curriculum online.  Their biggest challenge was how to teach the classes that had to be hands on like nursing and engineering. Oakland University did not wait, they jumped in and within a week they had the students back on track with their education.
 
Through conversation, we learned again how much the lack of social interaction affects all students no matter what grade they are in.   Jon agrees that it is hard to maintain the same degree of teaching without the face-to-face communication and group collaboration.  He hopes that by September, Oakland University will be able to flip those percentages back around and have most of the students back in class.  He also focused on the topics of dorm revenue, PPE, fund raising, grant money, faculty diversity, student debt, work force retention and $5 Friday’s.  Needless to say, we had a very informative speaker.