5 minute read
ON THE HILL
The mass campus testing event on November 13, pictured here, yielded a 1.5% positivity rate. The Minnesota Department of Health had warned Gustavus to expect a rate of between 10 and 15 percent. “That was when we realized what we had done worked,” says COVID response coordinator Barb Larson Taylor ’93.
A SEMESTER OF COVID-19: HOW WE ROAR-ED
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“Nobody in the world had done this, there were no best practices, and the criteria we were trying to implement kept changing.”
Those are the words of COVID response coordinator (and associate vice president for marketing and communication) Barb Larson Taylor ’93. COVID has truly been among the great challenges in Gustavus—and world— history. Gustavus students have risen to meet it.
“We made an intentional decision as a campus to rely heavily on the community to have the Gustie spirit and do the right thing,” says Heather Dale, director of the Gustavus Health Service and a member of the COVID Response Leadership Team. The College asked students to ROAR— Respect Others and Act Responsibly. In the fall semester and in January, they did.
It helped that first-year students (and select returning students) moved in first, essentially for a three-week trial basis, before all students were invited back to campus. It required sacrifice. “One of the biggest challenges was showing first-years the culture of Gustavus when no one else was around,” says Lauren Hecht, psychological science professor and director of the First Term Seminar program. For their first weeks of college, first-year students met for only one inperson class. All students were asked to stay six feet apart and avoid gathering indoors.
There were only 16 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in September—those students set the tone for the rest of the semester.
As the semester progressed, many classes transitioned back and forth between online and face-to-face learning while students and faculty navigated contact tracing and positive COVID-19 cases. When students moved home for winter break as scheduled, there had been no documented cases of transmission in a Gustavus classroom.
“Students that made safe choices were rewarded for their decisions,” says Dale. As was the whole campus. Consider the positive test rate on campus. Gustavus Health Services administered 946 COVID-19 tests in the on-campus clinic, along with 1,923 additional tests during three mass testing events. Fewer than 200 positive cases were recorded between September and December, making the cumulative positive rate 6.8 percent total.
Big Data EvolutionR
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS COLLEGE OCTOBER 5 & 6, 2021
BIG DATA (R)EVOLUTION
Oct. 5 and 6, 2021
How is big data changing our lives, and what challenges and opportunities does this transformation present? In less than a generation, we’ve witnessed nearly every piece of personal, scientific, and societal data come to be stored digitally. Stored information is both an intellectual and an economic commodity; it is used by businesses, governments, academics, and entrepreneurs. The velocity with which it accumulates and the techniques for leveraging it grow at a pace that is remarkable and often intimidating. But this revolution also promises hope as it facilitates the development of targeted treatments for disease, uncovers patterns in the cosmos, and optimizes agricultural efficiency to create sustainable food sources. The decision on having an in-person audience will be made in July. Learn more, at gustavus.edu/nobelconference.
AN ACTIVE AND URGENT TELLING
Schaefer Art Gallery February 11 through March 17
This exhibition features contemporary artists working with photography to honor the weight of lived experience through an intersectional lens. It was organized by Strange Fire Collective (SFC), a group of interdisciplinary artists, curators, and writers focused on work that engages with current social and political forces. Stemming from SFC’s mission, the exhibition centers artists for whom questions of identity deeply affect their relationship to representation. The works engage with ideas of visibility and invisibility, the reality of lives that exist outside of—or in opposition to— expected and enforced social norms, and the social and political power of speaking one’s truth.
View the exhibit virtually at gustavus.edu/art/schaefer.
FROM THESE HANDS: FIBER ART AND POETRY BY GWEN WESTERMAN
Hillstrom Museum Art February 15 through April 18
This Hillstrom exhibit features the work of Dakota scholar, artist, and poet Gwen Westerman, a faculty member in the English department at Minnesota State University, Mankato. The exhibit includes important loans from The Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul and The Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School in Pine Ridge, South Dakota.
Westerman has collaborated with the Museum in the past when she served as co-curator and artistic contributor to the Museum’s 2012–2013 exhibition Hena Uŋkiksuyapi: In Commemoration of the Dakota Mass Execution of 1862. That exhibit was occasioned by the 150th anniversary of the largest mass execution in U.S. history, in which 38 Dakota were hanged in Mankato on December 26, 1862, following the end of the U.S.Dakota War.
View the exhibit virtually at gustavus.edu/finearts/hillstrom.
CAMPUS SOCIAL
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This year, in lieu of a public lecture, students, faculty, staff, and trustees looked inward— focusing on their own learning facilitated by a racial equity training firm.
@davidyoungs Newest member of the Pawstavus Class of 2025! #whygustavus #letsgoGA
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@mark_tarello SPECTACULAR! Sunrise seen this morning from Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota.
@carrollgoalieschool Back at practice with the Gustavus Adolphus College women’s hockey team.
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10:00 a.m. Time for Reflection
—Hanaa Alhosawi ’22, 2019’s St. Lucia, recounting the legend of St. Lucia at the 2020 virtual Festival of St. Lucia service. You can watch the service, including the crowning of Abbie Doran ’23, the 2020 St. Lucia, at gustavus.edu/events/stlucia.
