SHA-Cordecho-Winter-21-22

Working to Define the NewNormal IN A POST-PANDEMIC WORLD In a very unusual way, stars aligned for Anita Underwood, Professor of Organizational Leadership and Business at Nyack College. For her many years at Nyack College, Anita had the luxury of living where she worked. With a less than ten-minute commute, Anita enjoyed the freedom and fluidity of moving between home and work with ease and convenience. Anita is a dean and skilled online professor who has taught online classes for over ten years. In 2019, suddenly, her comfortable, ideal work/home life balance was challenged with the consolidation of Nyack College’s two campuses. Plans for the consolidation of the namesake’s campus with the Wall Street campus were underway with the intent to move all operations to the Wall Street campus. Rather than have a ten-minute jaunt, Anita was faced with a 90-minute commute on public transportation in each direction. Just as this change was ready to take shape, the pandemic hit. All Nyack professors and administration were instructed to work from home. While the virus was certainly no blessing to Underwood, who shared she has been personally touched by loss as a result of COVID-19, from a work/ life perspective it had an unexpected silver lining. Unlike most in the educational arena, Anita was well-versed in best practices for online teaching and learning. Her courses were already being presented on an online platform. Without a commute and with courses well under control, Underwood used her additional time to turn inward towards self- reflection and goal-setting. She was able to become introspective and tap into her curiosity and creative space. This work provided a needed calm that she brought to her administrative work, research and classes. She didn’t find herself short-tempered when meetings or classes would be interrupted by children in the background, and she creatively pivoted to online surveys and Google forms to collect data so her research could continue. Her balance allowed her to take on additional challenges like being the architect of a fully virtual commencement celebration. In short, she was modeling for her business and leadership students the benefits of flexibility in organizational leadership. Now that New York City is open, the president’s cabinet at Nyack College is exploring what kind of flexibility can be extended to professors and administrators as it relates to working from home and being on campus. Certainly, there will be times when employees will need to be on site, but Anita plans to be a voice at the table describing the personal and organizational benefits of a flexible work environment. S P I R I T . M I N D . B O D Y . C O R D E C H O 9 L E A R N E D F R O M E X E C U T I V E L E A D E R S H I P Pond to go on to Cornell University and earn a spot on the Dean’s List. Teachers like Sr. Edith Wyss and Sr. Connie Marlowe modeled for her what teaching should look like and how to connect with students. Second to her parents, Kathleen reflects that her teachers at Sacred Heart were the individuals who had the greatest hand in molding her into the person she is today. As a professor in the MBA program, Kathleen has no reservations in describing herself as a demanding teacher. Throughout the pandemic, however, she has found herself routinely embracing compassion in her relationships with her students. Acknowledging that she did not know what her students were wrestling with in their private and business lives, she found that with added flexibility, 95% of her students were able to do a good job despite the added stressors of the pandemic. When examining her teaching and retooling to meet the needs of remote education, she found she needed to reevaluate how she delivered her content. She quickly learned that lectures would not keep online students engaged so she pivoted to create far more space for student voices, utilizing tools like breakout rooms for deeper conversation among peers. She also found it necessary to move away fromminute details and focus on overarching concepts and their applications. One of the most helpful new practices she developed was open office hours where her students would “huddle up,” check-in on each other, and continue to work on applications of their knowledge. An additional advantage of this time was that students who needed to drop out of school (due to life demands or strains on finances) were able to drop in, stay connected with fellow students, feel supported, and continue their learning. Anita Underwood PhD ‘69, Professor of Organizational Leadership & Business at Nyack College