The Long-Term Impact of a Pandemic on Higher Education Learning

Since earlier this year, higher education institutions globally have made the most dramatic shift in teaching methods in history—and it was made almost overnight. Those following news surrounding the pandemic’s effect on higher education already know this shift is changing the operational and financial landscapes of many colleges and universities. But what does it mean for students? We wanted to know what it’s like being a participant in this learning shift, and what students really need and want moving forward. In that spirit, we invited four students from various universities to share their thoughts with us.

TreanorHL is a national architecture, planning, and design firm located in the United States. The company holds a firm belief in sharing resources and insights with professionals, clients, and building users to shape the space we use to live and grow as people. For more information, visit treanorhl.com.

Transcript

Megan Brock: 0:05

Welcome to TreanorHL Talks, a podcast about architecture, planning, and design trends, as well as the current events and noteworthy topics in the field. I'm your host, Megan Brock, introducing today's topic, the impact of COVID-19 on higher education learning. Since earlier this year, higher education institutions globally have made the most dramatic shift in teaching methods in history. And it was made almost overnight. Those of you who have followed news surrounding the pandemic's effect on higher education, already know the shift is changing the operational and financial landscapes of many colleges and universities. But what does that mean for students? What about the class of 2020? We wanted to know what it's like being a participant in this learning shift, and what students really need and want moving forward. In that spirit, we invited four students from various universities to share their thoughts with us. Joining me today are Hassan and Nadia, who are interns in the student life studio at TreanorHL, as well as Ashleigh and Anna, who are also current students. Joining me from TreanorHL is Tim Reynolds and Nadia Zhiri. Tim and Nadia help colleges design spaces that help students live, learn and grow as they prepare themselves for professional careers. So thank you all for joining me today, virtually. Nadia, I will go ahead and turn it over to you.

Nadia Zhiri: 1:27

Well, thanks, Megan. I'm Nadia Zhiri, I'm a principal at TreanorHL and I am our student life studio leader within Higher Ed. My name is Tim Reynolds. I'm the principal in our science and technology group here at TreanorHL. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're involved in on campus, what your majors are anything that might be of interest to us.

Anna Stafford: 1:54

So my name is Anna Stafford. I am at this point, technically a senior at KU. I'm hoping to graduate at the end of December. I'm a history major. And as far as what I do on campus, I do a lot of archival work, I was doing a before the whole COVID-19 thing happened. I was doing a sort of history internship working a lot at the Spencer archive, and we spend a lot of time at the libraries and things of that sort. But yeah.

Nadia Laytimi: 2:24

My name is Nadia Laytimi. I'm a I'm going into my fifth year and five year accelerated master's program at KU. I am a part of Gamma Phi Beta Sorority. And that's honestly about all I have time with my internship and school and trying to say caught up in everything.

Ashleigh Beane: 2:49

I am Ashleigh, I go to Butler Community College here in Wichita, and I'm studying culinary arts and restaurant management.

Hassan Haltam: 2:59

And my name is Hassan Haltam I'm architecture student, there'll be a senior next year doing my undergrad there and University of Arlington here in Texas. And it's been an interesting semester.

Tim Reynolds: 3:13

I can't imagine what this is like for you guys and how you've felt about it. But let me ask you first, based on what you've gone through, if you could describe your experience relative to this semester, in one word, or one phrase, what would it be?

Nadia Laytimi: 3:31

Mess. It's a mess. Politics, school, the whole organization. I mean other I really appreciate our weekly emails from Treanor and the fact that we're so like involved in keeping up to date with everything. I really appreciate that because I feel like we're not getting much from the university and like, and aspects of like a weekly update. Like hey, guys, like it's not as personal as I feel like our work messages have been and I think having even like working still has made this feel a little bit more normal.

Anna Stafford: 4:09

I think my word would be like disconnect, like, in every sense of the word there's people have problems connecting physically online trying everyone's trying to figure out zoom, everyone's trying to, you know, navigate this new way of learning but also there's just a disconnect from the university not being on campus every day. There's a disconnect, obviously, politically, it's being kind of polarized and that's really strange. So there's just a lot of disconnection with with everything.

Ashleigh Beane: 4:45

Challenging, very challenging. My degree plan is meant to be very hands-on, like we do events all year round. We actually cook in class, we're supposed to be able to show step-by-step how we do everything. And suddenly we don't have a space where we can just show our teacher this is what we're doing along the way, we have to figure out how to show it from home.

Hassan Haltam: 5:08

For me, that--e word I would think would be, you know, it's hard to put it in a word, but definitely challenging. Yeah, I agree with that.

Tim Reynolds: 5:17

So, Ashleigh, when you say challenging, tell me what you what's been the most challenging part for you?

Ashleigh Beane: 5:24

I've been working three jobs at a time pretty much for the past two years along with being a student. So going from having a place to constantly be and then going to school and talking to my teachers and talking to other students. And then going back to one of those three places, I always have to be to being in my house, staring at the same thing all the time with my co workers, being my cats is a little bit weird, and stressful.

Tim Reynolds: 5:51

Hassan, tell me what you mean by the word, challenging?

Hassan Haltam: 5:55

But I think it's been challenging for everyone. For, for me, personally, ever since I started architecture program, I transferred from Finland. I was there for two years. And then I transferred here and, you know, I've I started my undergrad when I was in my late 30s. So I'm not your traditional student. And I've done a lot of things in business in the past. So it was shocking to me that you can't have a pin-up on a PowerPoint. I didn't get it, you know, so when I was talking to my professors in Finland, I was like, wait, guys, why don't we just do this on the projector? It's gonna be awesome. You know, I got all these visuals and stuff. And they were saying, well, no, that's not how we do it, you know. So now, it's been challenging, and everybody had to shift gears. But it's also been a blessing in a way, because you can do a lot of effects and things like that, when you're showing somebody your screen. The challenge has been for the communication, and like what Ashleigh was saying, I mean, it's really hard for the professor to be like, no, no, no, that's too much salt, or no, no, no, you shouldn't put that building here, that should be over here. Like our last project was a master plan in Dallas. So it was, it was a huge, huge scope. So the challenge was definitely that the professor wasn't able to, you know, put some trace paper over my drawings and fix what I messed up so royally, you know, as a, as a student.

Nadia Zhiri: 7:11

You know, it's it's an assumption that what we're experiencing now is going to become our new normal, somehow, things have changed so much. And we are all feeling those changes. So let's have a conversation about what this learning experience has been, and what you think it's going to evolve into, and maybe some pros and cons of what this experience is bringing?

Anna Stafford: 7:40

Sure, yeah, I would say that, overall, I would say that I had a really positive experience. Obviously, it wasn't ideal. A lot of my classes, especially in the history department rely on discussion in class where you're interacting with your peers and your instructors. So it was it was very difficult to sort of go from that to most days, just not even having that kind of discourse with anyone. Besides, one of my classes would hold like zoom lectures, twice a week, everyone else just kind of was like, uh, here's what you need to do get in touch with us if you have any other information, like if you need any other information. And that was I was able to handle that pretty well. But so it was positive in the sense that the transition was pretty smooth. But the I guess one con of it was that you you miss that interaction that is so helpful in learning the material.

Nadia Laytimi: 8:41

Yeah, I would have to say the same thing. It's a lot of like the accountability of being in class is lost, just having those conversations, especially with my my studio class, it's a six credit class, like we really rely on feedback from our peers and our professor. So it was just hard having a review session that was on Zoom. So it wasn't necessarily like the feedback we would have hoped for, for a final project. But I think we did a really good job actually in handling in my studio. We had like this really big zoom session with like 40 participants and we had, like 20 different professors or not professors, but associate professors like people who worked at different firms around the US. They were able to call in, so we were able to actually get feedback from architects. So I think that was a cool way of handling the transition and maybe can be used again.

Nadia Zhiri: 9:43

How did that work exactly? I mean, what that it was 40 people and they were all on and how was it a cool experience?

Nadia Laytimi: 9:52

With that session, he did these like breakout sessions where we would get different reviewers and we would all reconvene back to our zoom session. And then we hop out in these breakout sessions with like two reviewers. And we got, I got to meet with four reviewers. And that was more than I had expected to.

Tim Reynolds: 10:11

How important is the face-to-face interaction that you have with your student peers to you relative to your college experience?

Ashleigh Beane: 10:23

Well, in restaurant management and culinary, I kind of feel like it, it can be a hugely beneficial thing for us. We all have different ideas of how restaurants should be run, how kitchens should be run, we all share ideas for recipes. So we kind of build off of each other, and having the opportunity to interact with each other really helps with that. But at the same time, there's other ways to do that, that don't involve physically being in front of each other. We all have social media, so we could just as easily get on a Zoom call once a week and talk about what we thought of the class and everything and how we feel about the recipes, what we would improve on and everything. It doesn't require us to be in the same room.

Hassan Haltam: 11:03

Yeah, and it's funny, Ashleigh, you should mention social media. Because imagine if this happened 15 years ago, pre-Facebook or pre-WhatsApp, or pre-anything or pre-Zoom are all the I know, we just be so out in the middle of the lake, just we'd all be lost. Yeah. So it's interesting how these things have kind of progressed to the point where we are now and now everything kind of kicked into high gear what we need, we need all this tech, you know, to communicate, but yeah, I agree with everything Ashleigh said, definitely. I mean, we it's a very collaborative effort.

Nadia Laytimi: 11:34

Yeah, all of we, I feel like, since we've been through so many years, we have like a group of just architecture friends, we've texted group message and just stay like up to date with each other and just checking in constantly, like, how are you guys doing? Like, we know, this is weird, like, don't, don't make it feel normal, like, you know, so we, I feel like, it's nice to have like a space where you can talk freely to your, like classmates and like, let them know, like, Hey, I'm going through the same thing to like, it's not just you like things are going to be okay. You know, just encouragement.

Anna Stafford: 12:11

Yeah, keeping, keeping in touch with like, friends has been difficult, like a lot of my friends that I had here, just went back home. So like, be with their parents. And so it's, it's hard to kind of stay in touch, but we've been trying and, but also there's like, even just on social media, keeping in touch with other classmates, and seeing that everyone's kind of going through the same thing is really helpful. And it keeps it keeps you motivated, you know, the least bit that you can, just because you can see that everyone else is also going through it and you're not alone and struggling to to keep keep the faith.

Nadia Zhiri: 12:54

There's a certain feel that you must have had, being a student and doing things on campus. How was that changing for you? And is it something that you miss at all?

Nadia Laytimi: 13:07

Yeah, um, obviously, I miss my friends. Everything's been really hard. They had to, like move everyone out of our house. And everyone, so everyone's home, basically. It's, it's a weird transition. And especially since like, I have a younger sister who's going into her freshman year at K State, I'm kind of thinking about her and like worried about her, like, she's not going to have the same opportunity I had and coming to school and like, kind of being set loose, like in making all these new friends. And I'm like, is she even going to be able to go on to campus and kind of get that same opportunity, and, probably not the way that we're handling things right now in universities. So it's just, it worries me.

Anna Stafford: 13:56

Yeah, I definitely feel a disconnect, not being on campus every day. I feel like being on campus and seeing other students just going through the same thing that you're going through. And then like I mentioned before, having class discussions and seeing instructors, and just having spaces where you can sit and do homework for a moment you know, it, it makes it feel more real and so when you are in your apartment trying to you know, do the same schoolwork it it doesn't feel as meaningful, if that makes sense and it feels a lot less I just feel like I said very disconnected and unmotivated not being on campus around everyone.

Nadia Laytimi: 14:42

I think the burnout is a lot more intense to just since you're trying to do everything as efficiently as you were when you were in person at home now and finding like okay, where are these spaces in these zones I can make in my space now. and it's been interesting.

Anna Stafford: 15:03

It's hard to find the right spot to work when you're in the same spot every day. And if this were to continue, I would try to, you know, set up more of a space for me to like really sit and do my work that feels a bit more official and comfortable. So yeah, I would try to get like, more more materials to make it feel a bit different than what it is now. Because right now, it's very casual workspace.

Hassan Haltam: 15:33

I've always tried to get groups together and try to do competitions and things like that in university with colleagues and peers and stuff, and that's kind of challenging now, but at the same time, we have more downtime, so maybe not. But I think it's harder to break the ice, and really get to know somebody, you know, the way we're doing it now. But I think there needs to be more consistency, because this is something odd, every professor used a different platform. Right? Which was just there was so inconsistent, I would lose, I'll be like, okay, Allen's class that Zoom or is that Teams, which one is that? And, you know, it's like you're always trying to, like pedal back. And okay, which platform is this class in? So I think the universities especially should have a consistency.

Ashleigh Beane: 16:16

Yeah, that's what we did, too. We were all supposed to use our online platform, it was Canvas, but every teacher used it differently. And it was so hard to keep up with who was doing what, exactly.

Tim Reynolds: 16:29

From a technology standpoint, did your institutions help out in any way to get faster internet connections at home or where you live? Did they offer you laptops if you didn't have one? Was there any assistance that you were getting relative to technology? Or were you on your own?

Ashleigh Beane: 16:49

The only assistance that Butler offered was, they made it so that you could access Zoom for free, there was a limit on it before where if, for more than 45 minutes, it would cut you off if you weren't paying for it. And they made it so that if you accessed it through the Butler website, it was free. But other than that, I think the expectation was that you already had your camera or your laptop or whatever you needed.

Nadia Laytimi: 17:14

I at the beginning of all this, I actually had to buy like higher internet speed just because I wasn't able to do everything that I was meant to do at home. So that was kind of one of the trials and tribulations just right early on. I now looking at it even during those review sessions back to like our final reviews we had and I we had professors like casually mentioning how they're going to be teaching the second year of student studios online and how this is preparing them right now for that. And there's not a lot of transparency and like letting students know kind of like, okay, what what's going on? And like how can we better prepare? Because I feel like it's just mentioned, like, I don't know, I feel like there could be more transparency from the university and like, enabling us to be more prepared, especially if this is how it's going to be again in the fall.

Anna Stafford: 18:11

Yeah, I would agree with the transparency aspect of it, I definitely feel like my professors did the best that they could, such as short notice only having a couple of weeks to rework, you know, the syllabus and get everyone like at a scheduled time for people to meet if we were meeting during zoom. So I feel like it went okay for the amount of time that they had. And I think when the university does make a decision about the fall semester, hopefully, over the summer, they'll have more time to kind of tweak the problems that people were having and make it a little bit easier for the majority of the students to have better success with the whole online learning because I feel like I did alright, personally. But I could definitely tell that in some of my classes, there were other people who were struggling not meeting or maybe had a harder time have making connections just learning online.

Nadia Laytimi: 19:13

Yeah, definitely. I even had in the beginning one of my one of my good friends in my studio class, he would have to come over like the first couple weeks of school because he just didn't have Wi-Fi working in his apartment. So he would come over and we would do our Zoom sessions and then he had to buy some whatever Midco, you know, just to make things easier for him. But then at that point, it's also his computer's not working like up to its best, you know?

Hassan Haltam: 19:43

Yeah, at Arlington they they were pretty supportive. I think that you need good equipment to do CAD and Rhino and whatever else you need in architecture school, so they were actually pretty supportive. They did. They did supply quite a bit of equipment I think we're on loan and things like that. And there was access to the computer labs even during that day or the pandemic because of things like LUMION just for rendering and stuff for final projects. I don't know how they policed it, I was fortunate because of, you know, my place at Treanor, I, you know, I've got some, some some nice equipment, as far as you know, my work laptop and one of the computers in Lawrence there where you are Tim has LUMION, which is a really good rendering software, and I was able to remote into that. So it was a blessing to be, you know, part of the TreanorHL team during this because I had a lot of what I needed. But yeah, the school did okay, I guess. You know, a lot of people on the calls, and on the sort of the meetings and studio, you could tell some of them were working off the phone and stuff like that. So I mean, it was pretty limited, but they did offer it, it could be that the students just didn't take them up on the offer.

Tim Reynolds: 20:54

So tell me about, have your institutions made plans for the fall semester? And if they have, what are they?

Ashleigh Beane: 21:03

Butler's current plan is to start classes up again, as usual, like on campus for the fall, they're actually doing a lot of stuff right now, where if you take six credit hours during the summer, they'll give you three free credit hours in the fall. So they're trying to encourage us to get as much of it as we can done the summer to minimize how much time we have to spend there during the fall.

Hassan Haltam: 21:24

Yeah, and with Arlington there, they're also saying they're treating everything pretty normally, they're not really giving us a Plan B at all, which is odd, because I really doubt that it's going to be on campus. But everything, the description of the classes, everything is you know, face-to-face, and they give you a room number and all that stuff. But I don't know, I'll believe it when I see it.

Nadia Laytimi: 21:42

I think it's especially to do with the fact I think schools are still kind of giving hope that we're going to be in-person, but then you talk to professor's and then you hear kind of a different story. And I think there's a lot of confusion and a lot of people aren't planning too far ahead. I don't know. I talked to the Dean actually during the first week of quarantines, and he was letting me know about how the fact like we can't have students back on in the fall without like having a second wave in September. And then I thought, right, why would we even invite students back on campus? So I'm like, are you telling me we're not on campus in the fall? Like, are we going to come here for a month in person and do like weird hybrid? Like, like, how is that going to work? And especially with housing, I'm trying to figure out and I had a lot more questions, but I obviously didn't want to overwhelm him because he's dealing with tons, I'm sure already. And but if I had asked him for something, I think it would be how are we going to, how are we going to help the kids who don't have the technology to be able to work the software's that we need efficiently? Because I know one of my biggest issues is like, my computer's really slow, like my laptop is really slow. And so I struggle with finishing work efficiently sometimes. So I'm wondering, what about the people who don't have even a laptop who have to go into the bridge lab. So that's in person stuff they have to deal with.

Anna Stafford: 23:13

I haven't heard anything about housing specifically, I think the last thing I saw was similar to Nadia, which was just like, they're still tentatively planning for like, for us to be back on campus in the fall. But then, just recently, I saw that Wichita State was there doing hybrid slash online. That was the last thing I saw from them. So that sort of made me question like, I shouldn't get my hopes up too high. Because other you know, comparable universities are doing things differently. So yeah, I think it right now it's just very up in the air.

Tim Reynolds: 23:51

So none have none of them talk to you about social distancing? And when you get back on campus, have they talked to you about masks, have they talked to you about we're limiting the number of students in a class so you can maintain social distancing? Any any information?

Ashleigh Beane: 24:08

Not yet.

Hassan Haltam: 24:11

Which is surprising, really.

Megan Brock: 24:14

Well, what are you comfortable with? What types of protocols need to be in place before you feel safe returning to campus?

Nadia Laytimi: 24:22

I think, if KU and Lawrence more specifically had a comprehensive way of testing and retesting and tracking the virus and our local town then I would be more like if we could like live see, like, who has this virus on campus? Like are we in danger of transferring in I just I don't know if we'll get there. But I think that would make me feel most comfortable. I know that there hasn't really been a comprehensive way of tracking the virus in the US and that's a little scary, especially since we don't know how like who and how many people have it. So I don't think I would be comfortable with being back on campus with the amount of people that usually are on campus until we have something like that.

Anna Stafford: 25:13

Yeah, I agree, I think there would be need to be like, a more cohesive way of letting us know how we can be safe around other people, testing, and also just holding people accountable for being hygienic, which I have no clue how they would even do that. But it would definitely have to be very well thought out and organized. And I would have to feel very secure with whatever the plan was before I would feel comfortable being on campus. But as far as like what that looks like, it's really hard to say because I don't know, within the sheer number of people, it'd be hard to really keep everyone on the same page. Keep keep the whole campus clean.

Tim Reynolds: 25:59

So tell me, given the fact that your institutions are saying they're gonna go back on campus, how do you feel about that? Are you worried about it? Are you confident that your institutions are going to take the steps necessary to keep you safe?

Ashleigh Beane: 26:17

I think that my, my instructors personally are going to try to. And I do think that the Dean of our school cares. But at the same time, I don't think that it's the best idea, especially going into the winter season, when all of this is more likely to spike again. And everything I just, it doesn't seem like a smart idea to start going back so soon.

Hassan Haltam: 26:40

It's almost shocking to me that they would, even the lack of lack of clarity about what the plans are, is surprising. So I mean, I know I'm sure they would love to keep it as safe as they can, but how much is really in anyone's control? You know, so I mean, you know, short of building cubes for everyone to be in, and then even that has weird implications. You know, it's just, I can't foresee this thing is really being a smart move. As far as going back in the fall. You know, and especially if it was a successful semester, I really don't know how the results were, you know, personally, I had, we were pretty far along when we started. So we, it was a pretty quick and easy wrap up for me. I mean, there was the challenges, obviously. But, you know, I think we could probably keep doing this until we have some closure, but I can't, I can't see why it would be wise to do it on, you know, face-to-face. Because you know, these rooms are pretty tight and air change in these buildings are pretty bad, you know, how the schools are pretty, everything's old as far as the air exchange.

Tim Reynolds: 27:42

Well, and I think that's something that goals are going to need to reassure students that they've taken things into account. Even if you think about things in your school, like you're walking down the hallway, passing people all of the time. How do you how do you social distance in in areas like that? How do you do it in collaboration areas? As one of my professor friends asked me yesterday, how do you do that in public restrooms? You know, is there going to be a monitor that says, no more than two people in the restroom at one time? I think it's going to be difficult to police this.

Megan Brock: 28:22

So what are your concerns about your career after school? Do you feel prepared? What are your questions?

Anna Stafford: 28:31

I definitely feel like my I've kind of just put off just thinking about the future in general. Like, I feel like that's what this has done. To me. It's just, I feel like I'm just kind of at a standstill, and I'm still thinking about what I would like to do in the future. But it's hard to even think about that when I don't even know what you know, August and September is gonna look like and what like, am I going to be able to graduate? Are things going to be so different than I totally have to alter my academic progress? So I definitely like I'm still thinking about my future career, but it's also just kind of hard to even fathom what it's going to be like, because I don't want to like get my hopes up and have all these expectations and then be really let down. So it's tricky.

Nadia Laytimi: 29:22

The advice I've been hearing a friend like I've been listening to a lot of NPR they've got like Coronavirus Daily and like all their like daily things. So I just kind of been listening to that just to keep like a factual information news source in my day to day life. And that's been really helpful, just kind of knowing what's going on that way. But um, I've I've heard a lot of talks about people who are going like in their freshman year are considering taking gap years and taking a lot of Gen Ed's through JuCo. So I think that's going to be a large transition is more community college courses, and especially when you're considering just taking the class online, like there's your, you're comparing university classes to community colleges, and there's quite a large difference in the amount that they cost. So I think you're gonna see a lot more people going to community colleges just to get their credits. In the meantime, during this all.

Hassan Haltam: 30:28

It's, that's, I've been thinking about the same thing quite a bit. Again, I feel very fortunate that I have position with a firm, which, you know, it's become like a family, you know, in student life. So I feel fortunate from that aspect, but I'm thinking of students that have no experience, you know, so, you interview on, you know, platform, like what we're doing here. Um, you know, you get the idea. So, I mean, you have this interview, and you get the job, and then how does it go from there, you know, you end up being an intern in your living room, or how does that work, you know. So as far as like getting employed, I think a lot of this, because globalization has been something that's kind of led up to this, too. So now, Tim could just as easily hire an intern in South Korea as he could at UT Arlington, you know, to work in science and tech. It's an option, because everything's pretty much online now. versus you know, face to face. So you don't even need your interns or your employees to be in the space with you, since that's not even an option. So I think this whole thing was globalization. And outsourcing is gonna blow up even more, maybe not with our company, but with most companies. So that's, I think that should be a concern for students. So I think everybody just has to stand out even more. So they really have to go that extra mile, their portfolio has to be better than everybody else, they have to communicate better than everyone else. I think it's more competitive than it's ever been.

Tim Reynolds: 31:53

So you feel like, there's more pressure on you because of this.

Hassan Haltam: 31:58

I think there should be, at least that's how people should be looking at it. I'm not a pessimist. But I'm a realist. You know, I mean, just like we're having this conversation, and every conversation, since this thing started has been, you know, on Zoom, or Teams, or whatever. Well, you can do that with somebody in Mexico, or Chile, or Jordan, or Finland, or whatever, you know, so I think things will change. And there's really nothing keeping us from doing that anyway, because design is design. This doesn't work in the culinary field, you know, has to be still somebody physically, you know, cooking up the food. But in architecture, especially, I think, maybe it's because I was over there for a few years. And now I'm here, I really don't see a difference. I actually sat in all the final projects for my colleagues in Finland, because I missed the year because I transferred over so they just graduated all of them with their undergrad. So I sat in on the Zoom meeting, it was like, 3am, you know, and I would like, excuse myself, when it was when I couldn't do it anymore at like, 4am. You know, this is like two weeks ago, but I still sat in and watch them, you know, present their final project and, you know, go on from there. So I think it's definitely going to be challenging to find work, a particular area oriented job question, you're asking, again, more competition than before.

Ashleigh Beane: 33:12

As far as the restaurant industry goes, it's, it's a little harder to make changes around stuff like this, just because, I mean, like he pointed out, you still have to have people there to cook the food. And that's usually a team effort. So you're pretty much always going to be with people cooking at some point. Um, there have been a lot of nice changes, I mean, like, things like GrubHub, exist, and DoorDash. So it is possible to have a place where you're not interacting with the customer face to face as much. But there's only so many changes they can really make as far as kitchens go, and the physical restaurant goes, That doesn't include like adding a drive thru, or getting rid of the dining space and making it just a pickup location. There. It's a little harder to work around that in this industry. And honestly, I'm actually kind of afraid that like people just aren't going to want to go out eat as much. And it might diminish a little bit of the restaurant industry.

Tim Reynolds: 34:10

So have they actively taken a part of your curriculum and said, hey, we we really need to talk about the hospitality and restaurant business. What if this happens again, is that really been a big part of the discussion this semester?

Ashleigh Beane: 34:30

Some of the teachers have. I took a class where you were supposed to design your own restaurant and bar and he started asking us questions while we were working on our final project. How would you work around something like this if your restaurant had to close down, and you need to figure out how to keep going in a way where you can continue to serve everybody without them physically being there? How would you do it? So we were all sort of expected to work around this.

Tim Reynolds: 34:53

Hassan, what about you? Have you guys talked I mean, you know how this is, this is going to impact In the architectural and design community, have you talked about it actively in the classes about how this is going to impact the way you practice?

Hassan Haltam: 35:10

No, we haven't. And it really surprised me, I was expecting that the professor's really, you know, be thinking outside the box. But I think everybody was kind of scrambling just to get through the semester. And perceiving next semester, in the fall, it's summer, but definitely in the fall, I think it's definitely going to be a discussion.

Megan Brock: 35:28

So on one hand, Hassan, like you mentioned, maybe this creates a more competitive environment professionally, but maybe it also creates an environment where we need to connect with each other and really remember that your experience is one of many. So for the students that hear this, what do you want them to know? What is your message?

Ashleigh Beane: 35:50

Don't panic, I mean, the changes that are going to need to happen to make this all continue to go forward are going to happen, and we'll figure it out as we get there.

Hassan Haltam: 36:01

And I think things always have a way of working themselves out. You know, I've been walking the line, just for years trying to get through architecture school, just because it's been a dream of mine for a long time. And you know, I have no regrets other than not doing this earlier. So I think everything always works out in the end. So you know, this too shall pass. That's probably the biggest, biggest word of advice for everyone, you know, this too shall pass.

Anna Stafford: 36:28

Yeah, I would say a positive or just something that I feel like, I want other students to know is that if you're feeling unmotivated, or if you feel really confused, and you don't feel like you, you're you're putting your future on hold, or you just, you feel discomforted, it's, it's very normal, I feel like I'm going through it. And I know a lot of other people are going through it. And this is a first time thing for pretty much everyone on the planet right now. So we're all just have to take it one day at a time. And hopefully, we can, you know, get to a place where if this does have to be the new normal, we can. It can feel a lot more comfortable for all of us, and we can find success.

Tim Reynolds: 37:14

So let me ask you guys, this. Is a forum like this have any value to you?

Ashleigh Beane: 37:24

Yeah, I think it actually helps with some of this. I actually wasn't really thinking very hard about until you started asking questions. And then it just kind of gave me a new perspective. I guess, when I got to think about it a little bit more.

Tim Reynolds: 37:38

I'm wondering if you'd be willing to talk to us again in the future?

Ashleigh Beane: 37:42

I would.

Hassan Haltam: 37:43

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I'd be interested. Because I mean, this is all this is all irrelevant stuff. You know, and we're still figuring that out. So none of us have the answers, you know, but together, we could kind of get closer.

Megan Brock: 37:55

Hassan is right. While we don't have all the answers, talking about it is the first step to moving forward. Thank you to Hassan, Nadia, Ashleigh, and Anna, for joining us today on this episode of TreanorHL Talks. What do you think? How can we assure students will succeed during this global shift? And how do we prepare them for a world that will look different after graduation? How do we also help them grow as individuals outside the virtual or physical classroom? On our next episode, I will catch up with Tim and Nadia to get their thoughts on today's discussion, as well as ideas and suggestions for how university clients can prepare their facilities as campuses began to reopen. TreanorHL is a national architecture, planning and design firm located in the United States. The company holds a firm belief and sharing resources and insights with professionals clients and building users to shape the space we use to live and grow as people. For more information visit trainer aol.com That's t-r-e-a-n-o-r-h-l.com