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The countdown to the new academic year continues as we check in with University of Wisconsin Oshkosh’s Barb Rau, dean of the College of Business (COB), as part of our Titans Return series. She shares updates about what new and returning students can expect as they head to campus amid the pandemic.

What did faculty and staff in your college learn about teaching online this past spring that may inform how hybrid or online classes will be conducted in the fall?
The COB delivers an online MBA program in partnership with UW-Eau Claire and UW-LaCrosse. U.S. News & World Report has ranked our University of Wisconsin MBA Consortium program among the top 10 programs in the nation in its Best Online MBA Programs rankings. So, we are fortunate to have a lot of faculty experience with online education.

That said, those faculty who had no experience with this mode of delivery were nervous about the transition. They were worried, particularly, about their ability to engage students in what seemed to them to be a less personal and personable format. So much of teaching is relationship oriented. I think we learned how much we appreciate each other and how generous faculty and staff are with their time when effective student learning is threatened. Some of us learned about university resources for instructional support that we didn’t know existed. Everyone learned how much they appreciated the work ethic and service orientation of Derek Bozinoski, who provided phenomenal IT support.

Finally, we learned that the basic elements of good teaching—organization, content knowledge, good communication and a supportive, empathetic approach—works regardless of the mode of delivery. It is possible to be give personal attention to students and to be personable online and that was a relief to many faculty. Moving forward, I think faculty have been able to reflect on their experiences from the spring semester and make more proactive decisions about the type of online experience they will deliver to students. This may involve creating new supplemental materials, improving recorded lectures, designing new activities and integrating the online and the on-site experiences so as to give students more options for how they will receive the content of each course.

Describe how faculty members in your college are preparing for the fall semester.
Faculty are attending workshops and seminars through the Center for Teaching and Learning, our MBA Consortium and their academic societies. They are having conversations with each other and with colleagues around the world to share learning experiences and bounce ideas off each other. They are creating new material and experimenting with different hardware and software tools. They are reading voraciously about the experiences of others and about students’ reactions to the spring semester. They are visualizing each class session and asking, “What do I need to do to make this a good experience for both the on-site and online students in my classes?”

In addition, they are keeping up with all of the developments of the Titan Returns Implementation Team, attending the Chancellor and Provost town halls, and engaging in solutions to tricky problems posed by the presence of COVID-19. I hope, very much, they are taking time to rest and relax in between all that preparation so that they can return to campus renewed and ready to tackle the strange and challenging semester ahead.

What’s new in your college for fall 2020?
We will be launching our second cohort of our graduate Data Analytics Certificate Program and welcoming a new cohort of our Executive Path MBA. We expect to officially launch a UW Oshkosh MBA online, geared toward addressing the graduate business education needs of alumni. We are welcoming a new full-time instructional academic staff member, Scott Guinter, who will be teaching in our human resources management program. He comes to us with a wealth of HR expertise in compensation, general human resources, labor relations and safety.

What advice would you give students who may perhaps be on the fence about starting college or returning during this time?
The decision to attend college is always big and scary. Students face any number of risks, financial and personal. Will I select the right major? Will I meet good people? Will I make good choices that keep me and people I care about safe? Am I on a path toward greater life satisfaction? While COVID-19 certainly presents a challenge we have never seen before, the path to making a good decision is no different than it has ever been. We gather information, we discern good information from bad, and we weigh the options carefully against benefits and costs. My advice is to keep in close communication with the University and learn about all the steps we are taking to keep everyone safe this fall. Engage in conversations about these measures and about your understanding of the various risks, costs and benefits. We do a better job of processing our decisions and preparing for the choice we make if we have discussed it and analyzed it from multiple perspectives. Keep in close communication with your professors, let them know your fears and your plans for the fall so that they can find ways to address those. Whatever the choice, you will know you made the best one that you could, given what you knew at the time you made it.

What are some of your own personal thoughts/goals about returning in the fall?
Fall is always my favorite season. I love the sights and smells: leaves turning, pumpkins and hay on the lawns, fall flowers with frantic bees flying around, and chubby squirrels gathering whatever they can for the winter. I love the warm late summer days and the crisp early fall ones. Most of all, I love the thrill of new discovery—new friends, new books, new debates, new ideas. So I’m excited to return to campus. I’m very curious to see the new business ideas our students will have related to the health and social justice crises. I’m also curious to see how masks change our communication. Perhaps they will encourage us all to pay more attention to words and actions.

I look forward to seeing our amazing educators, dedicated staff and eager students all converging around a shared commitment to advancing knowledge. Online or in-person, relationships will be formed, ideas will be shared and challenged, learning will happen, and that is exciting and something to celebrate.

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