The Impact of closing a college on faculty and students

This past week has been a week for the books. It started off with my preparations for my 4 courses while I prepared to leave for the week to present at the NIRSA Conference in Portland Oregon. Everything was going great until the day of my first presentation session about getting into academic side of higher education from the recreational side of the industry.

I woke up on Wednesday morning to see if any students emailed me about their assignments that were given out while I was away at the conference. When I opened my email, I saw an email from the President's administrative assistant stating that everyone needed to be at a mandatory meeting that afternoon and cancel class if it conflicted with the important meeting. Immediately, my phone starts going off from people trying to figure out what is going on and from the other side of the country, I start to hear rumblings of what the meeting was about. I called the academic affairs office to see what I should do because my presentation was scheduled to start shortly after the meeting was scheduled to begin and I didn't know how long the meeting would last. I am advised to not attend the meeting because they didn't want me to hear the news before I have to present, which stresses me out more. I meet with my co-presenters and we manage to work it out so that I could attend the meeting for however long it would last and then come late to the presentation.

The meeting time comes and my heart starts racing as to what was about to be announced and then the President makes his announcement that due to COVID related enrollment declines and a cyberattack over winter break, the institution was not going to have enough enrollment in the fall to open. My heart sank, I moved my entire family from Texas to Illinois for this position. I was told during my interview process that the school was not close to shutting its doors and that while the school has not made a profit in the last few years, it was still actively investing into our growth plans. But now less than 1 year into my first academic appointment, I am told I have to find a new job, with just over a month left in the semester, all while at a conference.

I immediately called my wife and told her the news and then I go to my presentation. After my presentation ended, I told my group of colleagues that I was with that I was going to go back to my hotel room and debrief what just happened. On my walk back to my hotel room, I spoke with some colleagues and all that we could come up with is "why were we hiring people to start this week, if this was even possible??." None of us even knew it was that bad, that closure was imminent.

Eventually, students all started to reach out to me to see how I WAS DOING WITH THE NEWS. My students knew that I had purposely moved from Texas to Illinois to work at LC and that I love each and every one of my students and genuinely care for their success. All I could say back to the students was that I was still processing what was going on, but they don't need to worry about me and I immediately changed to ask them about how they were doing. Each one came with the same shock, heartbreak, disappointment, and panic that has struck everyone this week. The shock comes in even more the more I reflect on what has happened the last couple of weeks, with being told we need to speed up our search for new faculty, because we were already sitting on applications without a search chair.

The more time that I have had to reflect on what is happening, the more awful I feel for my students. I had 9 students who were a summer internship away from graduation, who will no longer be able to graduate from the college that they have done all of their work at and there is very little that I can do about that at this moment. Lincoln College for some of my students was the only college that would admit them with a scholarship, and they now have to figure out where they can go. I feel so awful mostly for my students. Abby and I will survive and I am sure that I will find somewhere to work, but I just can't help but feel awful for my students.

I have yet to see them since before the news went out, because of my conference. What am I supposed to say to them this week?