Vice President of Academic Affairs Changes Dynamics of Curriculum Throughout the Pandemic

Napierra Alexander
Wednesday, July 14, 2021 12:00 AM
Community, TBR, Students, Press Releases, Employees, All

CLEVELAND, Tenn - Since the spring of 2020, the world has had to adapt to the new changes the pandemic brought to our everyday lives. Cleveland State Community College was no exception and the challenge became giving current and prospective students access to classes and events on campus. Though nothing really prepared anyone for guiding a school through such an event, Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Barsha  Pickell, has helped strengthen the college’s online teachings, tutorials, and research while also developing safe and effective ways to be on campus while renovations took place. 

“In times of crisis great leaders not only step-up but excel in the face of adversity,” stated Dr. Bill Seymour, CSCC President. “That is how I describe Dr. Pickell at the onset of Covid-19 and throughout the past 15 months.  She led our faculty through unprecedented change, motivated by the desire to maintain academic quality for the benefit of our students.”

Dr. Pickell graduated from Carson-Newman University after studying history and political science. She then earned a Master’s degree in political science from UTK before being awarded a PhD from the University of Virginia. She came to CSCC as the Dean of Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education before transferring into her current position. 

“I am so proud of the way our instructors and academic support staff stepped up to the challenge of transitioning to distance learning last year,” stated Dr. Barsha  Pickell, Vice President of Academic Affairs. “Faculty created online and hybrid versions of nearly every course we offer and added fourteen new 7 ½ week general education courses to provide students with even more flexible options. Our Center for Dynamic Instruction, Library, Tutoring, Advising, and Service Learning staff did outstanding work in providing resources and support for instructors and students in new and imaginative ways. And my incredible team of deans and administrative staff endured marathon meetings and strategy sessions to create the plans, processes, and support system we needed to accomplish all of those goals.”

In her first year as the Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Pickell led an enormous campus-wide effort for faculty to study the best teaching methods for hybrid and online classes over the summer of 2020. Doing this, faculty redesigned nearly every class offered to make them more supportive and effective for students. She oversaw the creation of a review process so that each course was thoroughly examined on both the technical set up and layout of the course to ensure the newly created classes would work well for students.

Dr. Pickell has also overseen a number of other changes to make work on and off campus safer and more efficient for students and faculty. Flexible work schedules were allowed for faculty with some working entirely from home and others combining work from home and on campus. Much of the routine paperwork was redesigned to be done entirely online. She also oversaw the extension and strengthening of tutoring and library research for online students. This adopted several online testing services required by the college’s programs to allow students to complete their coursework and graduate. 

A challenge some CSCC students face is the lack of reliable internet access. Dr. Pickell pushed for the purchase and sharing of laptops and hotspots to allow students to work remotely. And as conditions changed, she continued collaborating with campus and community leaders to adapt and improve the ways in which we were teaching to continue providing educational opportunities for our students as effectively and safely as possible.

“Dr. Pickell has been an exceptional leader over the past year as she helped guide students and faculty safely through the pandemic while still providing the best education possible,” stated Ryan Thompson, Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences. “She has worked tirelessly in developing multiple plans to handle the constantly changing circumstances and been very supportive of faculty in helping them design methods of teaching classes that helped students continue to learn despite the challenges of the past year.”

Amidst the face lift that Cleveland State has undergone, Dr. Pickell successfully  rescheduled classes and programs in other buildings while the new Health and Science Center was being finished and other buildings were being remodeled. As the CDC guidelines continuously changed throughout the pandemic, she prepared numerous contingency plans that were adapted periodically to ensure safety of those on campus. 

As the college moves into the 2021 fall semester, many changes have been made to the academic curriculum in the past year, but thankfully the college is now offering on-campus classes and events without covid symptom check-ins or pre screenings. On May 14, the Tennessee Board of Regents followed the guidance released from the CDC that fully vaccinated individuals are not required to wear masks on campus. Since then, all Cleveland State Community College sites have reflected these same guidelines. 

“We’ve learned a great deal through the changes we’ve made in response to the pandemic that will serve us well in the years to come, '' stated Dr. Pickell. “We are in a much better position now to serve the different learning styles and scheduling needs of our students, and the quality of our course design and teaching, while always excellent, has been even further enhanced by the research and creativity of our faculty and staff over the past year. This has certainly not been the easiest first year a person could have as a new Vice President for Academic Affairs but I can’t imagine a better group of people to have faced it with. I am very blessed and grateful to work with an amazing group of people here at Cleveland State.”