Pictured above: A staff check-in meeting unveiled plans for celebrating spring graduates as well as what the university is doing to honor local health care workers and first responders. Jonah Hinebaugh | The Crow’s Nest
By Jonah Hinebaugh
Instead of the usual lights illuminating the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and Tropicana Field, an array of green and gold will take their place on May 9 and 10 to honor USF’s spring graduates.
Graduates traveling on Interstate 275 will also be greeted with six digital billboards featuring messages congratulating the class of 2020 –– whose in-person commencement ceremony was interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.
The alternate ways to celebrate the spring graduates were announced April 29 by Carrie O’Brion, director of marketing and communications for USF St. Petersburg, during a virtual staff check-in meeting.
The billboards are “going to say congratulations to our graduates and that we’re with them in spirit,” O’Brion said during the call.
The check-in was a way for faculty and staff to touch base, share stories and get the latest information from Regional Chancellor Martin Tadlock and Nick Setteducato, interim regional vice chancellor for administrative and financial services.
A main talking point during the meeting was when the campus will reopen.
Tadlock said a task force delivered a four-phase return to work plan to USF system President Steve Currall.
“There was some mention of July recommendations included in that plan,” Tadlock said. “I would assume that probably means they’re hoping to have everybody back by July, but that’s just my guess.”
“I wouldn’t plan on coming back to work on Monday,” he said.
Before the plan is finalized, Tadlock said, Currall will have to wait for word from Gov. Ron DeSantis, local municipalities and the state university system Board of Governors before solidifying the plan.
After the meeting on Wednesday, DeSantis announced a three-phase plan for reopening Florida. The first phase, which goes into effect May 4, allows restaurants and retail shops to open as long as they don’t exceed 25 percent capacity and social distancing guidelines are followed. Elective surgeries will also resume.
The lack of available tests for COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, is “part of the reason there’s not a widespread plan for how everybody is going to get back,” Setteducato said.
“Keep in mind that our business has always been categorized as essential,” he said. “So at the end of the day, the decisions we took around our remote employment or remote work arrangements were in line with trying to adhere — while being an essential business — to keeping as many people from gathering on campus or having to commute and all of that.
“But at the end of the day, we’re an essential business. So it’s a little different for us than it is for those that have been deemed nonessential and have been completely shut down.”
Tadlock added that welcoming students back to the campus won’t be a “linear process.”
“There will be starts and stops and possible changes as we flex through this until there is a vaccine, and people are assured that they’re not going to contract the virus,” Tadlock said. “So it’s not linear. It won’t be linear. And it’s a marathon.”
In the meantime, 65 volunteers, including Tadlock, will be calling the students who lived on campus –– 552 in total –– to check in and see how they’re doing, what their experience has been like and give administration some feedback on how things are going.
“We’ll be collecting what they say and pooling those comments, so that we can share those out with folks so you get a feel for how our students who had to leave are doing,” he said.
Since the new residence hall has yet to open, there were talks of honoring first responders and health care workers by lighting up certain dorm rooms in the shape of a heart.
“That would reflect our appreciation for the work being done by our responders, our security people, our police force, our medical professionals — who, of course, are kind of our lead people through this event,” Tadlock said.
They would use cellophane on the windows to make it an appropriate color and have “the right effect,” Setteducato said.
Setteducato also made sure to thank every person in the call who may not receive as much recognition as those in other professions.
“My thanks to all of you and your families for how seamlessly this has gone,” he said. “I know it’s not without a lot of sacrifice, so thank you.”
