New chancellor talks about some of the less-obvious ways UNCC has navigated the pandemic

For Sharon Gaber, the fifth chancellor of UNC Charlotte, 2020 has been a year of change and disruption. Gaber was named chancellor in April, replacing Phil Dubois in the early months of a global pandemic.

Despite reporting some clusters over the course of the fall semester, UNCC has managed to keep its campus open to students most of the semester, even as other universities have had to send students home amid increasing positive cases for COVID-19. The school initially opted for a delayed start, and then pushed back the start of in-person classes until Oct. 1.

Gaber said outside of the pandemic, she believes “every great city has a great university,” and that UNCC can fill that role in Charlotte.

“We’re young, we’re growing,” she said of UNC Charlotte. “We want to continue to be this city’s great public research university, and I want people to think of us this way.”

Gaber spoke with the Observer about her first semester leading the school, and her vision for the university’s growth and planning. (This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.)

As the semester is winding down, what do you feel you’ve learned or taken away from it?

“There’s the COVID piece, and then there’s the rest,” she said. “Pivot is sort of the word of 2020.”

Gaber said she was pleased that the university did not have to send large numbers of students home during the semester. Classes began online before starting some amount of face-to-face instruction, and went back online after Thanksgiving.

Beyond leading the university through the pandemic, she said she worked to invest in connections with the community, alumni and civic leaders.

“It’s hard to do in a pandemic,” she said. “But what I’ve learned is that people embrace the university and are very excited. They have a large research university in the 15th largest city in the U.S., and people want even more from us. What else can we do? What additional research? What additional students can we provide for the workforce? Can faculty do projects in their areas? It’s exciting to see the interest from the broad community in what we’re doing. And, and I think collectively, everybody looks forward to a time when we can meet face-to-face again.”

On the COVID piece, is there anything that you think you’ve done particularly well, or that you would do differently going into the second semester?

“The wastewater testing that we’ve done has really helped us be able to stay open,” Gaber said. “We are randomly testing what’s coming out of the waste in our residence halls to determine if there are individuals with COVID. If there’s one or two people in a residence hall, and they are shedding COVID in the waste, and we go in and test 400 individuals and find the one or two people, we have managed to isolate them before they have passed this along to others. And that was pretty remarkable.”

Gaber said the university also implemented a daily health screener, which asks about symptoms and exposure to COVID, and increased the communication with students, faculty and parents. All employees and students were also encouraged to get a flu shot, and had to fill out a survey about whether they had done so. More than 20,000 people got a shot, Gaber said.

“We’re saying right now our game plan is to come back and open in January. But we’re also starting to say, ‘By the way, the numbers are going up again.’ And if that’s what we want to do, there’s a chance we may not be able to do that based on conversations with the county Health Department. If they say that’s not a best practice, then we would again have to pivot, and I want people to know, we’re paying attention to what those numbers look like.”

Can you tell us about the decision-making process for the second semester? Does UNCC have a cutoff for positivity rate that would lead to a change in instruction?

“Back in August, when we were having conversations about starting in September, the county’s positivity rate was up around 10%. Well, we’re up above that right now. So the question mark is, what is it going to look like in January when we want to open?”

Gaber said the positivity rate on UNCC’s campus was around 2%, significantly lower than the county’s. She said going forward, the decision would have to be made with the county’s coronavirus metrics in consideration. Any decisions about closing the campus would be made in conjunction with the UNC system leadership.

“I’ve had lots of people say make the call, make the call. But it’s a series of conversations. And we want to look at the data and understand what it looks like.”

Has there been any discussion about mandating a vaccine for students, faculty, or any requirements along those lines?

“There are preliminary conversations about what that looks like,” she said. “I am confident the system will also have a perspective there.”

Gaber said based on the state’s vaccine priority plan, students won’t be among the first groups to receive the vaccine. That means the rollout will not affect UNCC students likely until later in the spring, or beyond.

“So then we’re thinking about what does it look like for fall 2021? How accessible is it? What does that look like? We all know that for kids to go to elementary schools, they have a series of shots. If that becomes part of what is the expectation, we just have to go through that process and recognize, what does it look like to be able to mandate that 30,000 plus students have to get that? So we’re not at a point of saying it’s mandatory, but much like whooping cough and everything else, it may in the future become part of what is mandatory.”

On the non-COVID front, are there any initiatives that you’re proud of, or anything you want to take forward into the second semester?

“We’ve started strategic planning,” she said. “There’s a group of people who would say, ‘Oh, my gosh, don’t burden us with one more thing like putting together a plan when we’re in a pandemic.’”

But Gaber says now is the time to begin the process because the university must lead its way out of the pandemic, rather than playing catch-up down the line.

“If we don’t plan for what it looks like going forward, if we don’t figure out how we’re navigating our way out to be better, stronger, leaner, you know, smarter, then we’re missing an opportunity. Our plan is to have it fully baked and bring it to our Board of Trustees in April.”

Gaber said she was also excited for the university’s efforts in putting together a diversity, equity and inclusion plan, and the effort to move into a higher research university classification.

Has the pandemic changed your mind on anything you used to take for granted, a bias or something you always assumed to be true that’s changed as a result?

“There are things that we’re going to take away from this pandemic and how we operated,” she said. “ What are the things that actually worked out of this, that people either learned or found made their lives easier?”

Gaber said that might mean no longer defaulting to in-person interaction for everything, as some students have thrived in the hybrid and remote environment. People have worked efficiently from home, she said, challenging the idea that everything needs to be face-to-face.

“You know, 15 years ago, when people were saying online education is the wave of the future. We’re not going to need brick and mortar anymore, people aren’t going to go to universities, they’re going to do everything online. And then you had the pushback of people saying, ‘No, I actually want to be on a university campus, I want the experience, I want to meet with people.’ So here we’ve had this major disruption. We’ve learned all online is not for everybody, but there is some push now and our faculty are much more comfortable with it because they had to be.”

This story was originally published December 12, 2020 at 6:00 AM.