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Editor's note: This is the second in a series of stories detailing West Virginia University President Gordon Gee's thoughts on how the university is helping guide its students -- and the entire Mountain State -- through the COVID-19 pandemic.
MORGANTOWN -- Higher education is undergoing a dramatic change in the wake of COVID-19, West Virginia University President Gordon Gee said.
The university last month closed its campus and moved to online learning because of the response to the pandemic.
"Universities now need to look into the future in a much different way," he said on Tuesday. "What we thought would be happening 10 years from now is going to happen tomorrow."
Gee said West Virginia's stay-at-home order and social distancing guidelines have made traditional college classes impossible. Those orders and guidelines may be lifted or eased in the future, but it has shown multiple weaknesses in the current college format, he said.
"That changes the whole dynamic," Gee said. "We have to restructure the university, remake the university to meet those needs. Looking toward the horizon is very important."
Gee said some experts predict many of the nation's smaller colleges will vanish due to the coronavirus closures, but Gee said it is an opportunity for all higher education institutions to find their niche.
"I think the great strength of American higher education is diversity," Gee said. "They can no longer just be all things to all people. You have to find your space, be different from other institutions. Every place needs to start differentiating itself."
West Virginia University likewise must adapt to the change in how higher education can, and will, be delivered.
"Do I still think we'll have a resident component?
Absolutely, because I do believe that notion of the common conversation is important," Gee said, "but I think it will also mean maybe we don't have these things called 'semesters,' that maybe we have ongoing, rolling kinds of things where kids will come on campus for two weeks or two months and then they'll go on off and do very applied and practical things and then come back."
Gee said he would also like to see a change in the building blocks of the university as well.
"I think one thing is moving away from these very rigid structures of colleges and departments and moving into a much more horizontal structure" such as centers and institutes, he said.
Those changes also would involve how educators perceive their own roles. Gee said too often the university places an emphasis on research rather than instruction.
"Think about the language of the academy," Gee said. "We say you have 'teaching loads' and 'research opportunities.' That in and of itself gives a real idea of how we think. We need to reward and recognize our faculty in a much different way."
But Gee expressed hope for the future, saying while universities typically look ahead three to five years, the pandemic has accelerated that timeline by a decade.
"The challenges are immense and the opportunities likewise are immense," he said. "We are now leaning toward lessons learned and evaluation. I think it's very important for us to not let this moment pass without really determining what did we do right, what did we do wrong, and what we learned from the educational experience."
Gee said the pandemic has not only taught some hard lessons, but also provided a window of opportunity.
"We have been given a great gift: Everyone now is at least focused on the fact that they know the world is going to be different. This is the one time in a mammoth organization, whether it be General Motors or West Virginia University, in which you can really make dynamic change," he said. "The tragedy of this moment for universities is if we tried to go back to business as usual, because I think that we would have squandered the moment."
Gee said he believes 2020 could be a turning point for higher education.
"I view this moment not as a disastrous challenge, but as a challenge of change," he said. "The way we have been doing things may have served us 50 years ago, it is not serving us now. We've got to totally rethink the nature of the educational enterprise and we've got to use this moment as the catalyst to do so."