The University and the Faculty

The distance education context for this narrative is our Faculty of Health Disciplines (FHD) at a Canadian university focused on removing barriers to access and facilitating success in university studies for adult learners on a global basis. Our faculty is composed of approximately 43 academic faculty, 18 administrative staff, 10 undergraduate tutors, and 75 graduate sessional instructors. We have over 7,000 students from across Canada and around the world enrolled in theory courses and over 350 students in various types of clinical practicums in the health disciplines, including nursing and counselling psychology.

There will always be a crisis at some point. Previous crises—including the SARS epidemic and climate disasters such as wildfires and floods—provided opportunities to refine our leadership strategies. The contexts and details of crises will always be different. Our challenge as leaders is to learn how to respond to them and build upon our learning by scaffolding the lessons learned from the current crisis to the next crisis and the time between crises.

The Leaders

The leadership context for this narrative involves two seasoned women faculty members. Dr. Edwards was the dean of the FHD at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, and Dr. Corcoran was a program director with responsibilities related to curricular, clinical, and day-to-day operations in the Bachelor of Nursing (BN) programs. Combined, we have 40 years of experience working within a Canadian distance education university. Our leadership strategies developed over decades as we took on increasingly senior academic roles. Because our leadership approaches were already applied to a largely remote and virtual workforce, no massive changes were required to address the move to online learning during a crisis such as the recent pandemic. We relied on the leadership strategies that we had been implementing for years during and between previous crises. We applied the same strategies much more visibly, intentionally, and consistently during the recent crisis as principles to address faculty concern and anxiety in a rapidly unfolding context.

DR. EDWARDS

As the dean of the faculty, I focused on providing strong, stable, and visible leadership. As a faculty, we had faced and overcome previous crises. We built upon those experiences. As a nurse, my practice had been in a cardiovascular surgery ICU where a patient rupturing a coronary artery graft and bleeding out through the chest tubes was an emergency. In my leadership practice in postsecondary education, there has never been that level of emergency. Rather, there has always been a way to address a crisis in an educational setting. I situate my educational leadership against this backdrop. My leadership approach has been consultative, measured, and decisive.

DR. CORCORAN

Overwhelmingly, my leadership, time, and energy were focused on pragmatic aspects of clinical affairs, including ongoing, unfolding issues expressed by students, faculty members, and stakeholders in the health system (e.g., nurse preceptors and managers). I developed leadership experience making collaborative decisions related to students and day-to-day operations in clinical settings during a local flood in which a state of emergency was declared in 2013. This initial experience with a local crisis facilitated my reflection on leadership regardless of the type of crisis faced.

The Challenge

Leading through previous disasters, we have always focused on meeting the needs of our learners and colleagues. Faculty members have demonstrated agility in their teaching practices. Support staff have provided guidance to learners based on their circumstances and while working within academic policies and procedures. New crises provide us with the opportunity and requirement to sharpen and advance these practices based on rapidly changing and unpredictable circumstances.

Personal and Institutional Values Alignment

Leadership strategies need to be based on the individual values of the leader ideally in combination and alignment with the organizational values of the distance education institution. The values of leaders matter (Bookey-Bassett et al., 2020; Streeton et al., 2021). Strategies need to be placed carefully atop a foundation of values. Crises tend to upend individuals and organizations. After an initial upending, values provide a landing pad: they are a place to reset and begin again. If values remain foundational despite initial and periodic imbalances, then they will provide both an anchor and stability. Our distance education institution has five main “I care values” as part of the strategic plan: integrity (actions are guided by ethics, honesty, and fairness), community (embracing collaboration and connectivity among diverse individuals), adaptability (flexible and responsive to the changing needs of learners), respect (every individual is valued), and excellence (enhancing the quality of all that we do) (Athabasca University, n.d.).

DR. EDWARDS

In various exercises, I have identified my key values as integrity, authenticity, and compassion. I align directly with the institutional values noted above and enact them by leading within a culture of collegiality. People are always my priority. I delight in encouraging others to reach their full potential and in supporting them as they take calculated risks to grow.

DR. CORCORAN

In my practice as a nurse educator or leader, my values reside firmly in relational practice from a humanistic perspective. I value relationships with people; understanding and empathy are important to me. I look at power imbalances—individually or structurally in systems—and I place value on working to even out power differentials. The “I care values” of integrity, community, adaptability, respect, and excellence align with my own values.

Communication

Although communication is accepted as one of the keys to effective leadership, during a crisis its importance is amplified. Frequent and decisive communication helps to build trust and subsequently the credibility of a leader (Hartney et al., 2021). Communicating clearly, consistently, and frequently while being intentional and slowing down to ensure that there is consistent messaging are vital (Raderstorf et al., 2020).

DR. EDWARDS

When the World Health Organization characterized the global outbreak of the coronavirus as a pandemic on March 11, 2020, communication began immediately with our existing leadership group in the FHD, the Dean’s Advisory Group (DAG). As with any crisis, my goal was to send clear and frequent messages to all stakeholders: students, faculty members, and administrative staff. On March 12, 2020, a message was posted on the student learning management system (LMS) acknowledging the impact of the pandemic on students, indicating that additional information would be posted on the LMS, and linking to university services (e.g., counselling). Within four days, we had cancelled all practicums (in nursing and counselling), and the term was considered completed for all graduate theory courses. These decisions were communicated to students through email and the LMS. A town hall was held both to listen to students and to communicate our decisions.

My first message to all faculty and staff on March 13, 2020, noted that the crisis of the pandemic was unfolding and that I would let them know everything as soon as I came to know it. I also asked that people email me if they came to know information before I did, particularly in relation to clinical practicums. Links were included to Health Canada sites to provide credible information. I organized weekly TGIF sessions on the Zoom videoconferencing platform so that faculty and staff could share what was happening in their city and province. These virtual face-to-face meetings were vital to group communication and even more to providing support to one another. They were also an opportunity for me to be visible to the faculty and to give assurance that there was a plan, however evolving.

DR. CORCORAN

I believe that part of clear communication is active listening. While I listen to the content of a verbal message from an individual student or faculty member in the midst of a crisis, I also listen to the tone of voice and cadence of speaking. I believe that active listening paves the path toward empathy and reduces the possibility of a leader making assumptions. Listening to multiple and diverse perspectives helps people to feel heard and supported (Keselman & Saxe-Braithwaite, 2021).

Support

When a crisis occurs, whether it is personal and individual (e.g., the illness or death of a family member) or widespread and collective (e.g., a communicable disease outbreak), people need support. Students need lenience related to due dates for assignments in theory courses. Learners in face-to-face practicums need the choice to continue as scheduled or take a pause and defer the practicum to a time when they are mentally and physically ready. These are not easy decisions for our adult learners with competing priorities and responsibilities. During the pandemic, some students chose to take time away from their nursing work (in which they were very likely needed) to continue to pursue their educational goals. Other students occupied multiple roles (e.g., nursing student, mother, daughter) and were caregivers of immuno-suppressed children or elders in their families. These students often chose to defer their face-to-face clinical practicums. Their choices were pragmatic but also posed moral dilemmas; support from leaders such as faculty members or clinical instructors was essential.

Faculty members also need ongoing support. They, too, are confronted with individual and collective crises during their work lives. Their fitness to maintain their practice is of paramount importance. A leader must provide support through active listening and problem solving.

In the FHD, the majority of faculty members, administrative staff, tutors, and sessional instructors are women. Although women are acknowledged to take on major roles in domestic labour, there is also a matrifocal tilt related to kin keeping, such as caring for elderly parents and maintaining communication among family members (Brown & DeRycke, 2010). We suggest that a crisis tends to amplify this burden on women. It is with these underpinnings that support such as negotiating and renegotiating workloads in the FHD was offered.

DR. EDWARDS

Regardless of whether the FHD is in a crisis or not, as a leader I speak about supporting our learners and each other. Occasionally, I offer my own frustrating experiences, which encourage others to share theirs. I focus my support on the DAG so that in turn they can support faculty members in their issues and concerns. In DAG meetings, during crises, our associate dean, a psychologist, provided short, action-focused coping strategies that engendered discussions and collegial support. One of my mantras, illustrating my intentional focus on support, is “people before paper.”

DR. CORCORAN

As a leader, it is important that I encourage and support faculty members so that they can support our learners flexibly, non-judgmentally, and empathically. In undergraduate nursing programs, the curriculum is fairly rigid. Nursing is a regulated profession, and patient safety is of paramount importance. We must follow the rules of our regulatory college of nursing. However, a crisis calls for some degree of flexibility. Unfortunately, a crisis is when some educators feel the need to cling more tightly to rules, seemingly for the sake of stability. Exercising flexibility and divergent thinking related to students’ learning is easier for some faculty members than others. In my role as a leader, support was intertwined with communication (the initial strategy articulated in this narrative). I actively listened to what a faculty member was communicating and engaged in problem solving toward a student-centred solution. Although initially time consuming, this type of support built individual faculty member capacity and, as time unfolded, functioned as role-modelling to other faculty members. For example, I often shared the saying “no fast moves” with my colleagues. It related to being intentional about decisions and setting priorities for decision making. Over time, both trust and capacity were enhanced. Faculty members would contact me even if they did not have a problem to solve, just wanting to check in and catch up in a gesture of mutual support that I appreciated. In addition, I would hear colleagues say “no fast moves” during a discussion, and this showed me that, as a group, we were being intentional with decisions.

Providing Structure

Structure is an antidote to chaos. In times of crisis, people are anxious because of the uncertainty of an ambiguous threat (Klann, 2003). For some, this can be paralyzing. Providing structure enables people to rely on a framework, a way of being and doing to guide them to take the first step and then the next step and then a few more steps—until they are walking maybe not quite with confidence but with some sense of purpose and direction.

DR. EDWARDS

The ultimate responsibility for providing structure was that of the dean. Our faculty had a well-established DAG that met monthly. Having this organizational structure in place, with a clear chain of command through program directors, was a strong determinant of making decisions rapidly based on principles and a broad understanding and then communicating decisions back to students, faculty, and staff. I position myself as having a sound way forward. I use the analogy of walking at night with a flashlight; you have only a small circle of light in front of you, and that is where you take the next step. The principles that we followed were simple (e.g., keep our processes consistent) and one step at a time (e.g., as deliberately as possible, make today’s decisions today, and then tomorrow, when the circle of light moves, make tomorrow’s decisions tomorrow). I was also clear in my communication and with the DAG that we would make mistakes because decisions had to be made with incomplete information, but when they came to light we would remedy them.