YOUNGSTOWN - YSU alum Ashlee Cline is the school counselor at The Rayen Early College Middle School in Youngstown.  Laura Davis, a graduate student in the School Counseling program working as an intern at the school. YSU emailed Ashlee to find out about life as a school counselor “On the Frontlines” now that schools have closed due to the coronavirus. Excerpts from her email response:

“I'm sure it's not a surprise to hear that virtual school counseling is a challenge. We send a lot of emails to check in with students. I have an Instagram account too that I created as a way to stay in touch. I know that many students live on Instagram!"

“One of the biggest struggles has been a lack of response from so many students. There have been some who have kept in touch pretty frequently, but others have not. It is difficult not knowing how my students really are doing. I know so many of them struggle with different things, either socially/emotionally or with family. I know that being out of their regular routine is difficult.”

“I recently began scheduling Zoom conferences with each grade level, just to check in with anyone who wants to see their classmates and talk for a little bit. I have also provided students with an opportunity to Zoom conference with me one on one, just like they would be able to do if they were in school and needed someone to talk to.”

“Another huge challenge is being able to help students with mental health needs at this time. Also, I’m thinking of those who live in households where they endure physical, emotional or sexual abuse or where drugs/alcohol are being abused and knowing that they don't have the opportunity to go to school, where they feel safe and supported. It’s has caused me to feel more stress because there isn't much I can do for them right now.”

“I know I wrote a ton, but there really is a lot going on right now for which nobody had really planned or prepared. Parents are stressed, school staff are struggling and working hard to find new ways to teach and reach out to students. I think we're all doing the best we can right now.”

The story on Laura Davis will appear in the digital edition of the Spring/Summer YSU Magazine in early May at www.ysumagazine.edu.

A MONUMENTAL TASK

The task: Take all of YSU’s 2,700 Spring semester on-campus classes taught by hundreds of faculty to more than 12,000 students across more than 100 disciplines, and transition them out of the classroom and to fully online-only courses that students take at home.

And do all of that in less than two weeks.

Front, center and “On the Frontlines” of the transition was the university’s Information and Technology Services, logging 14 hour days, seven days a week to make the switch to digital teaching.

“It meant assessing what tools work for which courses, which technologies faculty were comfortable using, and training faculty on those technologies over the course of just 13 days,” said Jim Yukech, associate vice president and chief technology officer.

It also meant providing access remotely to all of the software applications available to faculty and students in the campus’ 105 computer labs.

“All of the work has gone very well thus far,” Yukech added.

Thanks, he said, to an “amazing” team in ITS, and in particular:

Sharyn Zembower: Technology Training Coordinator, who worked one-to-one with faculty and also with the Academic Continuity Team to provide faculty consultations with Blackboard, WebEx and other topics.

Troy Evans: Systems Architect, who worked to ready a virtual application environment.

Dan Clements: Service Desk Technician, offering customer support during the extended service hours.

Raelene Adams: Technology Support Engineer, who worked on virtual applications and RDP tool for remote access.

Robert Allshouse: Technology Support Technician, who worked on preparations, configuration, inventory and safe frontline distribution of equipment to faculty, staff and students.

Robert Butcher: Technology Support Technician, who worked on preparations, configuration, inventory and safe frontline distribution of equipment to faculty, staff and students.

Lori Hinebaugh: Software Integration Engineer, who worked on programming the student refund.

Bob Forchione: Software Integration Engineer, Blackboard class/instructor loads and processing.

Chris Yankle: Executive Administrative Assistant, purchasing coordination, managed university switchboard operations.

Tom Bridge: Network Architect, who was responsible for ensuring that the campus network infrastructure was ready for online learning.

Mickey Hancharenko: Security Architect, who was responsible for ensuring that campus cybersecurity infrastructure was extended to faculty, students and staff for online learning.

Gene Soltis: Technology Support Technician, who filled in wherever needed – distributed hardware, answered service calls and facilitated communications with other IT work teams.