The pandemic workout: a creative solution

It’s May in Charleston, and the sun hangs low over the Ashley River. The air is dry, with a light breeze. Just beyond four active-duty Marines playing croquet on the green space behind LeTellier Hall, a lone figure sprints across Wilson Field. With the quarantine in effect, Brandon Rainey, the starting quarterback for the Bulldogs, often finds himself in solitude, a strange situation for the star team member of a sport that’s all about togetherness.

Not to be deterred by quarantine orders and social distancing guidelines, Strength and Conditioning Director Donnell Boucher and his staff got creative. An app called TeamBuildr, a smart phone and some exercise demonstration videos on YouTube make up the equipment inventory for Boucher’s virtual gym. The simplicity of the setup was deceiving, and Rainey was surprised to realize that he could get a rigorous workout without access to a gym.

“There’s been a lot of bodyweight work, and it’s been hard actually,” says Rainey. “I was genuinely surprised by how sore I was when we started doing these workouts. I feel as though we really haven’t skipped a beat with everything.”

Boucher has been using the cloud-based TeamBuildr app for four years now. The app allows coaches to create customized workouts to engage with athletes—a useful tool, especially during the off-season. Or when a pandemic unexpectedly interrupts the academic year and the spring training season.

“Because we had a little bit of a head start and the athletes knew what was going on,” says Boucher, “we were able to really dig down into the specifics of what the workouts needed to be in light of the fact that gyms were closed.”

The daily workout schedules are varied, and to keep matters simple while the gyms are closed, Boucher focuses on speed, strength and conditioning across all sports because, as he says, “every team needs those things.”

Each exercise on the daily workout includes a link to a YouTube video demonstrating proper technique, which required a lot of planning and filming for Boucher and his strength and conditioning staff.

“The only way the kids were going be successful was if every single exercise included a demonstration and an explanation,” says Boucher. “We had to develop one program and keep it concise for everybody.”

While the NCAA prohibits Boucher from keeping tabs on which athletes are working out, he is able to see that they are engaged. “The engagement that we’ve had across the board with all 350 athletes is as high as it’s ever been in the previous three years that we’ve used the app. The kids are out there looking for things to do to keep them busy. And ultimately, you know, we designed a workout that was effective. You don’t have to have any equipment, so as long as you can get to an open field or a track, you can have a good workout.”

The interruption in the academic year by the quarantine and the transition to distance learning created a new dynamic for students and an unanticipated off-season. And off-season training, according to Boucher, is critical to success.

“People on the outside don’t realize what a college athlete has to do in the off season, and especially at our school, where they’ve got so many other demands on their time. People don’t realize what our kids go through when they go home—academics are a priority, but our athletes know that if they want a chance to compete when they come back, they have to stay in shape.”

Other strength and conditioning programs across the country have not been as fortunate. Unlike Boucher, many didn’t have an off-season workout that could be converted into a contingency plan.

“It’s taught us another way to do our job, and when we do get back to normal, it’s going to be great. We have this library of exercises and this content that we can get to the teams for when we want to train more remotely in the future.”

Meanwhile, Brandon Rainey, who started in 11 games last season and rushed 240 times for 900 yards and 17 touchdowns, is on the field alone, with the strains of Darius Rucker’s “Wagon Wheel” pulsing through his earbuds for company. He finds comfort in the thought that the quarantine will one day be over and he’ll be back with his teammates.

“These guys truly are some of my best friends. We’re all so close, so it is weird being apart from each other for so long, but we are making the best of it, and we’re all very excited to get back to campus soon and be around each other practicing again.”

The freshman LRC: a leadership building block

Wearily the Class of 2023 arose before sunrise on a cool, clear Saturday morning in February, just three weeks before the coronavirus quarantine would interrupt their freshman year. On this day, they weren’t awakened by their cadre; instead, the freshmen were in charge of themselves. The responsibility was theirs and the day belonged to them because the day’s Leadership Reaction Course (LRC) was designed exclusively to develop their leadership skills.

The freshman LRC is a relatively new event administered by the Commandant’s Office. The course has two main objectives. The first, to prepare cadets for future endeavors as cadets and throughout their lives by building moral courage within leadership. The second is to prepare freshmen for the transition to sophomore year. At the start of the exercise, freshmen were divided into random teams. The teams worked together in the various scenarios and LRC stations. The stations were difficult and wide ranging; some focused on physical endurance such as water jug carries, while others, like leadership lectures, were academic. At certain times, cadets were forced to rely on specific skills like planning, creativity and teamwork.

“It was definitely different,” said Cadet Lawrence Ferguson, an Army contract cadet. “As knobs we were always told what to do, but that role was different during the freshman LRC. The course showed me that leadership is difficult but worth the effort.”

Capt. Eugene Paluso, the commandant of cadets and a retired Navy SEAL who conceived the idea of the freshman LRC, said, “Moral courage is important for leadership and making tough decisions, whether you’re in the military, the government or working for Walmart. The importance of standing up, thinking as an individual, having that moral courage, especially in difficult circumstances, is what we’re trying to instill.”

Following Paluso’s guidelines, the LRC was created to challenge cadets with tough decisions not easily resolved. The cadets’ everyday approach to “only follow orders” during knob year was turned on its head, giving them the power to lead and make decisions. It was difficult at first. “At the beginning, we were really struggling to lead ourselves,” said Ferguson. “After receiving the tasks, it would take us a while to work as a group to get them started.”

Ferguson’s team did not delay for long. “As the day went on, different people began to step up and take charge,” he said, “and it helped us to get going.”

Another advantage of the event is the resulting greater sense of class unity and bonding among the participants. Instead of splitting groups by company, all cadets are put in random groups, forcing them to work with unfamiliar people. The new faces add a hurdle that increases the need for communication and good leadership to complete each mission—skills that are important in both business and the military.

“I’ve moved around a lot in my military career,” said Paluso, “and I can’t overemphasize how important it was to be able to see a familiar face when you’re in a new environment, and sometimes it was great not to have a familiar face because that forces you to really focus on your interpersonal skills and figure out who’s who in the zoo, who you’ve got to listen to, who you’re gonna listen to and who you can completely blow off.”

The stations and exercises—with all the new experiences, people and expectations that came with them—created a lasting impact on the freshmen. As the day continued, their confidence and their passion grew.

One station that made a lasting impression on Ferguson was the rope bridge station. Cadets built and navigated a bridge over a hypothetical river. The team’s mission was to get its equipment and personnel across a rope bridge suspended between two trees. Each cadet was outfitted with a harness and a carabiner that attached to the rope, with the goal of getting the team and two heavy jugs of water across without letting anything or anyone touch the river. The exercise was timed, and a leader was selected from the team to guide the unit across safely. “The rope station was tough,” said Ferguson. “We had never done anything like that before, but somehow we managed. Everyone took their tasks seriously, and we eventually were able to complete the scenario.”

Different groups achieved various levels of success, but mission success was not the goal. Instead, cadets were given the opportunity to try out their leadership skills, figure out what worked, and practice planning, executing, brainstorming and adapting to new scenarios as they arose. After each attempt, TAC officers, retired military officers, pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of each group’s execution.

By the end of the day, weariness was replaced with elation. Cadets were eager to engage and try new roles to give their best attempt at leadership for each station. Hesitation during interactions with unfamiliar people dwindled as members of the groups bonded with one another in their shared experience. They worked as a team through their communication and commitment to a common goal. Every cadet wanted to see his or her peers achieve goals for the greater good of the team.

The importance of interpersonal skills, adapting to change, and moral courage stopped being academic on that day, and as they now begin their sophomore year, the cadets are better prepared for the experience.

Trent Martindale, who wrote this story, graduated in May and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. While double majoring in English and political science with a concentration in international and military affairs, Martindale interned in the Office of Communications and Marketing. He is slated to begin pilot training in March 2021 at Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi.

The academic migration to distance learning

As the spring semester got underway and news of the coronavirus became more ominous, Diana Cheshire began making plans. As director of the Center for Excellence and Innovation in Teaching, Learning and Distance Education, Cheshire oversees the college’s learning management system and conducts training for both faculty and students on how to promote active learning in both face-to-face and online environments. Her team also provides training and reviews online courses to ensure they meet national standards for excellence. With the onerous task of migrating 1,400 face-to-face courses to the distance learning environment, Cheshire and her team had their work cut out for them.

“We were still on campus teaching when we started rolling out training on how to migrate to distance learning. After we moved off campus, we conducted all of our trainings via Zoom,” said Cheshire. “We’ve now held over 10,000 different types of training or support sessions with faculty and students to get them up to speed with how to teach and learn online.”

As Cheshire’s team worked with students and faculty, they amassed an arsenal of web resources to create a dynamic learning experience for students, even in the face of a pandemic. “Our mission is to promote excellence in teaching to enhance student learning,” said Cheshire. “Our center provides leadership and support for innovation and best practices in teaching on all platforms, including face-to-face and online.”

Cheshire is in her third year at The Citadel. She earned her Ph.D. in mathematics education with cognates in instructional systems technology and educational psychology from Indiana University at Bloomington. Her research is in instructional design and technology, assessment, reform, mathematics education and computer-mediated learning. She also has a background in user experience and user interface design. In her current role, she applies these skills daily.

While not without minor hiccups, the migration of the college’s face-to-face classes to distance learning was a success. “I tend to be an optimist,” said Cheshire. “We knew that in migrating 1,400 courses online, there would be challenges. Many people were concerned that the internet would go down, that our learning management system would crash because of the number of users worldwide. In the end, we didn’t experience any of those problems. I am very proud of our faculty and students and how they adapted,” said Cheshire.

The biggest hurdle was not the technology but, in fact, the lack of technology—students who did not have laptops or internet access. As those students were identified, the college’s Information Technology Services department loaned them laptops and provided internet hotspots.

Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Simon Ghanat, who specializes in geotechnical earthquake engineering, found that teaching online enabled him to promote active learning in his classes.

“I think the environment promotes more student-centered learning than it did before because you have a variety of online tools that appeal to a different learning style,” said Ghanat. “Some students are shy. They don’t want to talk in class, but when they’re online, in discussion rooms, or writing emails—they’re actually telling me what’s on their mind.”

In a sophomore mechanical engineering class, Ghanat found that his students performed slightly better in an online format this summer than they did in face-to-face classes in the summers of 2018 and 2019.

“I used the same exam this time, and the syllabus was basically the same. The book is the same—everything is the same,” said Ghanat. “I looked at the results of the first exam this summer versus last summer and the summer before. The other two classes were face to face, and this one was online, and my online students out-performed my face-to-face students by 4%.”

While Ghanat’s success story is heartening, there were some students who struggled with the transition during the pandemic. The college has modified each student’s transcript to include a message indicating the unique circumstances that may have had an impact on student performance for the spring semester.

Online learning, Ghanat said, requires a greater commitment for students to be successful because online learning requires students to be active learners, but also, he says, requires a greater commitment from instructors too. “To come up with a one-hour lesson, you’ve got to spend a lot of time to make sure everything goes right, make sure you don’t say too much, make sure the visuals are correct, make sure videos, if you’re using them, are correct. There’s a lot involved.”

When she trains faculty and students, Cheshire tries to prepare them for the extra investment in time. “The perception is that everything is easier online, that you can get a degree online without very much work, but that’s just not true,” she said. “We tell students that it is more work and that it may feel like you are doing a lot more reading, or that the learning appears to be more independent. You also have to be very self- motivated and have the ability to manage your time well.

With classroom sessions held virtually on Zoom, peer teaching assignments that require students to learn material and teach it to their classmates, breakout sessions on chat boards requiring teamwork and active participation, and immediate feedback through email and texting, Ghanat has expanded his teaching style. “I love teaching,” he said, “and this experience has offered me a great opportunity to think about my teaching. It’s given me great ideas and techniques to implement later on in my traditional classes.”

Literacy initiative thrives during pandemic

When The Citadel moved to a remote-learning model in mid-March due to the coronavirus quarantine, most of the outreach programs at the Krause Center for Leadership and Ethics had to be temporarily halted. But social distancing requirements did not stop former Service Learning Director Conway Saylor and Community Engagement Fellow Mike Akers, ’19, from coming up with a way to ensure that The Citadel continued to make an impact in the community and that cadets were able to complete their community service requirements.

Their idea—Story Time with The Citadel, a library of videos produced for kids by students, faculty and staff sharing their love of reading through the books they chose to read.

“Basically, we were brainstorming about what was needed and how we could help during the pandemic,” said Saylor, a 30-year professor of psychology who headed up the college’s service-learning program until retiring in June.

For Akers, whose work as a community engagement fellow in the Krause Center focuses on Title I schools, the Story Time program was an obvious choice.

“Story Time was a natural fit for us because we have cadets and students who have close relationships with children of the Charleston area who greatly benefit from reading assistance,” said Akers. “When The Citadel went to a virtual platform, our number-one concern was how to continue to provide tutoring to children in need while we were under a stay-at-home order.”

With the pandemic interrupting the academic year and South Carolina struggling to keep up in literacy education, Story Time became a much needed resource for students and educators as they tried to continue the academic year online.

“Written language sounds different and is more complex than spoken language, so the more we can read aloud to our students, the more they can understand the structure of language and the way it flows and the way it’s connected together,” said Britnie Kane, Ph.D., an assistant professor of literacy in the Zucker Family School of Education.

According to Kane, reading aloud to children helps with comprehension and language skills. A strong foundation in reading sets the course for students as they move from learning to read to reading to learn. “There’s actually evidence to suggest that culturally we tend to stop reading to kids in early elementary school, but that it might actually be beneficial to read out loud much longer than that because language continues to develop,” said Kane. “The structure of it continues to get more complex as kids read more difficult texts.”

Literacy education is integral to the Zucker School curriculum. The Citadel Summer Reading Program, a summer camp that pairs graduate students with young students reading below grade level, has been helping Lowcountry families for more than 40 years. The school also offers a Master of Education degree in literacy education and a graduate certificate program for teachers who seek literacy teacher certification.

Cadet Christal Altidor, a senior psychology major from Florence who serves as a peer leadership undergraduate study partner in the Krause Center, has made four Story Time videos. When the quarantine was announced, Altidor was on spring break in Houston at roommate Cadet Sydney Williams’ home. With the help of Williams, who became her producer, and Williams’ mother, who unearthed some children’s books, Altidor was ready to read.

“Typically, I go to James Simons Elementary School and Charleston Development Academy to help kids with their homework, and that experience really transitioned well into reading for Story Time. It was like I never left,” said Altidor, who wants to be a social worker when she graduates. “I want to work with children as much as possible, so that’s my motivation for reading for Story Time.”

The Story Time library continues to grow and includes classics like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Where the Wild Things Are and The Three Little Pigs. It also includes Huevos Verdes Con Jamón and Buenas Noches Luna—the Spanish translations for Green Eggs and Ham and Goodnight Moon.

Sara Fernandez Medina, Ph.D., who teaches Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages, was searching for an internship alternative for her students and a way to help the Spanish community when she discovered the Krause Center’s Story Time initiative.

“We have a high number of Hispanic kids in the community who don’t speak English,” said Fernandez, “so I said, let’s do this in Spanish.”

In addition to Spanish, one cadet read a story in Chinese. Thirty volunteers participated in the Story Time effort, and more than 40 videos were published. In the 2019-2020 academic year, students, faculty and staff logged 27,468 hours of community service through the Krause Center for an economic impact of almost $700,000.

“Service learning is the heart of what we do in the Krause Center,” said Akers. “Story Time allowed us to continue our mission, and we hope that it will become an enduring resource for families long after the pandemic is over.”