Journey
Through a Crisis: Inside Agnes Scott’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic By Nicholyn Hutchinson
In late December 2019, the media began reporting on a small cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause in Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei province. As people prepared to ring in the new year and new decade, at first what was happening with this mysterious illness may have seemed as if it was safely a world away—until it wasn’t.
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Unprecedented Times Call for Unprecedented Measures At the beginning of every spring semester, there is typically an air of excitement within the Agnes Scott College community, particularly among first-years eagerly anticipating their Global Journeys, seniors happily looking forward to Commencement and alumnae making plans to return to their beloved alma mater for Alumnae Weekend. When classes began on Jan. 14 after the winter break, there was no reason to believe that this spring would be different. No one could imagine how significantly life at Agnes Scott was about to change. By then, a severe acute respiratory illness, identified as being caused by a novel coronavirus, had begun its rapid spread beyond China. A week after the college’s spring semester started, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the first confirmed case in the U.S. in Washington state, and closer to home, the first two cases were confirmed in Atlanta by the Georgia Department of Public Health in early March. In an attempt to slow the spread of the
illness, which was named COVID-19, restrictions were placed on international and domestic travel, stay-athome and shelter-in-place orders were issued, physical distancing practices were urged, and people were asked to self-quarantine and self-isolate. Infections and deaths, however, continued to rise globally, and on March 11, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Three days later, President Donald Trump proclaimed a national emergency, which was followed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announcing a public health state of emergency. Agnes Scott, like many other higher education institutions around the country, was paying close attention to the unfolding events. The air of excitement with which the new semester began was now replaced with one of uncertainty. A crisis was brewing on the horizon, and foremost in President Leocadia I. Zak’s and her leadership team’s minds was the safety of the campus community and determining the college’s response to COVID-19, of which the surrounding circumstances continually evolved. Gundolf Graml, professor of German and thenassistant dean for global learning, was the driver behind one of the earliest decisions made by the college. Graml initiated conversations in mid-February with President Zak and her cabinet about how the coronavirus outbreaks overseas might affect Agnes Scott’s various study-abroad opportunities, including Global Journeys, the weeklong, faculty-led immersive travel experiences for first-years. In what represented the first formal discussions about COVID-19’s potential impact on the college, Graml provided recommendations that led to President Zak’s
