Analyzing the Impact of Covid-19 Control Policies on Campus Occupancy and Mobility via Passive WiFi Sensing

Mobile sensing has played a key role in providing digital solutions to aid with COVID-19 containment policies. These solutions include, among other efforts, enforcing social distancing and monitoring crowd movements in indoor spaces. However, such solutions may not be effective without mass adoption. As more and more countries reopen from lockdowns, there remains a pressing need to minimize crowd movements and interactions, particularly in enclosed spaces. This paper conjectures that analyzing user occupancy and mobility via deployed WiFi infrastructure can help institutions monitor and maintain safety compliance according to the public health guidelines. Using smartphones as a proxy for user location, our analysis demonstrates how coarse-grained WiFi data can sufficiently reflect indoor occupancy spectrum when different COVID-19 policies were enacted. Our work analyzes staff and students' mobility data from three different university campuses. Two of these campuses are in Singapore, and the third is in the Northeastern United States. Our results show that online learning, split-team, and other space management policies effectively lower occupancy. However, they do not change the mobility for individuals transitioning between spaces. We demonstrate how this data source can be put to practical application for institutional crowd control and discuss the implications of our findings for policy-making.Comment: 25 pages, 18 figure

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SECURITY CONCERNS FOR UNIVERSITY WORKFORCE AND SUPPORTING INFRASTRUCTURE DURING A PANDEMIC

Faculty and staff working from home during the COVID pandemic were presented with new challenges in adapting to emergency remote teaching, as well as new and expanded cyber security threats. Changes to course delivery, remote access from public locations, and the potential of faculty and staff storing confidential educational records on university-issued devices, and potentially personally owned devices, made faculty and staff prime targets of malicious attackers. Information technology departments were challenged to support and secure the remote workforce from new cyber threats to protect their faculty, staff, and students from cyber-attacks. The focus of this study was to identify faculty and staff perceptions of cyber security, assess their understanding of cybersecurity policies and procedures, and to also identify concerns they viewed that needed to be addressed to be prepared for the future. Using descriptive research methodology, an online survey containing 37 items was created and sent to faculty and staff at a midwestern university to answer three research questions. The study identified that the faculty and staff at the institution surveyed understood the role they and others have at the university to protect the university from cyber threats. It was also identified that they understood the policies and procedures of the university regarding cyber security. Faculty and staff also identified various forms of technology and accessibility issues they feel need to be addressed if they are required to perform emergency remote teaching and support to maintain university operations

COVID-19 Protocols in Academic Libraries in Canada and the United States

In the Fall of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic raged throughout the world, educational institutions pivoted to online learning and supporting services, especially those found in academic libraries, adjusted. To better understand measures taken by academic libraries in Canada and the United States, the Association of College & Research Libraries’ (ACRL) Value of Academic Libraries (VAL) committee formed a subcommittee to examine how academic libraries adjusted and provided services to their respective institutions during COVID-19 pandemic. This report is the culmination of this examination

Annual Report 2020-2021: Student Life & Development

Student Life and Development (SLD) professionals at Winona State University (WSU) deliver programs, services, and activities that support students\u27 academic achievement, social development, and well-being in the timely pursuit of their educational goals. The 2020-2021 SLD Annual Report provides information from the following departments: Admissions, Community Engagement, Conduct & Citizenship, Counseling and Wellness Services, Dean of Students, Equity & Inclusion Excellence, Health & Wellness Services, Housing & Residence Life, Integrative Wellness, Student Union & Activities, TRIO Student Support Services, the Warrior Hub, and the Warrior Success Center.https://openriver.winona.edu/annualreportssld/1005/thumbnail.jp

COVID Response: Iterative Model Development in the Deployment of Hand Sanitation Stations at a Large Public University

This study illustrates the significance of iterative model development using the deployment of hand sanitizer stations in buildings at Clemson University as a case study. The COVID-19 problem affected Clemson University, a major institution, in several ways requiring adaptations to existing policies and procedures to take place. Following guidelines provided by the Centers for Disease and Control (CDC), the university implemented several new strategies including placing hand sanitizer stations in several buildings on campus in order to try and mitigate the transmission of the virus. This study focuses on learning how the initial decision-making took place to then design a representative model that can provide future recommendations. We first use semistructured interviews to understand the historical decisions behind the placement of these dispensers. We then come up with an initial model design strategy to capture what was done by the university. Finally, through ongoing interviews with key stakeholders we use an iterative modeling process to eliminate discordance between the model and the actual decision-making strategies to design a representative model. The thesis will first outline the strategies and techniques that were used to gather qualitative information. It will also present some of the quantitative data that was gathered. Next, the iterative modeling development process will be provided in detail. After this, the models are formally outlined and described. The subsequent results are then presented. Finally, the thesis discusses the takeaways from the iterative modeling process as well as the future plans with regards to implementation of the model. The value of this research study is to show how qualitative research methods like semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders iii can aid the iterative development of optimization models that lead to an ideal representative model to be implemented in the future