Monday, December 14, 2020. “My perspective of School during the Pandemic”

I usually wake up at 6:30 and go to school and 6:50 and arrive by 7:10 a.m. Now I wake up at 8:30 eat, shower, and brush my teeth. Then I walk up to my room and I open my iPad to online school at 9:30. I spend my usual school days in a classroom at school now it's on google classroom and it's in my house. I used to eat in a Cafeteria now I eat in my kitchen. For most of my peers' online school is harder and more challenging for them. They have less motivation and more distractions. They have less social interaction and more alone time. But for me I enjoy having plenty time in the mornings and being at home where yes there is more distractions but there's also more comfort. I have less social interaction, but more time to be busy with working, practice, and working out. For a lot of people, it's hard being alone and bored at home with nothing to do but for me it's easy because this pandemic has given me the availability to do more in a day.  I don’t like the masks or social restrictions, but I do kind of enjoy our new normal of being at home and having school online where I have less worries and more time.

Hunter Gondry
Junior, Eastern High School

Thursday, October 8, 2020. “Studying Virtual Frazier From New England.”

For my class, Organizational Learning, Innovation, and Systems Thinking in Northeastern’s doctoral program in Organizational Leadership this past Spring, the major assignment was to “explore an innovative company that made a ‘pivot’ during 2020’s disruptive landscape of the social and economic crisis amidst the global pandemic.” Having studied and worked in museums, I was interested in examining a museum rather than a corporation, if I could find one that would fit the dimensions of the assigned project.

Almost all cultural and heritage centers had closed their doors in March 2020, many at a standstill during lockdown. Others shifted to makeshift online tours or slideshows of their collections, with limited audience engagement and success. I cast a wider and wider net as I searched the internet for a unique and collaborative response, and saw a lot of the same model — post some photos, run some archived video footage, and direct “visitors” to the Gift Shop. These were not going to fulfill my assignment…

Then somehow, I landed on the homepage of the Frazier Museum’s Coronavirus Capsule! I clicked through to read how the museum was virtually supporting local schoolchildren learning from home, the collection and curation of digital content for the capsule with a plan for a future exhibit, and programming to address the social unrest that was surging outside the Frazier’s own locked doors, and across our country.

I scoured the museum’s website, from the story of the museum’s founding to the up-to-the-minute submissions to the Coronavirus Capsule. It was energizing, even from miles away, to visit Virtual Frazier, see the interaction of the Teaching Artists with schools in the local community, and follow the steady cadence in President & CEO Andy Treinen’s Monday emails to the Frazier community, near and far.

Since the class I was taking focused on a systems theory approach to organizational structure and operations, I concentrated on the Frazier’s innovation within the volatile environment of the pandemic and social unrest. The museum was so interactive and responsive, innovating the communication of its own mission and amplifying the voices of the community around it, staying focused on my narrow topic was difficult!

I contacted Megan Schanie, Manager of School and Teacher Programs, for more information to incorporate into my project, and she set up a virtual meeting with Rachel Platt, Director of Community Engagement; Brian West, Teaching Artist/Historical Interpreter; and Heather Gotlib, Manager of Educational Partnerships and Volunteers. They generously shared their time, expertise, and insights on various aspects of the museum’s operations, and how the staff was responding to inform and engage with its community. They suffered my many questions with grace and patience, and their input informed my research greatly; I cannot thank them enough for their assistance!

My final deliverable was a late June presentation on how the Frazier employed an innovative reaction to the pandemic, assumed a leadership role within the interdependent systems in which it operates, leveraged these systemic interdependencies to strengthen both its internal and external relationships, and created meaning through supporting diverse communities. Even the dry academic terminology could not dim the vibrancy of the Frazier’s diverse programming and inclusive collections, which illuminated the slides of my presentation. While small in comparison to the multinational companies and industrial corporations my classmates presented, the Frazier outshone them all in its agility, creativity, and responsiveness to the needs of its community in Louisville, as well as the larger environment beyond the city limits.

I could not imagine having a more dynamic and exemplary organization to study, and I look forward to a post-pandemic opportunity to travel to Louisville to see the Frazier History Museum in person!

Alice Campbell
Doctoral candidate in Organizational Leadership
Northeastern University