A Closer Look at SFA's COVID-19 Response

All of us remember that initial post we saw about the campus closing for the semester. We remember the mass panic during the pandemic. We watched as many universities shut down for the semester and received notice about our courses moving online. The feeling of powerlessness and watching the entire nation slowly shut down incited fear and uncertainty in all of us. In this blog post, there will be an exploration of Stephen F. Austin State University's (SFA) COVID-19 health communication campaign and the changes that were made on the campus in response of the pandemic. In addition, we will also be utilizing the Social Cognitive Theory to compare and evaluate the effectiveness of the health communication campaign.

I was a student at SFA during the spring semester of 2020 and I clearly remember the length of time it took for SFA officials to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. As an active social media user of Twitter, I saw several students call out SFA officials on their lack of responsiveness. It wasn't about two weeks later when we all had started to get an active response about what the rest of the semester was going to look like.

Slowly, all of the students and faculty shifted online and prepared for final exams. I remember one of my professors including a statement in one of his first Zoom recorded lectures. He apologized on behalf of the university and told us that many of his colleagues were struggling with the transition online as well. This was a reality check: no one had a plan of what was going to happen. Together, faculty and students worked to maneuver through the challenges of adapting to an online course. Finals came and went and the campus climate was filled with anxiety, frustration, and sadness. Many students participated in a virtual graduation, and for students like me (who will be graduating Spring of 2021), wondered if our graduations were going to be virtual too.

Locally in Nacogdoches, the Nacogdoches County Sheriff's Office updated the community every day using status cards, which you can see here. An example is also displayed below. These status cards were posted on the Nacogdoches County Sheriff's office Facebook page. It was easy to understand, accessible, and contained valid information. The people managing the Facebook page responded to comments from community members and created Facebook live-streams elaborating on CDC guidelines and what Nacogdoches members needed to do to stay safe.

This is how I kept up. Along with the daily Center for Disease Control updates, I watched the amount of deaths climb the ladder. SFA did not have a resource like this at the start of the pandemic, but many local residents of Nacogdoches kept SFA students aware of how many cases were active by word of mouth. Many actually feared for the students to come back because they were afraid of the spike in cases.

Later in the summer, students that were enrolled for the Fall 2020 term received several emails and statements from the university. These emails included thorough evaluations of CDC guidelines, a layout of different course options, and a sample of how our bills would look like in the Fall. On Twitter, Dr. Adam Peck (Dean of Student Affairs) responded to tweets that pertained to the COVID-19 situation at SFA campus and calmed a lot of students down by being straightforward and concerned about student safety. Now that we have a background of how the university has developed it's response to COVID-19, let's take a look at the media strategies and other campaign components that SFA has used.

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SFA's COVID-19 Campaign: "Get Back, Jack!"

The university has implemented target strategies for their COVID-19 health communication campaign. Through media, SFA officials utilized different media platforms and posted about the measures that were being implemented on campus. One tweet that an SFA faculty member posted was about a "Step and Pull" door fixture that was placed in bathrooms across campus. I have seen many of these fixtures located in the Baker Patillo Student Center. Major hot spots are the doors that lead to the restroom and having these fixtures in place make me feel a whole lot safer! Having personalized tweets from actual members of the university that were targeted towards students helped create a positive climate and reassurance that things were actually being done.

For those that are reading this blog for our Health Communications course, I know that we had to watch the mandatory video about COVID-19 at the start of the school semester. This video was posted on our banner notifications and included the Student Body President, Chris Moore. This video included a couple of student actors that portrayed the viewer to think that we were on an airplane and the actors were debriefing us on what to expect in regards to the pandemic. This quirky yet very informative video was directed towards students to ensure that SFA was following CDC guidelines and had things under control. These were the ground rules and those who did not follow them would face consequences. This set the tone for the school year and was a very effective health communication strategy!

SFA also created lumberjack avatars that were used to demonstrate what an SFA lumberjack would do. If you have not been physically on campus, there are several posters posted within each building that have COVID-19 related information lumberjack style. These posters have school spirit within them and contain information about hand washing techniques, how to properly wear a mask and when to wear it, as well as the catch phrase "Get Back, Jack!" to place emphasis on the CDC guidelines of staying 6 feet apart. (CDC, 2020)

Dr. Adam Peck has also created a task force on campus called the COVID-19 Contact Trace Team. This team is a group of selected students that were hired through the Dean of Student Affairs office. There is an active hotline where students, faculty, staff, and parents can contact to ask questions in regards to the pandemic as well as report COVID-19 exposure. This team collaborates with departments across campus to ensure student safety and wellness.

SFA now has an easily accessible COVID-19 resource homepage that includes guidelines and information about Fall 2020, Spring 2021, and future students. There is also a page that reports active COVID-19 cases on our campus as well.

Something that is also important to note is the change of expectations of students that are physically on campus. Wearing a mask on campus is now something that is socially mandated. I've heard several comments about how students feel scared to walk on campus without their mask on in fear of being publicly ridiculed or called out for it.

As I am writing this, as of just a week ago, SFA announced that with or without insurance, SFA students were able to go to the health clinic to get COVID-19 tests. Many wonder why this has just been recently announced but my assumption is that with the extensive data that the COVID-19 Contact Trace Team has received, there may have been several statements from callers about not being able to afford getting a test done. The constant changes in response to data collected further demonstrated the effective communication of this health campaign.

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Using the Social Cognitive Theory to Analyze SFA's COVID-19 Campaign

With all of this information about the campaign, we are able to assess the effectiveness of health communication on our campus. What is important to note about this campaign is that the environment at a university is designed for the students. There is actually a slogan that the university uses called "Students First, Always." Students are what makes a university. The media campaign was directed towards students to ensure that less risky behaviors were implemented to ensure that the campus would be a safe place for everyone.

"The Social-Cognitive Theory (developed and adapted in a large part by Alfred Bandura), is a popular theory applied to how people learn new health behaviors and can be used in the design of behavior change messages." (Yamasaki, Geist-Martin, and Sharf, 2017) This theory is applied well in this campaign through the video that students were mandated to watch and the utilization of flyers with new health behaviors in each building on campus.

The theory is based on observational learning of new behaviors. This means that with each learned behavior, there are a set of factors that influence the person to reinforce this behavior. All of us have had to wear a mask and have been told by health officials that wearing it helps reduce the chance of us contracting COVID-19. Everyone (let's be quite honest here, most people) wear a mask because the people around them are wearing it (environmental factors) and a personal factor is that they do not want to get themselves and other loved ones sick. Having to wear the mask on campus and having the guidelines enforced on our campus is a perfect example of the Social-Cognitive Theory. This model is also important to enhance our self-efficacy in making health related decisions.

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In conclusion, I would have to rate SFA's health campaign a 6/10 (10 being the best health campaign ever). Other universities were quick and efficient with their response to the pandemic. SFA has a track record of doing the bare minimum (usually due to a lack of proper funding).

For example, a fellow student submitted a post about Texas A&M and the things that they have implemented, such as a walk-up COVID-19 testing station. Three months into the semester, our university has decided to make COVID-19 testing available to all students free of cost. The difference between SFA and Texas A&M is the resources that are available to a bigger school. There are more students, more funding and a serious attitude about this pandemic. There are still people that enter buildings without a mask on, but overall, this health campaign has made a positive impact on our campus. Each and every day, we are working together to hopefully have a sense of normalcy again.

References:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, September 11). How to Protect Yourself & Others. CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/index.html

COVID-19 Info. (2020). Retrieved November 09, 2020, from http://sfasu.edu/covid19

IT, N. (n.d.). COVID-19 Information. Retrieved November 09, 2020, from https://www.co.nacogdoches.tx.us/covid-19/index.asp

Yamasaki, J., Geist-Martin, P., & Sharf, B. F. (2017). Storied health and illness: Communicating personal, cultural, & political complexities. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.