University of Wyoming’s new President, Ed Seidel, shared a biographical introduction of himself, his past career choices and his aspirations for the university last night, July 7, on a Facebook Live interview. In the interview, he spoke about the COVID-19 pandemic and the university’s actions to address it.
Seidel says UW understands some students may not have had their summer jobs and some parents may have lost their jobs due to the pandemic. He wants to make sure the educational experience is affordable to everyone this coming year.
“Persevere,” said Seidel during the live interview. “Give it all you got. Recognize that we’re all in the situation together. Nobody asked for it and it’s here. A few years from now you’ll be looking back on this and say we did it, you know we got through that. And I hope that adds some fortitude and some sort of sense of energy that you can overcome obstacles that you have in your life and this is one that we’re all facing together so a part of this is helping each other get through it.”
Seidel also names all who participated in finalizing the approved plan shared by the Board of Trustees “heroes” and says he and the university are taking this situation very seriously.
Specifically, Seidel is looking into more specific aspects of the university to help prevent a large spread of COVID-19 like looking into the filtration systems in the air conditioning units and other scientific aspects of the virus.
As of July 2, UW has received $26 million from the state to help fund testing for the university and to help increase financial aid for students along with other financial matters.
Seidel also spoke on the importance of having international students as well as just international individuals a part of the University. He said they add to the excellence of any university. Visiting family and friends are also an important part of the UW community especially during homecoming and other events. Therefore, visitors are still welcome but will have to follow the same guidelines as students and faculty when on campus such as wearing a mask and social distancing.
Seidel wishes to research and further understand computing and data within the university, give more education on entrepreneurial culture and interdisciplinary work to better equip the faculty and students for the future, and to foster a more inclusive and diverse university overall in order to economically grow Laramie and the state.
“The University of Wyoming has some really special qualities,” said Seidel during the live interview. “It’s small and it’s residential and it has the capacity to really build a family of students here who really feel connected and feel connected to the state, and they learn certain values here like how to become civically engaged citizens when they graduate and I wanna make sure that every student, regardless of the major they have, could be English or could be history or could be physics or could be an engineering discipline, that they’ve also got a sense of how to use that to make themselves succeed in life and to bring back value back into their home and to communities.”
Seidel worked at the University of Illinois from the late 80’s to early 90’s starting out his career working with universities and higher education. In Illinois he specifically learned how to work with very diverse individuals with different backgrounds and different careers, which is something he hopes to improve at UW. Seidel then went to Germany to help start the Albert Einstein Institute just outside of Berlin and later started building a new interdisciplinary research center at Louisiana State University, which is another aspect he wants to improve at UW including how the University can help make the state better. After that he worked for the National Science Foundation to build a computational data program for four years and moved to Russia after that to help build a university from scratch with the backing of MIT. He most recently is joining us from Illinois where he worked again.
Through all these different locations of work for Seidel, he has started conducting conversations with some universities in Illinois, Germany, the UK, England, Wales, Israel and India to create partnerships with UW.
“I think we can do a really good job of promoting the wonderful university that’s here and the environment that people have here, and not just nationally but also internationally,” said Seidel during the live interview, “and I think there are many strengths of the university here that I think will resonate a lot as we try to develop partnerships with the universities, with funding agencies, with foundations and with international partners, and I’ve already had inquiries.”
Seidel encourages students to reach out to the faculty and especially their professors more this coming year to receive that personal contact some students will be lacking due to online courses, and more contact with professors will help students keep grades up and excel in their academic careers. Seidel said that only 35% of fall classes are online currently with 65% still in person but understands students want to be with students and have that on campus college experience. Furthermore, study groups would also provide social interaction and help students academically. He stresses, though, to make sure all contact with professors and study groups are safe with social distancing, mask wearing and proper occupancy numbers in rooms or at tables.
“One thing I hope that you all would help me do, those listening and the student organizations, is to commit to practicing the safest practices that you can during COVID-19,” said Seidel during the live interview, “and this means not just on campus but off campus so you know its no safer to go into a bar than it is on campus so you got to be careful about this so please commit to be safe as possible. I was a student too and I know you kinda feel invincible and ‘well this won’t affect me’ but even if Wyoming has lower incidents right now of COVID virus, we’re going to be having students coming back next month, student, faculty and staff from all over the world and they’ve been exposed to things so we’re going to be one of the places to be very, very careful and we want to be careful going forward.”
