Learning from the Voices of Faculty: An Analysis of the Impact of Shelter-in-Place on Faculty at San Jose State University in Spring 2020

This is a research paper based on an in-depth study conducted in Spring and Summer 2020 at San José State University College of Engineering that focuses on the students and faculty experiences during the shelter-in-place due to COVID-19. There were four parts to this study. In this paper, we focus on the interviews of 23 faculty members that taught in Spring 2021 (18 lecturers and five tenure-track and tenured faculty members). Seven women and 16 men were interviewed and they worked in almost every department in the College. The interviews were conducted via Zoom in Summer 2020. The faculty members had a variety of years teaching at SJSU: nine faculty members taught for 0-5 years, six faculty members taught from 6-10 years, two faculty members taught from 11-15 years, and six faculty members taught for more than 15 years. The interviews asked open-ended questions of the faculty members and used a thematic analysis approach to analyze the transcripts. The results of the interview analysis indicate that there were commonalities of experience in Spring 2020 after the unexpected shelter-in-place. Most of the faculty members had never taught online before and they struggled with switching to remote instruction. This paper gives a detailed analysis of the faculty voices about their experiences and present recommendations based on this analysis.