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Kate Walters takes the drive from her East Syracuse home to Syracuse University to make deliveries to students in quarantine.

Walters, an external relations assistant at SU, is currently one of 11 “pod leaders” on campus, which has grown from a few leaders at the beginning of the school year. The leaders are staff and faculty from across different SU departments and provide support to students who are quarantining in places such as South Campus and at the Sheraton Hotel.

Pod leaders work on an on-call basis and also deliver items to students that they may have forgotten or need while in quarantine. Although the leaders don’t personally hand deliver the items to students in quarantine, they work as an advocate for them, said Joe Hernon, SU’s director of emergency management and business continuity.

“We’ve asked students to basically pick themselves up and go lock themselves away for 14 days,” Hernon said. “It’s just to provide another layer to help them out.”

Hernon and Carrie Abbott, SU’s director of first-year and transfer programs, formed the program in August. The pod structure was initially created when some first-year and transfer SU students from hot-spot states quarantined at SU dorms and stayed in small groups over the 14-day period.

SU eventually reimagined the pod structure and applied it to students who needed to isolate once the school year began and COVID-19 exposures began to rise. Leaders facilitate communication between students and family members, and deliver items such as nail polish and yoga mats.

“If you need grandma to come drop you some soup off, we can find a way to coordinate that your grandmother can drop some soup off,” Hernon said. “Little creature comforts.”

Brent Huot, an SU sophomore who is currently staying in quarantine at the Sheraton, expected there to be more communication from pod leaders.

His first form of contact was a message from his pod leader three days into his quarantine asking if he wanted to connect via Zoom. To get tested for COVID-19, he has been in contact with the Dean of Students Office, The Barnes Center at The Arch and SU’s COVID-19 Office and said each service kept referring each other to one another.

“I get the idea,” Huot said. “I just feel it could be better executed … There’s definitely a lack of communication with the resources students are provided with.”

The pod leader program has SU staff and faculty working two jobs at once. Walters said she’s on Microsoft Teams daily to communicate with other leaders and checking to see which students are added to the quarantine list.

Walters’ schedule with pod work varies week to week. She has had three students in one week, but over 40 in another.

Vicki Smith, a pod leader and assistant director of student success at the College of Visual and Performing Arts, said that the leaders are doing the best they can despite the rising cases at SU. With 180 active cases as of Wednesday night, the university will transition to fully online learning for the rest of the semester starting Thursday.

More leaders from different schools and backgrounds have joined throughout the school year, and the leaders have become more connected with one another, Smith said.

Smith joined the job in October and first worked with students isolating themselves on floor three of the Sheraton. Her job eventually expanded out to other floors as more students were put into quarantine.

“I’m just trying to just be the best resource I can,” Smith said.

Walters, who works at the Newhouse School of Public Communications, first volunteered for the job after an email popped up from Newhouse assistant dean Karen McGee in late September. Although Walters doesn’t have much contact with students as an external relations assistant, she has two college-age children and contracted COVID-19 in the spring.

As Walters began to deal with parents and students who were dealing with quarantine, she would get phone calls at night. It didn’t bother her.

“I’m used to getting up at midnight with a sick kid because that’s who I am. That’s what I do,” Walters said. “As long as I can help somebody … You just do what you can to make it easier.”

At the end of October, Walters received one student who was celebrating her birthday inside quarantine. She took the time to create a care package for the student, stuffing it with goodies like Goldfish crackers, cookies, apple cider, a coloring book and a birthday card.

The student’s parents thanked Walters and told her deans at Newhouse what a great job she did.

“That was really a bonus,’” Walters said. “I was just doing something nice.”

Published on November 11, 2020 at 9:11 pm

Contact Christopher: cscargla@syr.edu | @chrisscargs