Navigating a pandemic together
How the support of donors is helping to have a positive impact, during a challenging time for all.
The pandemic has turned daily life on its head for all students across the UK, even across the world.
A large amount of their teaching over the last 18 months has been delivered online rather than in person. Some will have found themselves living back at home when they should be living independently at university. Others will have found themselves unable to go home, due to travel restrictions or shielding loved ones. It’s affected their finances, with the loss of jobs. And sadly, for many, it will have affected their mental health.
At Loughborough, we’ve tried to keep things as normal as possible when we can. As soon as it was possible, we allowed students back on campus and reintroduced some face-to-face teaching in a safe and measured manner. We’ve opened facilities, both academic and social, whenever guidance has enabled us to do so.
During all this, one of the main things we have committed to doing is supporting our students and support from our donors has made much of this work possible. Over £400,000 was directed towards various initiatives to fund emergency activity on campus in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stepping up to the challenge
Managing the effects of the pandemic has been a team effort across the whole university. Everyone has played a part in ensuring the University has been able to continue delivering its core services in a safe manner.
This includes our ever-committed student ambassadors.
Student Ambassadors supporting pandemic-related work on campus
Student Ambassadors supporting pandemic-related work on campus
Since the pandemic first began. Our student ambassadors have been involved in various initiatives to support and help others at the University. This includes the preparation and delivery of food to isolating students; the collection and delivery of pharmacy prescriptions; mail delivery, and other essential shopping.
Funding from donors was used to recruit student ambassadors to support the testing centre, and health and safety ambassadors, who worked with students when they returned for the start of the 2020/21 academic year. Their role was to educate other students on mask wearing and social distancing policies that were in place across campus. They also helped to ensure that COVID signage was being displayed in the most appropriate places, and that wipes and sanitisers were available to all students as they entered and exited facilities.
“I had COVID and had to isolate. It has been great to be able to help others and make sure they aren’t alone.”
Student Ambassador
Protecting mental health and wellbeing
The impact of the pandemic has been far reaching. It has had a huge impact on society’s health, not just physical health though, our mental health.
So many factors have played a role in this including long periods of isolation and lockdown; minimal contact with family and friends; and limited access to the activities that made up our lives prior to the pandemic.
For students and staff of the University, life on both of our campuses was flipped on its head, with students having to access their teaching and assessments online and staff working remotely.
From the very beginning, the University recognised that all the factors we were dealing with, were likely to have an impact on our community’s general health and wellbeing. Since then, we've been working to ensure that individuals have access to the support and information they need.
This included the development of the Loughborough University Wellbeing app, which was launched in May 2020. Designed to support both students and staff, the app was developed in partnership with mental health and wellbeing experts at UniWellbeing but made possible with funding support from donors.
The platform follows a holistic approach, using proven methods to positively influence your wellbeing, incorporating mindfulness and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) amongst many other techniques. It helps individuals to develop small habits over time, that will make a beneficial change to their lifestyle in the long run and ultimately lead to a healthy and happier lifestyle.
It considers the challenges university life can bring, supporting individuals with common obstacles such as staying productive, relationships, maintaining a work-life balance and money management, as well as general themes such as staying active and keeping connected.
“This is a proactive approach to health, wellbeing and resilience, that can be used by staff and students alike.”
Sarah Van-Zoelen, the University’s Occupational Health and Wellbeing Manager
Delivering on the essentials
The second wave of the pandemic began during the first term of the academic year, meaning most students were back on campus at the time. In addition to testing and tracing potential cases to keep the virus under control, the University focused on ensuring that students were fully supported during any periods of isolation.
Over 120,000 meals were delivered to self-isolating students, free of charge, and all laundry was collected and returned. All of this was made possible because of your support.
Our approach won high praise. This praise also belongs to our donors, as your support once again made the delivery of all this possible.
“We were overwhelmed with the amount of support we got from the Catering team. We felt incredibly lucky to be at the University.”
Loughborough University student
A different but still merry Christmas
Your support also made sure that many of our students still had a merry little Christmas.
As the events of 2020 unfolded, it became increasingly apparent that the festive season was going to be different for most. Once the Government released guidance on students travelling home for the Christmas break, the University worked to ensure that all students and staff, whether they planned to head home to see family or stay at university, were supported.
Approximately 400 students stayed on campus. A programme of fun and engaging activities both online and in-person, called Loughborough Festivities, was set up to ensure loneliness was avoided.
Events took place every day of the Christmas break and included online exercise classes, creative workshops, gingerbread making, film nights and a scavenger hunt.
The Vice-Chancellor also hosted a series of COVID secure events for students including a quiz, a bingo night, a fancy dress competition and Santa’s grotto.
Hot meals were provided every day and were free over Christmas and New Year. On 25 December, a full Christmas dinner was provided, with the Vice-Chancellor dishing out the plates, and all students that chose to participate were given a small gift.
Loughborough University staff support Christmas Day festivities on campus
Loughborough University staff support Christmas Day festivities on campus
A team of student ambassadors also acted as peer buddies so students had someone they could turn to if they needed additional support or someone to chat to.
Seventeen student ambassadors were also recruited to act as Support Buddies over the Christmas break, who were asked to stay in contact with students that were left on campus and ensure no one was lonely.
"I was really worried we would be forgotten about, but the amount of support put in place and knowing there were staff still around, that cared, was nice."
Leah, final year sport and exercise psychology student
The ultimate test
Testing for COVID-19 on campus has become essential to our everyday operations and keeping everyone safe. The testing facilities we have on campus have enabled us to limit and reduce the virus spreading amongst our student and staff populations, due to how quickly we have been able to turnaround results.
We are deemed to have one of the strongest testing programmes within higher education, and the credit for that must once again go to our donors. With your support we were able to purchase three testing machines for use on campus (who are affectionately known as Tom, Dick and Harry).
The machines purchased by the University can be used to confirm PCR test results and are being used to test symptomatic students and front-line staff, as well as confirm asymptomatic positives from lateral flow tests.
The biggest advantage of the machines though, is the time in which they can return results. Because they use cartridges, we can have results back within one hour. At times over the last year, NHS test results have taken up to 72 hours to arrive. Being able to turnaround results so quick meant that we could get students self-isolating and had real time data for how many cases we had on campus and locations. This enabled us to put measures in place to control any peaks.
Fast turnaround testing also meant that we could:
- test symptomatic students and if negative, release the household from isolation, allowing the students to attend in person teaching and other activities.
- ease the student’s and student’s family anxiety by quickly confirming if they had the virus or not.
- ensure students were safe to travel home during the Christmas holidays. This was particularly important for students who were returning to family members who were clinically vulnerable.
- carry out fit to fly tests to enable international students to fly home with the relevant PCR documentation.
The machines have helped to carry out over 4,000 PCR tests to date. Access to the machines enabled us to establish a thorough testing regime on campus, and this ultimately enabled our students to come back on to campus for the final part of the 2020/21 academic year and to attend in person teaching where possible. It also puts us in a good position for if wider testing is needed again in the winter.
Working together
What has been apparent in all University activity over the last year, is that no matter the circumstances face, working together is how we achieve success. Thank you to all our donors for their continued support. The pandemic has presented us with some of the most challenging times higher education has ever seen and your support has played a crucial role in ensuring that the University has succeeded when coming up against these challenges.
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