Andrea Bordeau and Arik Ohnstad

[00:08] ERIC OHNSTAD: My name is Eric onstead. I am 47 years old. Today's date is November 1, 2021, and we are in the great room of E. Bronson Ingram hall at Vanderbilt University. My interview partner today is Andrea Bordeaux, and we are longtime colleagues who've been working together for nearly five years in the Global Education office at Vanderbilt and at Vanderbilt more generally.

[00:34] ANDREA BORDEAUX: My name is Andrea Bordeaux. I am 37 years old. Today is November 1, 2021, and we are here at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. My interview partner is Eric Onstad, and our relationship is that we've been working together for a very long time now, collaborating for years on supporting Vanderbilt students in their studies and travels abroad.

[01:05] ERIC OHNSTAD: Andrea when was the first time that you realized the pandemic would just radically change your world or your way of life or your way of working?

[01:17] ANDREA BORDEAUX: I think that it was probably in two parts initially. When things started to appear challenging and questions were arising, I think it was immediately evident that as a professional, I was being challenged in a way that I hadn't been before. To the degree of the challenge, to the size of the challenge. But more specifically, the moment that stands out in my mind is in mid MARCH when the U.S. department of State issued its Worldwide Travel Alert, a Level 4 Do not travel to the entire world. That was an unprecedented moment. And as someone who works in the international travel space, but also as someone whose identity is so closely linked with being able to travel and experience the world, I felt doors closing in a truly profound way and wondering how or when or if they would ever reopen in the same way. Eric, was it something similar for you or how did your realization begin that the pandemic would radically change the world for you as you live it and perceive it?

[02:52] ERIC OHNSTAD: Yeah, Andrea I think that when I first started to really get the notion that things were really changing, it was when we started to. It was, yeah, exactly that same time when it became worldwide. First we thought it was China, and then from our position, it was Italy, and and then after that it was worldwide. And so that happened. And I think very shortly thereafter, we had our first on campus case at Vanderbilt, causing the university to close down, because of course, nobody knew how to deal with this yet. Nobody knew what it would take to put the pause or to slow down this virus. And so I think it was over the course of the next few weeks that it really started to hit me what it would mean and how long this could go on. And of course, it's gone on much longer than I anticipated it would as well. We haven't managed to handle it as well as I would have liked as a country, but I would say it was about the same time. And, yeah, I still wonder what it will mean for some far flung areas of the world that I've always wanted to visit and how long it will be before we can be there.

[04:07] ANDREA BORDEAUX: But absolutely, I appreciate your point about that Cascade around the world. I think for those of us who work in international education or work at a university, we first felt this when it came to China and then Italy, as Eric mentioned. And for those of us who work with students in the international education space, when we started to see this virus touching locations that were popular among our students, or just prominent programs for universities around the country, we knew that it meant something different. Eric and I have both been in this field through SARS and MERS and Ebola and similar types of challenges. But those challenges very often did not touch the spaces where our students were more engaged, where we had very large numbers of individuals that we were responsible for. And so I remember this moment, I think it was February, possibly early to mid February of 2020, where Eric was standing in my office doorway, and I remember saying, if this hits Spain, all bets are off. And knowing that we could isolate and manage cases in places like China or Japan or India, to name a few locations where our enrollment numbers and the number of students we support were small, this could be an individual response. But I remember saying to Eric, as soon as this goes to parts of Western Europe, our world in many ways will implode because of the sheer number of humans that we support.

[06:17] ERIC OHNSTAD: Right. And I remember, but when it did hit Italy, we still thought, well, maybe it will be contained there to the extent that, just to give one detail, our office was preparing care packages for those students who would have to come home from Italy when Italy's numbers were raging. But Spain had not yet seen huge numbers. So we had, I think, 40ish students coming back from Italy, and we were preparing to send them care packages. And before we could get those care packages done, it spread, I believe, to Spain was the next big location. And, yeah, from there, it was just a very fast cascade.

[06:53] ANDREA BORDEAUX: Absolutely. And in this moment, we knew that we were managing a situation so much bigger than ourselves, bigger than our students, bigger than our institution. Knowing that when we heard about cases emerging among student populations in different locations, we knew the implications for our universities. No one wanted to be the first university with cases abroad. No one wanted to be the university that had students stranded. And so we knew just how big it was. Even in the very beginning. And I think that that was something for those of us in our roles. It was. It was very hard to translate externally. I think there were. There was a realization or a recognition of this pandemic in waves. The same way we've had waves of cases and peaks and surges, knowing what it meant for our world came to us in a different way. And so when we think about peak pandemic, that peak, I think for Eric and I hit much earlier. Absolutely, than for most others. I know that I will never forget receiving an email in the very beginning of January from another colleague here at Vanderbilt who asked what I thought about this coronavirus in Wuhan, China, and what it meant for our institution and our students who may be traveling to China. And I remember, because Eric and I have lived and worked through SARS and mers, Ebola and these types of issues, I remember being very confident and thinking that this was something that we could manage and it was something isolated, because in almost every other circumstance, these cases were isolated, these situations were very isolated. And knowing just a few weeks later how absolutely wrong that assumption was, was so humbling and good in a way. Again, being able to see that this was something so far beyond our work and that this was going to engulf all of humanity in a very profound way. Eric, do any moments stick out in your memory as peak pandemic?

[09:44] ERIC OHNSTAD: Well, as you said, for that whole period where from February into March and April, when we were bringing students back, and then after we did have them back in the US when my team in the Global Education office were all trying to figure out how we could keep them whole academically, to make sure they could graduate or not graduate, but they could finish the semester with a full semester's worth of classes wherever possible, working with the dean's offices here, working with the Vice Provost for Academic affairs on that project, that's what really, for me, felt like peak pandemic. Because it was a time when we were putting in many, many hours, of course, but also when we were just most intensively responding to what had happened. So even though the pandemic had not peaked in the US at all in terms of case numbers, by that point, it would begin to soon thereafter. But to me, that still feels like the part of the pandemic bringing students home and then dealing with their academics afterwards, that just where my life was felt the most transformed. Even though, of course, in the summer afterwards is when our lives as a whole were most transformed, when masking went into place and we were all locked up in our houses and all of that as a collective in the U.S. nevertheless, for me, peak pandemic is that time where we were working with students.

[11:15] ANDREA BORDEAUX: I think it may be helpful to anyone who listens to our conversation to know a little bit more about our roles and the way that we serve students. Eric, do you want to take a minute to just share a little bit about your role here at Vanderbilt and what you do to support our students?

[11:35] ERIC OHNSTAD: Sure. I work in the Global Education Office, which is the office that supports undergraduate students at Vanderbilt in their study abroad. So from the time they start thinking about studying abroad, we are mentoring and advising them on exactly what it will take to study abroad, how to map their academics to studying abroad, giving them tips on how to work with their academic advisors to make that happen, working through logistics of visas and travel, and also just trying to help them figure out what their goals should be for studying abroad. There's so many things you can do with study abroad. And so while they're abroad we are typically a little bit more distant, but still available if students need us. But of course that was a big shift during the pandemic in how much we needed to be available to them while they were abroad and how much kind of support we needed to give them while they were there. And typically on return there is some support that we do, but nothing like what we had to do after this event. How about you, Andrea

[12:40] ANDREA BORDEAUX: So from my perspective, I have a slightly different role, but one that I could not do without Eric and his team. I am Vanderbilt's Director of Global Safety and Security and I technically oversee all university travel. So that is our faculty, staff, undergraduate, graduate and professional students. So anyone who is around the world on Vanderbilt business is technically under the guidance of my office and receives both pre departure and proactive Support, as well as 247 crisis management and incident response. I am part of an international peer network called pulse, which is international safety and security professionals in higher education. We are about 130 individuals around the world whose sole focus falls within academia and supporting traveler mobility and traveler safety and well being. And this group, in many ways I think for a long time has existed in the shadows of the institutions where we serve. We are behind the scenes fixers. That is largely our role. Many of us go into this work because we love a challenge. There is no puzzle too complicated. And yet in many ways we function very quietly and very privately because no one really wants to highlight the incidents or what goes wrong as opposed to all the ways in which things go well. And they often do. So this peer network through the pandemic has really moved into the light in many ways. And the work that we do is much more visible than it's ever been. And I hope it stays that way because, you know, we do so much more than simply supporting our institution through an issue like COVID 19. But we are here for the, you know, the mundane to the. To the epitome of all challenges that we've seen over the last couple years. And supporting our institutions, supporting our students, is always the highest priority. But being able to have that peer network, those are the people that I have become most reliant on. Being able to share the experiences with another group of individuals dedicated to the same work, being able to share strategies for an approach. And when I bring that information back to my own institution here at Vanderbilt, that is only made effective by having a partner like Eric in his office that can then put these ideas into motion. So when I think about the people or services that have become most important, it's that the ability to function as a true team was truly brought out during COVID I think.

[16:20] ERIC OHNSTAD: Absolutely. I think maybe we should say a little bit more about how we collaborated, too, during that time, because in some ways, I feel like we had a hard time finding the time either of us to collaborate. And at the same time, it's because we were both working to support those students and bring them back in different ways. But I can't tell you enough how appreciative I am of how you handled all those students and bringing so many of them back, because you were handling much more of the individualized return plans, especially for those students who had the most rough patches. And, of course, also working with our partners who are focused on safety in particular. And then I was a little bit more focused on how do we communicate about this in a broader way. But I think from my perspective, while that was. Those were some tasks that I had to do, and there was a lot of juggling and just move and coordinating of the staff in the global Education office that I was doing. The. I'm just so proud of the work that you did and grateful for the work you did to bring those students back individually and in their groups during the pandemic because it was such a difficult time. And, you know, I think maybe we should bring in the human element here and describe how little of us. How little either of us slept during those weeks from, we want to say, early February until maybe the end of March. Yeah, something like that.

[18:07] ANDREA BORDEAUX: Thank you, Eric. That means a lot to me. To hear there is a pretty intense human element. Eric and I were Both putting in 16 hour or more days during those weeks on end. They were no longer Monday through Friday. They were seven days a week. And for my part in the individual movement of students in evacuation from locations, I think something that challenged me the most at this point was that for every incident or case that I had managed in my career, there was always an answer, there was always a way, there was always someone I could call. There was always something that could be invoked to move a mountain, to change the flow of water. It's an incredible thing in our world, and it's part of the fun of the challenge in this type of work. But Covid changed that. And for our students in certain locations, I think to myself, of Morocco in particular, there was just nothing that could be done until the gates opened again. Morocco closed its airspace without warning, and we had several students there on the ground who either had flights delayed or canceled. And in normal circumstances, I would have been reaching out to everyone I know around the globe, every security provider, intelligence providers, different national governments even, and we would have found a way. But when an entire country closes its airspace, there is no plane that goes in or out. There is no helicopter rescue. There is no boat. There was nothing to be able to tell the students and their families other than to please trust that we will do everything we can, and we will be watching this every minute that we can. And ultimately, it did work out really well. We were alert and aware when the window opened, when the borders and the airspace opened just briefly enough to allow those who needed to leave to leave. And we had the resources in place already so that flights were secured and students could get home to their families as quickly as possible. But I think that it will probably stick with me forever, that feeling of absolute powerlessness to know that no intervention of my own making would be able to do anything that needed to be done. So lessons learned, of course, you know, relate to patience and fortitude and a willingness to lean on others. And I think that's been something that has stuck with me as we move through, continue moving through this pandemic. Eric, is. Is there something that stands out to you as a lesson or a life lesson learned from our experience?

[21:44] ERIC OHNSTAD: I think it would be humility, as you were mentioning, because there are a lot of things to be. To be humble about and the need to prepare for many things by trying to do things right the first time, not leave things hanging as we are, you know, preparing. You and I have been working together now to prepare for restarting study abroad for the last few months. And we now have students abroad now. But I think the proper preparation and you can't prepare for everything. You can't fill students brains with enough information to give them the autonomy to move through every little thing that could happen. But I think what it's really done for me is emphasize in a renewed way the importance of preparing well for whatever we can divine and to be willing, I'm an eternal optimist. To be willing to look at the worst case scenario and to put optimism aside for a bit, to try to also see how bad things could go and prepare for that. So I would say that that is, I think, the major lesson learned. And luckily we've been again collaborating together to try to cope with that lesson.

[23:22] ANDREA BORDEAUX: I appreciate how you mentioned your optimism, because your optimism is the perfect complement for me. My role is entirely based in finding what could go wrong at all times. I have to be looking at the dark side of every question at all times. And so, Eric, your optimism is what keeps the conversation going and I think often motivates me to find solutions to questions and challenges that I think, you know, when we have fatigue, whether it be physical or emotional, it would be easy right now to keep the doors closed when it comes to opportunities for our students. And that optimism is so necessary because in a world that is still unclear how to navigate, it's just so critical to be able to offer something to our students to help them engage globally again before they graduate, before they move on to what's next. I remember hearing and sitting in conversations where counterparts mentioned that we could be graduating classes of students who may have never had an international experience, who may never have set foot outside of their own country. And that truly touched my soul in a very profound way to know that something that I was so dedicated to may not be happening for these students. And so despite the fatigue, I think Vanderbilt has done an excellent job at finding a path forward. I think it's easy to talk about the challenges and the obstacles, but I think we also need to talk about what's gone well. Eric and I put forward a plan to gently restart our international engagement efforts for our students. And that has been going really well. We have over 40 undergraduate students currently abroad this fall and many of them are seniors. And I think that's something just really incredible that we were able to find a way to make this happen in certain locations where it was, where it made sense. I think it's also important to mention how deeply Eric and I have been thinking about ethics and whether or not travel is essential. That's a question right now. Throughout the pandemic, we've been asked or we've heard the terminology essential so much that it's easy to ask ourselves now, is this truly essential? And when it comes to international experiences for students, Eric and I, I think we both fair to say we believe that they are absolutely. And so the commitment that Vanderbilt has shown to keeping this moving has been. It's been inspiring. I've been very grateful to be here during this pandemic and to see how the leadership here has done everything it possibly can to maintain agility and flexibility. But I think that something maybe we can talk about is how COVID 19 on so many levels has become a risk like no other. Eric, from your perspective, how has COVID 19 changed how you're able to think about risk for your students?

[27:37] ERIC OHNSTAD: In some ways, COVID 19 has threatened to be the only risk we consider, I think, and that is something that you and I talk a lot about needing to push back against in our own minds, but also in the minds of others. And I think in this case you mentioned that my optimism is a good foil for your the inherent pessimism that's built into your role. But I think in this case the students are actually a good foil for. For this because for students, many of them, they do not see COVID 19 as the overwhelming risk that pressures amongst the rest of us, the administration of the university, governmental focus, et cetera, they don't necessarily see it that way. So in part our roles involve convincing students that it is a risk. But at the same time I think it's good to their reminder that there are other risks that maybe finding them mental health care while they're abroad is just as important or more important in some ways to mitigating the overall risk that students face than COVID 19 preparations specifically are. The way I've come to think about how we study abroad in the age of COVID is that we work with partners overseas to try to create a kind of a Covid safe bed without necessarily leaving aside the rest of the risks that students face and the challenges for them. I'd love to hear your opinion though on that, Andrea because I think that's been much more a part of your everyday every moment. It's a big part of what I've been doing. But of course I've been almost all of the time I've spent thinking about it, I've spent thinking about it with you. And so I would love to Hear more on your perspective from that question.

[29:50] ANDREA BORDEAUX: Sure. I think that it's been interesting to see the evolution of the thinking around COVID 19 as the only risk. I like how you mentioned that prior to the pandemic, I used to say that a big part of my job was convincing students, families and institutions that terrorism was actually not the risk that they thought it was. I was very involved in working with students after the 2015 Paris attacks and the terrorism that we saw throughout Europe in 2014, 15 and earlier, even dating back to 2007 in Madrid and London. And so for many years, I think terrorism has dominated the conversation around university travel risk. I think that in many ways, it's important to remember the heritage and how we ended up in these positions and why we have a need for someone like me at an institution. I don't think many people realize that I believe the number was 35, but I think there were 35 Syracuse University students on board Pan Am 103 when it went down. And that was one of the first times that an institution faced what we would in the field consider to be a mass disaster where you had 35 students, their families, their loved ones, their friends, the extended community affected in such a deep way. And so there was so much trauma around that, especially among institutional peers, about what could happen or what could be if we were faced with a similar situation. So much of our preparation and our efforts around risk mitigation and risk management and planning was to think about incidents like terrorism. Although a majority of the challenges that face our students, a majority of the hard things that happen overseas are much more mundane. They're connected to transportation, they're connected to things that happen. I usually say, you know, between the hours of midnight and 5am These witching hours, where things just go wrong. It's being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's random. And it's about having the right supports in place to deal with those situations when they happen. But for so many years, terrorism led the conversation around student safety abroad. And I'm seeing a similar pattern. I've seen a similar pattern emerge with COVID 19 now, where the only consideration we have, the mental space to have is Covid, where in reality, that is not the primary concern either for our students or in reality, with the incidents that we're facing abroad still. And so it represents a distraction from many other things and many other challenges that we could be facing. And so our attention is pulled in a lot of different directions. Our attention is pulled away from this. And so a big Part of our commitment right now is making sure that our attention is spread more broadly. But absolutely, Covid has become one of the only things that we can think about and plan for and talk about. And I think it's going to be an interesting transitional time for all of us when we move back toward looking at those other challenges. It's almost like we need to regain muscle memory. We need to. We're out of shape at the moment. We need to. To think about what we used to be doing and how to do it even better despite the distractions.

[34:33] ERIC OHNSTAD: No, absolutely. And I think the intense focus that every. The leadership of every institution of higher education in Vanderbilt is not an exception, has had to give toward COVID 19 and especially to making sure that the campus experience is safe and to make sure that all of the different constituents are, are both as safe as they can make them and feel as safe as we can help them to feel, has definitely moved attention away from, especially folks like us who have been thinking about when we haven't had to think about COVID 19, thinking about other ways that we can move the international experience forward, whether it's making it more affordable so that every student can participate, those kinds of things which we view as critical toward. For the operations that we want to do going forward. Getting that up through all of the. I won't call it noise, but through the natural and necessary work that our leadership has to do has been very difficult. And so I think we are going to be facing when this is all done, a renewed emphasis on our own parts, on the things that we think are important, but also renewed attention to things that have been rusting, maybe is a way to think of it while we're working abroad. So while we've been dealing with COVID 19. Andrea what are you most proud of during the pandemic and your response to it? I guess.

[36:18] ANDREA BORDEAUX: I would say that I am most proud of the partnerships that I've had at Vanderbilt and externally, but I'm also incredibly proud of our students. I am blown away by them all the time, their resilience, their commitment to their future and the things that they want to do and the way they want to experience the world. I'm proud that our students have been so committed to this experience, experience this fall, being positive that I can say it's been. It's been quiet in all the right ways, knock on wood. We never say that in this field, but it's. It's been good. And so I'm, I'm. I'm proud of the parts of humanity who have stepped up and done more than they needed to. I'm proud of our students for choosing to get vaccinated, choosing to wear masks, choosing to protect others around the world when they travel in these spaces. I'm proud of our students for being thoughtful and considerate citizens of the world and getting to see them in that experience. Eric, what are you most proud of during the pandemic?

[37:54] ERIC OHNSTAD: I think I am most proud of more or less exactly what you just articulated being most proud of, which is proud to be at Vanderbilt and to be part of Vanderbilt deciding to restart study abroad with this fall right now. And that is to me it's been, I think the biggest, at least work related emotional high of the pandemic for me has been being able to send these 40ish students abroad, 2/3 of whom are seniors, as you mentioned, to do things like cap off their Spanish degree by studying abroad in Spain and taking all of their classes in Spanish. Those students are, you know, I'm just proud that we were able to open that door for them and that we, and that we fought hard to do it. I guess that's what I'm proud of and I'm proud that Vanderbilt made it happen because some of our peers did not open up study abroad this fall. And so to have been here and to work with you and the others who made that happen, I would say that's also my proudest moment of the pandemic.

[39:06] ANDREA BORDEAUX: And for me, the pride in that also connects to the joy that we've been able to experience throughout the pandemic. I'd say one of the, the things that has brought me most joy during this time is that recently I've been able to travel abroad again in order to conduct site assessments and safety assessments in order to make sure that our locations were truly ready for our students. And being able to do that has just been the most incredible privilege to, to get on a plane again, to enter another country again, to be met by partners abroad that we've worked with for years but now haven't seen in years. And to say to them, thank you, thank you for all you did for our students. Thank you for all you're continuing to do for us. And I've missed you, we've missed you, I've missed the world. And so being able to do that has just brought back this profound joy again. And so I think in a way there's been this sort of awakening, this opportunity to reflect, opportunities to step back. I think had Covid not happened, had the pandemic not occurred. We all just keep going. So in a way, there was this perfect pause that allowed us to, or at least allowed me to develop some perspective about the things and the experiences that I value the most. And so in a way, that was a strange gift. Eric, is there something for you that's brought about some joy in this?

[40:56] ERIC OHNSTAD: Yeah, I haven't been able to travel yet, Andrea but one of the things that I was able to do in the summer of 2020, kind of after that peak pandemic period of bringing students back, was to work on something from my own life, working on genealogy of relations of mine, my great, great, great uncle who had traveled to Britain. I found some folks who had documentary information on his life or touching his life. And we began a big correspondence among an extended family there, unrelated to me but related to each other. And it was just was pretty joyful to connect internationally in that way while exploring an aspect of my own cultural history. So that's kind of one of the places where I've been able to keep the connection alive and look forward to being able to travel and meet some of these folks in person.

[42:05] ANDREA BORDEAUX: So that is very cool. Thank you for being my conversation partner today. I've really enjoyed it.

[42:12] ERIC OHNSTAD: Thank you, Andrea I enjoyed it as well. Thanks for inviting me.