Ready or not, pandemic high school grads take on Virginia Tech, other colleges |

Now roaming the campus greens and neo-Gothic architecture of Virginia Tech are an estimated 7,100 new and first-year students, according to preliminary university data provided ahead of classes starting next week.

Jaden Minnick, 18, of Harrisonburg, said he has visited Blacksburg since he was a newborn baby, the son of a Virginia Tech graduate. He moved into one of the dorms on campus earlier this week, and on Thursday said he feels hopeful about the college years ahead of him.

“I’m sure there’s going to be some challenges on the way, but I think I should be able to handle it,” Minnick said. “I like my roommate so far. Seems pretty cool.”

Of course he is looking forward to Hokie football games, plus the broader experience of “having some independence and advancing in life,” he said.

“I would say I feel ready,” Minnick said. “I think I’m ready, both mentally for being on my own, and for the curriculum, and all that stuff.”

With school instruction in 2020 truncated by coronavirus-related shutdowns, then further marred by the ongoing pandemic of this year and last, Minnick described his high school experience as “being maybe a little too lax.”

“Specifically the 2020 year, that was my junior year, I did feel like I missed out on some core stuff that I should have learned,” Minnick said. But, “the next year, my senior year, I was really able to take advantage of it.”

With aspirations for engineering, Minnick as a high school senior enrolled in community college courses and found internships, “to kind of expand on what I was learning,” he said.

“I felt like I was hindered in my junior year, I did feel like I was maybe not given the most preparedness to go on,” Minnick said. “But I felt like my senior year was very helpful to kind of get me ready.”

He said peers have voiced similar sentiments about their high school experiences in the age of coronavirus. Because of pandemic leniency received during high school, Minnick said he has friends who have expressed concern about meeting assignment deadlines and attending class regularly.

“After COVID, giving people a break made sense,” Minnick said. “But also, it was maybe a little too much of a break.”

That’s why Virginia Tech is keeping especially close watch on the needs of its incoming students, said Rachel Holloway, vice provost for undergraduate academic affairs.

“The transition to college has never been easy, but … these students have had such a strange experience,” Holloway said. “We’re really monitoring not just that academic performance and preparation piece, but really, the whole environment of coming to college.”

It’s a focus Virginia Tech has always kept, she said, but disruptions of recent years exaggerated the university’s approach. Ensuring student success requires efforts from all avenues, including advisers, faculty, housing and other departments.

“It really is everyone on campus,” Holloway said.

“We try to reach out before a student gets to the point that they just don’t feel like they can be successful,” Holloway continued. “Mostly, we have to build their confidence sometimes, because it is a big transition.”

In-person attendance at the school’s Summer Academy bridge programs doubled in 2021 and 2022, compared to summer courses hosted virtually in 2020, Holloway said. Student appointments scheduled with faculty advisers also increased in frequency during the pandemic, she said.

“We’re also looking at, especially the last couple of years, making sure we have the summer following the first year as a real opportunity for students,” Holloway said, adding there was a good deal of demand for summer courses in math, science, English and other general education subjects. “We’re encouraging students to work with their adviser to think about if using that next summer, or even through their whole career, can really help them move forward.”

She said the growth and change between first-year students and the graduates they become is amazing. Seeing that development and their walk across the graduation stage is how she personally gauges the school’s success.

“The young people of the commonwealth have not had an easy few years,” Holloway said. “We want the next few years to be as positive and productive as we can make them.”

for everybody’ At Hollins University, a newly branded Office of Student Success is restructured from the former student affairs office, emphasizing all aspects of achievement, well-being and belonging, said Michael Gettings, a philosophy professor and associate vice president in the office.

“It’s a very holistic way of thinking about what students need to succeed,” Gettings said. “It goes way beyond just ‘can they write good papers?’ or, ‘can they do the problem sets in chemistry lab?’”

He said college survey results from last year suggested new students in 2021 had most of the book knowledge compared to fresh college students of pre-pandemic years, but lacked soft skills like time management, multitasking, focus and attendance, as examples.

“In a nutshell, it’s not the academic skills or knowledge that we’ve seen loss of during COVID, it’s almost more the challenges COVID brought on itself,” Gettings said. “The impact on families, the impact on finances for some families, and then the impact on mental health. Those are things that students are still carrying with them, and we are responding to.”

Altogether, those and other hurdles have made it more difficult for some incoming students to adjust to college, he said, adding that creating for students a sense of belonging is crucial to their well-being not just academically, but in other aspects of their college lives and futures.

“My mission is to look out and see how am I going to ensure that students have all the resources, opportunities and support they need to succeed and reach their goals,” Gettings said. “Ultimately, it comes down to meeting the students’ needs, and understanding what is going to support them.”

Hollins’ new Office of Student Success plans to coordinate efforts with many aspects of the college, including professors, housing and resident life, health and counseling, diversion, equity and inclusion, and plenty other departments, he said.

“We have to understand our students. We have to know where they come from. We need to listen to them. We need to empower them, and we need to be able to ensure that we’re putting things in place to help them reach those goals, because that’s sort of the promise of the college education,” Gettings said. “We see it when it happens, but we have to make it happen for everybody.”

are resilient’On one floor of Radford University’s Moffett Hall, future teachers who just this week moved into The Schoolhouse Living Learning Community are making fast friends with one another, said Brian Kitts, who instructs educational leadership.

“Young people are resilient,” Kitts said on Friday. “They’re resilient, and they find their strength.”

Surviving through the pandemic, young people learned to independently use the resources available to them, Kitts said. He has noticed that incoming students are aware of where their gaps might be, and they ask about tutoring and advisement options to those ends.

“I think a lot of kids have developed a new skill set, and own independent responsibility … I’m encouraged by their independence,” Kitts said. “They want to know where the resources are on campus, and what they can do for help.”

Kitts, too, mentioned belonging as a critical aspect of student success. Given the “infectious” excitement on Radford campus this week, he said there is good reason to be encouraged these students will turn out just fine.

“You can already feel the sense of community building, and you can already feel like the kids are going to be there for each other,” Kitts said. “That’s critical, transitioning to college.”

‘Mold the world’As classes begin for Virginia Tech on Monday, Minnick in his dorm room, said he wants to study chemical engineering with a focus in nuclear engineering and to one day find a sustainable energy solution in nuclear fusion.

Talk about a bright future.

“Things got pretty bad these past few years, and now seeing everything kind of try to go back to normal, it’s inspiring,” Minnick said. “I see it as hopeful of things to come… It inspires me to try to see how I can mold the world.”