Transcript: Baylor President Linda Livingstone discusses the Big 12's decision & more
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On Friday, Baylor President Linda Livingstone joined SicEm365 Radio to discuss the decision for the Big 12 to move forward with their plans to play the 2020 football season and what reasoning went into the decision to welcome students back to campus this fall in Waco.
To listen to the audio of the interview from last week, click the play button at the top of this article.
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SicEm365 Radio: We have heard this week from Mack Rhodes Baylor Director of Athletics, Jovan Overshown, who was a part of the show yesterday on many things that are going on in the athletic department. We've heard from football coaches, etc. And now we hear from Dr. Linda Livingstone, the President at Baylor University with Paul Catalina, Craig Smoak and David Smoak.
Dr. Livingstone, thank you very much for your time. Can you tell me what kind of influence that Baker may have had Tuesday when the big 12 decided? We're going to for john and try to play football season
Linda Livingstone: Well, first, thanks for having me. I'm so happy to be with you today. And I know lots going on. But you know, we had a great meeting with the Big 12 Board and the athletic directors and medical directors from each university. So, you know, we certainly played a role in it, but it was a team effort with each institution contributing their own perspective and their expertise. And I think we got to a really good place that we all felt like the right decision to make at this point in time so you know, each school play a little bit different role in that process, but I think we all got to a place we felt comfortable with that we could move forward.
SicEm365 Radio: How confusing did things get when the Big 10 and PAC 12 made their decision in regards to the big 12 deciding what they were going to do?
Linda Livingstone: I think we had known for a while the the likely direction that those two conferences we're going to make it, but we felt like we needed to listen to our experts, look at our own unique situations in our institutions in the states that we're in, and make the right decision for our conference and for our student athletes. And so, you know, certainly you want to hear what other conferences are doing. You want to understand what their experts are telling them. But at the end of the day, our decision was about what we thought was in the best interest of our student athletes and with their health and well being not just on the field, but off the field, the well being of them academically as students. And then you know, how we wanted to move forward as a conference. So certainly, we paid attention to it. We always want to know what the other conferences are doing, but did what we thought was in the best interest of the Big 12.
SicEm365 Radio: You may not know this, but on the day we have Mack Rhoades, which was Tuesday, earlier in that show, Dr. Livingstone, we had Dr. Ackerman from the Mayo Clinic. We We We had no idea of that connection. I just happen to see him up on social media and make a couple of comments about the myocarditis and so we invited him on. I was stunned he was able to come on. I got a couple of texts after the meeting that night that he was, like huge in making sure people understood what was going on with with COVID and the heart. And then to find out he has a son who's a junior at Baylor, how much of an influence I asked about Baylor. That's kind of part of it. How much of an influence did he have?
Linda Livingstone: Well, having Dr. Ackerman with us is really important. We certainly had many other really exceptional national experts on the call as well from the various institutions in the competition. You know, many of our Big 12 institutions have really exceptional medical schools and medical systems and so their experts were also really critical but certainly Dr. Ackerman was important. He works in this space. He works with athletes. He works with myocarditis patients and so he was very thoughtful. He's clearly an expert had some really good guidance and was very helpful to us as we thought through the issues and helped us think about things. We had multiple perspectives on the call that night from a medical perspective. And I think that was helpful because you heard all the perspectives you had to kind of weigh those together and ultimately come to what you think's the best decision for, for the student athletes. But, you know, it's that we are privileged to have his son here as an engineering student. And I've actually not met Dr. Ackerman personally, except on that zoom call the other night, but hopefully we'll get to meet him in person at some point in the future when he's on campus visiting his son.
SicEm365 Radio: Was there a time that you went to bed, went to sleep, thinking you had this or what was going to happen and you woke up and you would change your mind and how you felt or how you felt the conference would move forward?
Linda Livingstone: Well, I've had that feeling many times over the last several months not just about athletics, anything I can imagine. Yeah. But you know that I mean, the situation has been so fluid around COVID-19 whether it's related to athletics, whether it's related to bringing our students back to school or you know, where they should we should test or not, or what you know, all the things you need to do around the operations of the institution and the health and safety and well being of our faculty, staff and students. And so, absolutely, you know, I think there have been nights you've gone to bed thinking you're going to do one thing and you wake up the next morning and some new studies been done, or some new expert comes out or you learn something new about what's happening, you know, in Waco and McLennan County in Texas, and, you know, we're gonna have to rethink what we do. And so I think, in all that we're doing we recognize that we have to stay on top of the data we have to stay on top of our unique situation here. We certainly have to stay on top of the city, and the county and the state have to be really prepared to adapt to make sure that what we're doing at this moment is right for the circumstances recognizing that that can change very quickly with bringing all the students back to campus.
SicEm365 Radio: I guess as many as can come back to campus this semester, and then the athletes having to go to classes and things, are you planning to keep them kind of sequestered, how to like, what's the plan on, you know, keeping everybody socially distance as possible, as you can in a college environment where people will be going to classes?
Linda Livingstone: We're spending a lot of energy now and certainly as we go into the start of the semester, promoting what we're calling the family first kind of approach to returning to campus. And it's really about accepting responsibility, each of us personally for keeping our family safe, the Baylor family and that means doing things that keep us healthy and safe as individuals as well as those around us. And so we're spending a lot of emphasis on all of our students, whether they're student athletes or not including, you know, also our faculty and staff, but you really got to wear your mask, you've got to socially distance, you've got to wash your hands, you really shouldn't be in large gatherings. And you know, every day you need to be going through that symptom checklist. And if any of those show up at all, you really shouldn't be going to class or going to the office. And so I think for all of us, it's just critically important that we follow those guidelines and, and that gives us absolutely the best chance to be able to continue to athletic events to be able to continue to have face to face classes to be able to continue to have experiences on our campus. And so we have a lot of faith in our Baylor family that they will be deeply committed to keeping each other healthy and safe and to be staying on campus for the fall semester. So that's what we're really promoting and counting on that level of commitment from us.
SicEm365 Radio: Dr. Livingstone, what have you made of the collaborative effort from health and wellness, to the medical experts on staff to just the various athletic staff to everybody having to work together? You are all doing that anyways, but this is on a whole nother level. What have you made of how all of your different departments, coaches staff have been able to collaborate as one in trying to, you know, climb this this almost insurmountable mountain that we're facing here with COVID-19?
Linda Livingstone: Well, I can't say enough about the work that's gone on between our medical professionals and our health center. Dr. Stern does an amazing job running that. Jim Marsh is our Associate Vice President for kind of health and wellness and, and he's been significant in this as well as all their staff. And then certainly, Kenny Boyd and Dr. Urban and our folks in the athletics department has just been intimately involved. In all of the decisions we've made, and frankly, we've learned a lot from athletics as they brought students back a little bit earlier than the rest of campus, it's been really critical. And then I also have to say that we've really had great collaboration with the city and the county health department and working with them. I was just on a zoom call for just a few minutes yesterday, they were doing a tabletop exercise and it had our campus folks it had some of our faculty and held public health and environmental science, athletic folks were on there, the county health folks were on there. Somebody was there from the Family Health Center, and all talking about the things we've got to be sure we do is we come back to campus to keep everybody safe. So it's not just been a Baylor collaboration has been truly a community wide collaboration because we recognize that we're bringing back such a large number of folks that it has is a big impact on the Waco and McLennan county communities as well and so we have a responsibility to help keep those community safe and and engaged in what we're doing so it's been a great team effort and I couldn't be prouder of, of our folks in the way they've all worked together for the last several months.
SicEm365 Radio: Was there ever a serious consideration to not have students come back at all?
Linda Livingstone: You know, we've been working on this for so long. I mean, I think that after we sent everyone home in the spring, we then made the decision to go ahead and stay online in the summer, we've debated whether we should try to do our last summer session with some things face to face. But then we decided, you know, what we really want to do is make sure that we can come back face to face in the fall. And so we concluded that staying online in the summer and really focusing our efforts on having a way to bring people back in the fall and be safe and healthy about that was really the priority and we didn't want to risk that by bringing people back in the summer. And so I think that our focus really all along has been to bring people back in the fall, but we have known that if you know certain situations change, we might not be able to do that. But I would say that really from the beginning, our intent was to be back in the fall and, and and going coming back full fully online would have been a fallback option. All along, it was never our first choice and never what we planned for.
SicEm365 Radio: And I'm sure you're planning for anything to always change one of those meetings like that you have to throw out like random scenarios. What if, what if this, what if that happens, to get you know, plans on paper to, you know, whatever happens in COVID-19, which has been wholly unpredictable.
Linda Livingstone: Well, we've had several of those that was in one similar to that yesterday. We have a fabulous resource on campus, Dr. Ben Ryan, he's in our environmental Environmental Sciences Department. And he's an expert in working with communities on how to recover from public health crises and pandemics. And he's been with us here for a few years. So it was one of those situations where you have the absolutely right expert on your campus for what's going on at that moment. And so he has been instrumental in leading what we call these tabletop exercises, where we'll show a scenario we'll talk about what we might need to do or what information we might need. And then we'll make it a more complicated scenario. And so he's done multiple of those for my leadership team for this community group or other groups on campus. And it's been really critical in helping us think through how to plan and adapted to know how we might need to adapt and change as our circumstances change over the semester. So we've been really fortunate to have some internal folks as well as we've got a consulting group that's helping us with some of our testing protocols and some of those things. And so we've really got the right people advising us that I think it's really made it has put us in a really good position going into the fall.
SicEm365 Radio: Dr. Linda, so how much do you love zoom calls?
Linda Livingstone: You know, I actually tell people I kind of gotten to where I really enjoyed the telephone call every now and then. But I do have to say I can't even imagine going through this pandemic without tools like zoom and teams. Because to do as much work as we've had to do, and without being able to deal where you can actually see people's faces, I'd certainly much rather do it in a room together with them. But I can't even imagine how much more difficult it would have been. So I'm ready to quit doing so many zoom calls. But they it's really been critical to our ability to plan and move forward and do it in a healthy and good way. So I would certainly like to get back to normal but in under the circumstances, it's certainly much better than other ways we might have had to have done it, you know, five or 10 years ago, how much of what you wanted to do or what not so much you want to do what you thought was best for Baylor, the students or in this case, what happened.
SicEm365 Radio: Tuesday night with the football program, and the conference, how much of being a student athlete yourself came to play when you were trying to make up your mind?
Linda Livingstone: I think that having been a student athlete just gives me the perspective of knowing how student athletes might be thinking about this and, and how important it is to be concerned for their health and safety. And well being because I was in that position at one point certainly had a daughter that was in that position, and also knowing how much I would have wanted to play and find a way to do that, that was safe and healthy. And so I think that certainly is a perspective that's important because I can kind of see it from both sides and having been a student athlete, and then because I can really put myself into their shoes and in their mindset because I have been there and studying. It's been important to me and it gives me more empathy, I think for what they're experiencing than if I had actually had that opportunity when I was in college.
SicEm365 Radio: Dr. Livingstone, having that perspective, how important will the mental health side of things be?
Linda Livingstone: With, you know, just right now in general, but especially everybody coming back to campus and all that, I mean, that's something I know a lot of coaches have spoken out about. It's like players who have lost, you know, their, their identity in some ways or lost this or lost that. I mean, mental health is is obviously a huge part of this as well. How do you sort of you that, you know, the mental health aspects of this are just critical for us to think about and, and we recognize that this is so much more stressful for our student athletes and our students than sort of normal fall semester would be. And so it is something we talked a lot about it on the Big 12 call. We talk a lot about it. In my presidents council meetings, I know Mack Rhodes and his staff spent lots of time thinking about what is going to be in the best interest of the mental health of our student athletes and certainly our students more broadly. So we've all worked very closely with our counseling center staff, ensuring that we have the right support there. You know, we continue to have a 24 hour crisis hotline, the athletics department provides a lot of mental health support for student athletes. That is certainly something we're going to pay a lot of attention to and continue to monitor and support as we go forward knowing that this will be a stressful semester for everyone and that we're going to have to pay a lot of attention that to ensure our students mentally get through the semester in a healthy way.
SicEm365 Radio: Dr. Linda Livingstone, with the Baylor president on SicEm365 Radio, you've had to deal with this. You've had to deal with the social unrest. And you've made some decisions about how bainer moves forward and what they do to what's the right word embrace changes. You have also when you first arrive had to do it. You know, I mean, part of being a president of a university with things that Baylor's dealt with is is this has this been the most stressful time for you compared to anytime you've been at Baylor?
Linda Livingstone: I think this has been the most unusual time and certainly has had its stress associated with it. And I think the primary reason I — and I get this when I talk to other university presidents and other leaders of organizations — is this time is so different and difficult. Because information is changes rapidly or you don't have information or you don't know how accurate the information you have is. So there's probably greater levels of uncertainty than we would normally have when we have to make really significant and important decisions. And then that information changes more rapidly than it often does in other circumstances. So it really forces you to to make sure you've really got experts around you that you trust and that you can listen to in areas that many of us aren't naturally experts. You know, I'm not an epidemiologist or whatever. So I've got to have experts around me and then you've got to be willing to be adaptable and flexible and recognize that a decision you made a few weeks ago, may not be the right decision a couple of weeks later, and you've got to adapt to be ready to make those changes and pivot quickly. So I think that's what's made it challenging for anybody running any kind of an organization, just that high level of uncertainty and lack of information.
SicEm365 Radio: The last thing for Dr. Linda Livingstone, with us, Baylor University President, had you had to deal with this in the Big 12 decision making on Tuesday. If it was from when you walked through the front door, I know you're not going to admit this and you I'm not asking you to say but with what Mack Rhoades now commands the room with he's there and with what you've done. Do you feel though that Baylor has a bigger voice now within the big 12 than they had when you arrived?
Linda Livingstone: Now, I think there's a lot of respect across all of the presidents and athletic directors in the conference, and I know they have a great deal of confidence in our leadership here at the University from our football program through Mack Rhoades up through the senior administration, the university and and our board of directors. And it's, you know, something they paid a lot of attention to. And we feel good about the way we're viewed in the conference. But I have to say it's a great group of leaders in the conference broadly, we work well together, we respect one another and, and have a really talented group of presidents, chancellors and athletic directors. So it's a privilege to work with them. And we certainly appreciate the way they look at Baylor and the way they I believe trust the contributions that Mack and I make to the process.
SicEm365 Radio: Will the first day of school mean more to you this year than ever before?
Linda Livingstone: Oh, I absolutely think so. You know, of course, my very first first day of school back in 2017 was unbelievably special, but I think this one will be you know, quite unique and special because it just took so much work and effort on so many people's parts. To get here, and I can't thank our faculty and staff enough they have just bent over backwards and adapted and changed multiple times to make being here in the fall possible. And so I'm just unbelievably proud of our community and all everybody has contributed to make this happen. So I'm excited about that first day can't wait to greet our students and faculty and staff as they come back.
SicEm365 Radio: Thank you very much, Linda, thank you for your time. We appreciate it.
Linda Livingstone: Glad to be with you anytime.
SicEm365 Radio: That's Dr. Linda Livingstone, Baylor University President.