A Google search for “home workspace tips” yields more than 50 million results. Some articles recommend standing desks; others swear you’ll be most productive on the couch. With so much information out there, it can be difficult to know what advice to follow and who to trust, so we consulted our own Puget Sound expert in ergonomics for some tips for Loggers working and learning at home while social distancing.

How Pierre Ly paired global political economics with Chinese wine

Kaela Hamilton ’20 presented her senior thesis research in biology in late April from a room in her boyfriend’s house in Tempe, Ariz. Using her laptop and Google Meet software, she showed a series of slides about her research on the composition and distribution of epiphytes on bigleaf maple trees while her advisor, Assistant Professor Carrie Woods, and about two dozen faculty members and students watched from their respective homes.

Chemist Dan Burgard is at the forefront of an exciting—and stinky—field: wastewater analysis

Chemist Dan Burgard is at the forefront of an exciting—and stinky—field: wastewater analysis

Picture this: Inside a bustling mega mall in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 10 Puget Sound students are trying to get their bearings. Anthropology professor Gareth Barkin has just tasked them with talking to the shoppers—many of whom are locals and don’t speak English—about hijabs, specifically how the religious headscarf has become high-fashion among young, Indonesian Muslims. It’s an unfamiliar topic for the students, who are already outside their comfort zones in a foreign country.

Despite the obstacles to teaching and learning while under COVID-19 quarantine orders, the Puget Sound faculty displayed agile and creative adaptability in the crisis. Some professors kept it old school, sending packages of tools and coursework to students’ homes; others went digital, using platforms such as Google Jamboard and Slack. Most courses used one video platform or another, including the campus’s learning management system, Canvas. Here are just a few examples of ways that faculty members adapted.

Jolie LiBert ’20 was overwhelmed. Home in Flushing, N.Y., for spring break, the Puget Sound senior had moved from one coronavirus epicenter to another. It was mid-March, and virus cases in both Washington and New York were trending sharply upward every day. “I told my mom, ‘I wonder how I can proactively think about this without reading bleak statistics,’” LiBert recalls.

Historian Nancy Bristow tries to make sense of a 1970 shooting on a college campus. (No, not that one.)