Hannah Small wakes up in her grandparents’ California home at 9 a.m. Right away, she gives her grandfather his morning pills, tube feeds him, lets out the dog and does any necessary chores around the house. Only then does she open Canvas to assess the daily workload of her two summer courses.

Just as Small starts working on an assignment, it’s time for another feeding, or her grandfather needs other assistance or she needs to make a grocery run.

As governments, universities, schools and care centers began limiting their capacities or shutting down completely as a result of the pandemic, many students and teachers moved to remote learning, teaching and researching.

With these closures across the U.S., many students and instructors have undertaken full- or part-time care responsibilities alongside their full-time work. Some caregivers have felt both their work and home lives suffer as they feel the pressure of maintaining efficiency and keeping up with their peers.

In June, Small’s living situation changed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and she chose to help out her family by replacing the hired professional that usually cared for her grandparents.

“It’s never just all focus on school or all focus on taking care of my grandparents,” Small said. “It’s kind of like, ‘I have 30 minutes here; I’m gonna try and cram in some lecture notes.’”

Many students on a timeline toward graduation are worried about lasting set-backs from their time working in a distracting environment.

“With all the stress and reduced productivity, my academic career, for which I have sacrificed a lot over the years, will definitely be set back and affected long-term,” media studies doctoral student, graduate employee and father of two, Gubae Beyene, said. “There is a lot at stake here.”

For Beyene, his wife and their two children, COVID-19 forced work, school and home into one place. Beyene said he appreciates that his wife, Hewan, is the children’s primary caretaker, but he still feels burdened by the convergence of childcare and work. Finding a balance has been his toughest challenge. 

“There are times I wish I could make myself invisible just to get work done,” he said.

The University of Oregon’s Center for the Study of Women in Society launched the Caregiver Campaign on June 8. The campaign is a call to action asking UO leadership to address the labor inequities that were brought to light by the pandemic.

“The most strong sense of despair that I would say was really coming from moms — a few dads — but certainly from moms with young kids who are at home, who were having to do homeschooling, having to do daycare plus just the emotional labor that goes into caring for children,” Michelle McKinley, CSWS director and UO law professor, said. “Then we saw that this was totally a national pattern.”

McKinley and others at the CSWS worried about the university’s expectations of faculty productivity during the pandemic and thought to create the Caregiver Campaign. Though the campaign focuses on faculty, McKinley said, the CSWS recognizes the impacts on GE, student and staff caregivers as well. 

Labor inequities existed before the pandemic, McKinley said, especially in the academic system that is still modeled after hermetic monks spreading their information only to a select few.

“Higher education’s research expectations have favored men who have wives or domestic partners to perform childcare,” McKinley and anthropology professor Lynn Stephen wrote in the initial call to action. “Of course, there have been changes, but the structure and expectations of research productivity overwhelmingly privilege those who can defer child and elder care.”

The campaign suggested six steps for the university:

• Repurpose allotted faculty research resources to support caregivers

• Temporarily waive non-essential services

• Suspend “on track” standards for research productivity

• Develop a research accommodation opt-in policy, like the tenure clock extension

• Instruct department heads and deans to evaluate teaching loads

• Collectively identify essential strategies of caring

Along with the campaign, the CSWS organized a petition and survey and collected written testimonials from UO faculty who are caregivers. 

Maile Hutterer is an associate professor, UO’s History of Art and Architecture Department’s director of graduate studies, a wife and a mother of two. With the university and its childcare centers closed, Hutterer’s entire family is now working and learning at home.

“Even with every creative solution that we can come up with, the challenges are multifaceted,” Hutterer said in her campaign testimonial. “One is simply that our house is small, with limited places to work. Our only desk shares a room with the Legos, meaning that the lucky person who gets the desk is often working in a noisy environment. Indeed, the whole house is a noisy environment.”

Hutterer’s only uninterrupted work time is in the early hours or late at night when her children are sleeping — but even that is variable. Even this time is variable, as her children are just as stressed as everyone else, Hutterer said.

“Their sleeping routines are really disrupted and they’re requiring a lot more emotional support than I remember them needing before the pandemic,” she said.

Hutterer said her current pace of work feels relentless and overwhelming.

“There are no minutes of the day when I am not performing some kind of labor,” Hutterer said, “whether that’s labor for the institution or labor in support of my children. There is no break.”

Provost Patrick Phillips announced on March 25, after working with UO’s faculty union, United Academics, that all tenure-track faculty could request a one-year extension to their tenure clocks. All requests would be honored.  

Of course, UO cannot independently solve the caregiving crisis during the pandemic, Hutterer said, but she would like to see the university look for more solutions.

“That is a helpful but limited response,” Hutterer said, “because it doesn’t do anything for non-tenure-track faculty who are not on a tenure clock, and it also really doesn’t do anything for tenured faculty who will be held to the same research standards as faculty without caregiving obligations.”

Michelle Dreiling, a media studies doctoral student, and Beyene believe UO should apply this same guaranteed pause to GEs, as they are affected by the same problem as tenure-track faculty, Beyene said. At UO, GEs can apply for an extension if their graduation timeline has been delayed, but the application must be approved.

Guaranteed extensions for Ph.D. and Masters students, Dreiling said, “would bring such peace of a mind to a group of people — grad students — who are scared right now and who are in really precarious positions.”

As a fourth-year doctoral student in the School of Journalism and Communication, Dreiling is in their last year of guaranteed funding. With their current level of productivity, Dreiling anticipates needing an additional year. UO is under no contractual obligation to provide it.

“Honestly, that makes it really hard for me to focus on my work,” Dreiling said, “because I’m constantly anxious about my job prospects and my precarity and my ability to provide for my son.” 

During the last couple weeks of spring term, UO launched the Survey on Faculty Research and Creative Practice. Out of 298 faculty responses, 46% said caregiving responsibilities had a “significant impact” on their research or creative practice during COVID-19 and only 23% said it had “no impact.”

“Faculty respondents also expressed concern about vulnerability of non-tenure-track faculty,” the Office of the Provost said in an email to faculty on August 12, “as well as the additional time and energy spent caring for and mentoring students.”

On March 16, the Office of the Provost sent an email encouraging departments and administrative units to suspend non-essential service during spring term. On August 12, the Office of the Provost asked that this postponement continue over the next academic year.

McKinley is also worried that offering optional opportunities to relax pressures for faculty could cause more inequity when non-caregivers continue to progress while caregivers are left behind.

“It’s an unfortunate binary,” McKinley said. “If we stop or press pause on evaluation metrics for faculty because of caregiving, those who don’t have caregiving responsibilities are going to reap the rewards.” 

Vivian Olum Child Development Center and Moss Street Children’s Center, two of UO’s childcare options, both plan to open this fall.

“We are glad we can provide care during these times,” Sharon Kelly, Vivian Olum Child Development Center director, said. “We recognize that families are facing extraordinary challenges right now as they try to balance work, school and childcare.”

Moss Street plans to open on September 21 for fall term and Vivian Olum Child Development Center on August 31. Both will operate at a limited capacity and limited hours. The UO administration and student body has been supportive in reopening these centers, Becky Lamoureux, Moss Street’s director, said.

According to the Office of the Provost’s August 12 email, a small group of university employees have been working on caregiver support initiatives for the UO community.

“These initiatives focus on near-term actions to assist the caregivers in our community,” the email said, “and the team is operating and pursuing their work with a sense of urgency, understanding that action is needed now versus in months.”

The initiatives include an electronic platform to facilitate communication between those seeking care and interested care providers in the UO community and another electronic platform for families to post and search information to assist each other with meeting care needs. UO is currently developing both platforms, according to the email.

UO is also creating a centralized website for all caregiving resources, looking into additional on-campus childcare and planning discussion sessions and forums for student parents and UO employees with children. 

Still, many faculty, staff and GEs hope to see more creative and collaborative solutions from the university.

“We’re all kinds of people,” McKinley said. “We’re not just people who show up and teach. We have different kinds of needs, all of us.”

Gallery • 3 Photos

During the academic year, Moss Street Children’s Center will often take all-day field trips on “no school” days that are sanctioned by the Eugene School district 4J. University of Oregon students, employees, and faculty members with family at home are learning to balance childcare, school, and work due to the circumstances of COVID-19. (Kevin Wang/ Daily Emerald)