Well, hello everyone, happy Friday. We hope you're having a great Friday on this absolutely beautiful day in October. Welcome to this week's fireside chat. I'm Lisa Stearns here with Tim Cross.
He is back with us again this week. And we will be updating you today on the latest on COVID and how many cases we do have within the University system. But we'll also be hearing from our four units as they feature success stories from across the Institute that highlight the teamwork, creativity, and dedication of our faculty, staff, and students. So if you reminders, remember to keep your audio muted.
Use the chat function in Zoom if you wish to ask any questions. You can send those to me privately or you can post them publicly. A recording of this session will be made. It will be posted to our UTIA Coronavirus website, which can be found at utia.tenacy.edu.
So Tim, what does the case count currently look like for the University on the Institute today? Thanks, Lisa. Good afternoon, everyone. And we'll pull that case count up in just a minute.
I wanted to be sure to start off today by thanking Dave White, Doug Edlund, Doug Bonner, and Marcy Sousa for taking care of last week's fireside chat. Heard a lot of positive feedback. They must have done a great job. Back to a few suggestions, maybe we just let them take over from now on.
So that was really nice for them to do that. Truth in advertising here, I took a little mental health break last week and took a couple of days off. So I felt a little guilty about skipping out, but it was nice to have a break. And I came back feeling maybe not like normal, but feeling a lot better.
And I hope you guys had some time to take some of those well-deserved and much-needed breaks from time to time as well. So let me jump right into where I see the data right now in terms of our COVID cases. And we'll probably move through fairly quickly because I'm excited to be able to share with you today some of the more recent success stories that we've had going on within our units. So if you look at the charts today, you're gonna say, well, it sounds like the same old story and to some extent that's really how I would summarize things.
If you look at the number of active cases at the university level, virtually identical to last week, which is very similar to the week before and similar to the week before that. So we're at a sort of a maintenance level here, it seems about about a half a dozen positive cases among employees and somewhere between 40 and 60 cases of positive coronavirus amongst our students. So I think again, very low numbers, which is very positive, but all in all, reflects very well on our continuing practices to keep the number of cases low. And if you look at the number of isolations, much the same story there.
So again, almost identical to the past four weeks with a couple hundred students and somewhere between 30 and 50 employees both faculty and staff in isolation as of today. In our Institute, we're probably doing even a little bit better. Our numbers are very low currently with only one active positive case among Institute employees and currently about 11 employees who are in some status of isolation. So we're doing quite well.
We're really keeping our numbers low and you all have been doing a great job of helping us to achieve those numbers. Like last week of the week before though, if you look nationally, the trend is not good. It continues to go up and we're currently trending back to where we were late July, early August on the order of 60,000 cases a day in the country. A lot of that is now showing up in rural areas, whereas last summer it was much more isolated concentrated in our urban areas.
So that's certainly not good. It's certainly something we all need to keep track of at the state level, similar pattern, maybe not quite as severe or dramatic, but we're also once again back to the same levels we were seeing at the state level back in late July, early August with upwards of 2000 cases per day. So with all that said, I think what it tells me is we're continuing to do the right things here on campus. We're continuing to keep our own employees, faculty and staff safe.
We're keeping the student numbers very low and yet we're doing it in an environment that seems to be becoming increasingly risky, if you will, with the number of cases spiking again. So keep doing what you're doing. Don't let up, don't relax too much. Think about who you're interacting with and how you're interacting with them.
Keep your masks on. And if we'll continue as we have been in the past four weeks, I see no reason that our experiences would change dramatically. So that's really a summary, Lisa of our data this week and the experiences that we've had during the past week. Well, that's great advice, Tammy, you're right.
We all do need to stay vigilant. We also know that during this pandemic, our faculty and staff have really stepped up to deliver some real life solutions in new and different ways. So today we'd like to highlight some of these successes. Yeah, I get so much positive feedback from the work that's going on across the Institute, whether it's at our research centers, whether it's in the College of Veterinary Medicine, here on campus or in one of our extension facilities, just a lot of positive feedback folks do recognize that in spite of the coronavirus, there are great things happening within the Institute.
So it's really exciting to be able to share a few of those things. Several months ago, we shared some examples of virtual innovations that were taking place. And I think we've evolved in the coronavirus now to the point that what we're gonna feature today are largely face-to-face examples of successful but still innovative programs. And I think again, that shows how we've evolved throughout this pandemic as we've learned more, as we've adapted and I'm excited to see some of the work that's taking place.
Obviously in 30 minutes, we can't share all the great things that are happening. So for all of you that I know have great stories to tell, I apologize that we can't get to every one of you, but I hope that some of what we shared today will cause you to say, gosh, that feels a lot like what I've been doing or that is similar to some ideas or practices I've been following and hopefully be a bit of a reinforcement or a recognition of your work in that way. So with that said, I'm gonna ask each of our units to share one or two highlights. I'll let our deans or representative from the deans office and each case introduce the person that's gonna share their program and we'll move through these pretty quickly.
I apologize that I'll have to sign off today at 2.30, but that'll give everyone an endpoint and a target to shoot for. So without any lengthy introductions, let me introduce the famous in the very effective Dave White, fireside chat moderator extraordinaire. Dave, could you introduce our Ag Research Program I like today? Yes, absolutely, and good afternoon Dr.
Cross, good afternoon Lisa and UTIA. It's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Curtis Luckett, who is an Assistant Professor of Food Science and Director of UT's UTIA Center for Sensory Science, which works with corporate partners in the food industry to help them understand food consumer preferences. A little bit about Curtis' research program focuses on consumer attitudes towards foods, food texture perception and olfactory psychophysics, which sounds really interesting about smell.
So, Curtis will talk a little bit about that. He's agreed today to talk about some of the creative approaches that the center has used to continue operations despite the restrictions associated with the pandemic. So, Curtis, thanks very much for joining us today. Well, thanks for having me.
So, yeah, I want to really interrupt you now, food is a stimuli for humans. So how do people perceive food and beverage? Do they like it? Do they dislike it?
Do they do it too fruity enough, something like that? And so as you can see, they would need to consume a food or beverage at some point in this research pathway. And so it's a big challenge for us to try to try to, you know, do this in a safe, in a reproducible manner. So our research can lead us down in a different pathway as far as looking at how humans eat and drink and kind of stuff.
We do a lot of support for different food science operations going on, so we have food chemists developing new ingredients or food engineers developing new food processing methods. And that stuff hasn't stopped. We also have plant scientists that work with their, you know, doing trials to optimize the flavor and texture of Tennessee grown produce. And those produce items are still coming out of the field.
So we need to define a way to kind of get to a place where we can still provide them with that data, even though we can't really bring people into a close environment and have their meal, their masks and eat food. So one of the things that makes our research very difficult is humans are easily biased when they're eating food or drinking something. There's a myriad of different factors that can kind of throw off your perception of a food or beverage that are gonna give you a rony of conclusion of what you think you felt. So actually, I picked up my first slide.
Yeah, so we use a ton of different things. So we use lighting. So for instance, people have a lot of assumptions with beef, steak, that's maybe cooked rare or cooked medium well. So, or even with something like a pepper, a red pepper may be perceived to be spicier than a green pepper, even though the spice content is equal.
So we've marked by lighting these complex ordering orders, we blind participants to almost anything that you think could lead them astray in their food or beverage reception. So once COVID hit, we had to modify. So that comes up to the next slide. There's our new lab structure, which is a lot different.
So we have outdoors into your lab where people now can drive up and pick up their samples and take them home. So it's been a really big change. You're doing it from being a group that really tried to minimize and eliminate all bias from human judgment of food and beverage to a group that's now embracing its bias. So we've worked with our corporate partners and our research partners to see if we can leverage this idea that people are now eating foods in their home, not in our lab as well.
So obviously we've lost control of some of the bias that we entirely eliminate, but is there a silver lining? And so we have found this, because we started looking at things like preparation and eating behavior. So for instance, we can now start to ask questions to help our clients understand how the products being used in the home. So an example of one of those questions would be, how long did this meal take you to prepare?
So we had a corporate partner of ours, it was interested in rice. So they were doing it, they're called it the rice, a couple of different styles of producing this rice. But typically in our lab, we just put it in the microphone, and slide it through a door in person would just consume that. Now we have them people actually cooking this rice in their home, getting a lot of data about, okay, it cooks up well, it doesn't cook up well, my son dislikes it, my husband likes it, these types of things, which can be very valuable for company trying to position their product into the marketplace.
So that's kind of how we've switched gears. We all have a lot more sun, this year than usual, and it's been challenging. Great, thanks Dr. Luckett, and Dr.
White as well. Good information, you'll probably have a lot more volunteers to come do a drive-by taste testing now. So we'll look forward to some new opportunities to taste test some new products or new techniques. So thanks a lot for sharing today.
Next I call on Dr. Jim Thompson from our College of Veterinary Medicine and ask him to introduce the next segment of our program. Hey, Senior Vice President Dr. Cross, how are you doing today?
Couldn't be better Jim, I'm just out here at the farm. That's fantastic. Well, I've got two really talented individuals here that work hand in glove to provide essential surgical and anesthesiology training to our veterinary students. So I've got Genevieve Busiez and Jimmy Hayes, and they'll lead you through how we actually teach our student's surgery and anesthesiology and how we accomplish it effectively in COVID-19 time.
So with that, I'll turn it over to Genevieve and Jimmy. Hi, good afternoon. So we have a little PowerPoint presentation to go over a few slides and pictures with you. I'm in charge of the NSCH course.
I'm Genevieve Busiez here. And Jimmy, you want to introduce yourself? And Jimmy Hayes, I am the laboratory coordinator. Make sure all the students and vets go get through all their hands on laboratories.
So if we go to slide, the next slide please. So this is post pre-COVID. We had 40 to 60 people in our room at JAR-2. Next slide.
We go to the next slide please. So post-COVID, we organized a lab to where we had everything set up in the lab so the students would come in. They would go to the station and they would stay there. They wouldn't walk around the room.
We had the sanitizing station set out throughout the lab area. So we're sanitizing. And the bottom picture is when we move into the OR to do their surgeries, they're gown and glove and separated back to back to surgeon. So we go space out there.
Our next slide is you can see we've divided up our anesthesia teams as they came in to have space in the lab. So we don't have all 60 people in the lab at once. Table in between. It's an anesthesia student and a surgery student that works together.
They do their anesthesia and we prep them and we move into surgery. And I think Dr. Dubuisia is going to take the rest of the slides. Yes, I'm going to move over to the next slide.
So what Jimmy said is that, yeah, we had tons of people in there before and now we had to reduce it. Now we have teams of six students coming in at a time, which is a much smaller number, which makes it so much easier for us instructors to do one-on-one teaching, spending more time teaching them, each and every one of them. So that one-on-one teaching really brought back this idea of trying at the college dean Thompson's really pushing for this. And it's an amazing thing to be able to start assessing those clinical skills earlier before the student get to the clinic actually in their fourth year.
So I went back on that idea. They approached me last year. But it's a bit chaotic when there's like 40 people in there. So it would have been difficult.
But with now the smaller amount of students, one-on-one teaching went back to this idea. And with Jimmy, we discussed how we could make this possible. We got very enthusiastic. We started with four skills this year.
We'd never done it before in the NSTG course. And we built the skills forms, the skills assessment form. And we can click on the slide. There's a few pictures that should pop out.
Yeah, build the skills. We trained our instructors because we also needed to train the instructor on how to assess those. And we also trained our students, of course, the regular lectures. But we made much more material available online, so they don't have to be in the lab and watch a demonstration.
And so we can keep moving with the slides. And I'll go on to explaining. We had a few labs where we practiced. But we limited the time to 30 minutes at a time.
So we didn't have to be in there for too long. And once the practice was done, we started the assessments of the skills. And we're going to move on to the next slide after that. That's the last picture.
And we started the assessment of those skills. And I'll take just one example, which was how to test the NSTG machine before it's used. And we were so pleasantly surprised with how prepared the student were. We were not expecting that they would not only know their material that much, but mastered it.
And they were so well prepared ahead of time, that when they came into the lab, they were in and out in about 10, 15 minutes for most of them. Because they felt responsible of their knowledge. That's what we noticed. They were graded on those skills.
Not only those skills are skills that they acquired. They can check them out of their list, but also it's part of their final grade. So I think that really helped them seeing the video before, being very well prepared when they came in. They knew what they were going to do.
And I will say that from the student side, I got a few feedback. And we're still ongoing doing this in the process. The lab isn't done. But I got a feeling of accomplishment for them.
Much more in touch with the reality of their future career, because it makes the material that they're learning much more concrete. So these are just examples at the lab of machine assessment, placing IV catheter intubation, that kind of stuff, all broken up in different steps. And if we can move on to the next slide, there's more picture over there. And you'll see there are all those people around the students looking serious.
These are the instructors. And we're literally assessing those students every time they do something. We have to train ourselves not to prompt them. Be very quiet while they're doing it.
But once they're done, we can give them direct feedback. And we feel very privileged to be able to have this time with them one-on-one. It's almost a luxury in these days with such large classes of students. So it's also very valorizing, because we realize how much they know their stuff.
And so what we've been teaching them, they're progressing. We see their progress day to day. And so it's been really, it's been a game changing. And so we really are going to keep this for the next year.
It's a total new format that we're not going to let go even when COVID disappears. Hopefully, we're going to keep this new format, because we found so many advantages to this one. So that's what we have to say today about anesthesia. And surgery labs at UT.
Great. Thanks very much, Genevieve and Jimmy. So good to see the way you're able to provide that hands-on the clear, gentle training. But do so safely.
And really good here that the students have done so well through this new approach. So I hope it continues to work well in future years. Next, I'd like to invite Dr. Scott Senseman, if you would, to introduce the Extension program we're going to hear about today.
Thank you, Dr. Cross. So we've got a couple of rock stars that have been working very hard in Extension to tell you a little bit about what they've been doing at Dr. Jenny Ivy and Mr.
Aaron Fisher. And we'll start off with Dr. Ivy just a little bit about her. She's an Assistant Professor in the Department of Animal Science and serves as an equine extension specialist for the state.
Her research and extension interests include nutritional exercise and management interventions to improve equine well-being, along with the impact of owner knowledge on equine management. She serves on the American Youth Council Board of Directors, the Eastern National 4-H Horse Roundup Committee, and the Equine Science Society Exercise Science Committee. So, Jenny, I'll turn it over to you to tell them a little bit about your horse and service. Thank you, Dr.
Senseman. And thanks a lot for thinking about the Animal Science Group as we go through this. And also, thank you, Dr. Cross, for having us.
And allowing us to share some of these best practices amongst the different arenas within the Institute. So, if I could have the first slide, hold up, please. So, throughout the month of October, the Animal Science Specialist across all the different species really came together to deliver our annual in-service training. And so, obviously, with everything happening within the COVID pandemic, we weren't sure for a while, but we'd be able to have these in services as we traditionally do.
And so, after talking with Dr. Shrek and our Extension Administration, and also with a lot of the agents, we decided to go ahead and host these in person. And so, obviously, as we work to be able to manage the COVID restrictions, it really made us have to, think outside of the box. I really give a lot of credit to the specialists that came together to say that we really wanted to be dedicated to keeping the agents and the attendees safe and ourselves safe, and also be able to think about ways that we could deliver this hands-on training to the agents that's so important.
And so, the image that you see here, myself and Dr. Shrekland are working with agents at AIDS Plantation, in an outdoor arena where everybody could stay distanced, and talk about how to body conditions for and evaluate horses. And then we utilize these different scenarios that we'll talk about in a few minutes to be able to give some of that hands-on opportunity and talk about ways that we've really been able to apply those best management practices within the counties. And so, if we could go to the next image, please.
And so, like I mentioned, we really kind of had to think outside of the box a little bit. And so, being able to maintain our distancing guidelines, but also be able to open this to all of the agents across the state with specific interests for A&R and 4H. We weren't able to use some of our traditional arena. So, in this picture, we were getting set up over at Intrek and Spring Hill, where we normally would have had those trainings in the conference room.
But because of that distancing, we needed to move over to the bull cell barn. So, it took us a little bit to think about maybe how we could make this arena work and troubleshoot the fact that it's not temperature controlled and volume and dust and some other things that, you know, we were not necessarily always thinking about in a traditional format. And so, another component to this is that, because we were so dedicated to having it in person and being able to have the flexibility to be able to move outside and work with some of the catering guidelines, sometimes the connectivity was not the best for us to be able to stream it. And so, you know, it's almost one of those things where we can't have the best of all the world.
So, we thought that this was the best approach for this one at this point. And a lot of us, the trouble shouldn't really be present in the moment to be able to talk with agents and deliver that training face-to-face. If we could go to the last image, please. And so, one of the great things I think about, the fact that we were able to do this live is the benefit of hands-on learning.
And I know at least for me and my program, I'm going to talk to the other non-assigned specialists. We've really missed the opportunity to connect with people and get our hands dirty and be able to actually look and feel and touch and talk about what that means. And so, a great credit to Katie Mason, who are big nutrition specialists, who did this kind of pay analysis demonstration. But again, you know, moving things outside, being able to allow the agents the opportunity to touch them different pieces and be able to think about what that actually meant was regarding that back to the county and their producers.
And so, I mentioned earlier our scenario activity. And this was really a way for the specialists, Dr. Reinhorn, Dr. Strickland and myself, to think about how we could maybe reprogram a little bit differently.
And so, we actually took scenarios that we had helped with, with agents in different counties and posed them to the agents in a group scenario environment. So, it allowed for some of that camaraderie that we've been missing and some of that face-to-face interaction. But in a way that we could all remain safe and distance to keep everyone's health at the forefront. And so, it was really great to see how the agents came together and were able to network and kind of hearing some of the discussions really made us very happy that we went through those efforts to get back to that face-to-face environment.
And also, it was really great to see Dr. Uncle Canton, some looking procedure demonstrations and just to be able to have a different insight outside of the virtual environment that we've been in. So, it was a big success and thanks again to everyone who made that possible. Thanks very much, Dr.
Ivy. And then, I want to introduce Mr. Aaron Fisher. He's a youth livestock equine specialist in the Department of Animal Science and Air and provides leadership to statewide youth and animal science extension programs.
This includes educational programs, judging contests and animal exhibitions. Without him, we would not have had a lot of our livestock shows this year. I just want to let him show you a little bit about what he went through, Aaron. Thank you, Dr.
Stentman. And if you want to put up the first, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, first, I just, I just want to say that these youth animal science events were, I, I, I, I, I, I, because of great commitment from the county extension agents, I, I, I, I, specialist, and many other people that really worked on the planning of these youth events would, and so I, I, I, state, I, Chief Expo was the first in-person event we did in, I think it was August 7th and 8th. And we really started having discussions in mid-June for if we're able to have these, how might we be able to do it? What might we, I, I, I, I changed to be able to, I, I, I safely host livestock events.
And quite honestly, it was probably mid-July, which is just a couple of weeks before, a Chief Expo that we really came to the final decision of, okay, I, yes, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna try to have some of these. And so we, throughout the fall, we held sheep, goat, and dairy cattle shows, between the three shows. There were 234 youth that showed 815 animals. Individual shows were, were probably down a, I, I, a little bit, but I, not as much as what one I, I, I might expect.
And so just a couple of, of the measures that we did that, we don't typically do, as you can see in the picture, all the, all the youth out there are wearing masks. And we did our best to try to keep the, on my space, whether it was in the glina barrier or the, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, all the staff were masks and even all the, all the judges were also, I, I, very good about, about wearing masks. We restructured several areas like, and, and did, I, I, I, several things differently than, we normally do like the Skidlothon, Delana, and even check in way in just to maximize opportunities for social distancing. Whenever possible, we, I, I, I, I spread out the, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, Chief Expo, we were actually able to only pin people in every other pin.
And so that really kind of maximized the space there. I put up, I, yeah, assigns to, I, Encourage hand washing social distancing. Encouraged high-risk individuals, not, not to even come. And then we also, I, I, typically after the show, we'll have and a word ceremony for premier exhibitor of Skidlothon.
And so we just decided not to do that this year. That was one more place where people would, I gather together and we, I wanted youth and my family to go ahead and leave as soon as possible. And then you can throw up the second picture. And I thought this would be a fun picture to show.
In the sheep show, there's a costume class where the youth and the sheep dress up. And so here we can say sheep X-Bo, where even the sheep wore masks. And then you can put up the third picture. For the most part, families seem to be pleased with the opportunity to be there.
And we're very good about following procedures. It just seemed that they were just happy to be there. And a lot of the typical show problems that we always have seem to be very minimal. This is even true for those families who seem to always have a controversy following them.
It just really was not that big of a deal this year because everybody seemed displeased to be there. We also held three state for judging contests in August. Lifestyle judging, meet judging, and very judging. Due to not being able to host events on campus, we were able to work with the Wilson County Fair.
And so we moved those two to the Wilson County Fair. And so the partnership with the staff at the Wilson County Fair and the Wilson County Extension Office was just great and really, I contributed to the success. There were 76 youth that I judged in these, in these three contests. And as you can see in the picture, we required youth to wear masks all the time, except for when they were given reasons.
For the most part, we were also able to spread it. When they weren't in small groups like this judging when they were all together, we were able to spread them out where they really weren't very close. And we didn't have the ceremony afterwards, which it's not a good thing to not be able to recognize the youth, but we just felt that was one more congregation area that we could do without this year. And I just like the shows, everyone just seemed pleased to be there and to be able to go through these, these state events in person.
Great, thanks so much, Erin and Jenny. I know the agents certainly appreciated the hands-on training opportunity and I guarantee the parents and the youth appreciated the extra time and effort to enable them to participate in some of these youth events, Erin, so thanks for making those possible. Our final presenter today is Dr. Sharon Jean-Philippe and Dr.
Beel and Dr. Steyer both are tied up today. So I agree to introduce Sharon and it's really a privilege to do so many of you know Sharon, she's an associate professor in the Department of Forest for Wildlife and Fisheries. And she's the one that does our tree programs, urban horticulture programs, urban tree programs actually.
So Sharon, thank you so much for joining us. And if you would, share a little bit about some of the experiences that you've had in your class this fall. Thank you so much, Dr. Carlson.
I would love to just for all the, don't know urban forestry concentration, it officially started back in 2012. And the concentration is pretty interdisciplinary. It emphasizes a boroculture, horticulture, and landscape management, just to name a few. When you think about defining the urban forest, the sum of all woody and associated vegetation.
So what does that mean? We have trees and shrubs and bushes and all the like that appear in our residential, our commercial and natural areas across cities, towns and municipalities. I teach a whole host of courses specifically during the fall block. We have a forestry fall block.
One course in particular that I would like to highlight is practical boroculture. And this course is where, has been structured to where students participate in experiential opportunities that mimic on the job training. Top is covered in this course, our chainsaw safety plants, healthcare, both above and below in event street climbing techniques. We typically host this course out at the UT Alberita.
And at the Alberita, students are given real world problems and they work together as a field crew to complete tasks. A sign here is an image right here. Last week we had a really large white oak fall across a walking path. And unfortunately, it took out at least five or six other very small trees.
Students thoroughly went through and assessed the site. They look for probable, possible or eminent hazards and then develop a flexible work plan. There's another image of the actual work done as my great picture person slipping back and forth. Now, prior to COVID safety was imperative.
And during COVID it was definitely number one on all of our minds. And during specifically our chainsaw safety course, we made sure that we never shared chainsaws, that we socially distanced and that we were always practicing safety first. And if you could bring up that image three, two, four, thank you. So here's where we're having one of our safety talks well before we ever get out and start today.
Everybody's always safely apart from each other. And we're ready to always start their day. What we want to leave you with is one last video, a video that will highlight something that I think students and myself, this is like the best of the best where I teach event street climbing to these students and the number of these students I've never climbed before. And this is, by the time we get to this point, this is event street climbing.
And we would like to share a short video of their experiences. You can go ahead and play the video. Thank you and that's all. Thanks so much, Sharon.
It's really cool to see these students in action. And I know it's really important to their academic careers. So thank you for sharing that. Dr.
Cross did need to drop off. He has a UT system meeting that he has to attend. So I know on behalf of him and myself, I want to thank all those who presented today. These are just really, really interesting and unique ways that we are addressing just the important academic pieces of providing our students a good experience in the midst of a pandemic.
So thanks so much to all for sharing. It looks like that we really don't have any questions today. So I think we'll go ahead and just sign off for today. And I hope everybody has a wonderful weekend.
And again, go Vols. We hope it's a better Saturday than last Saturday. Take care.