Oral history interview of Shane Macfarlan, conducted by Jamie Nakano (transcript)

Shane Macfarlan, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Utah, discusses how he handled the transition to online classes when the COVID-19 pandemic started in Utah. He discusses; technological issues he encountered regarding access to digital materials and how student and teacher interactions have changed. He also talks about how quarantine has changed his research; and how he conducts it. He discusses how the pandemic reveals weaknesses in the; education system and how things may change in the future.

SHANE MACFARLAN Salt Lake City, UT An Interview by Jamie Nakano 17 November 2020 Utah COVID-19 Digital Collection Project J. Willard Marriott Library Special Collections Department University of Utah Salt Lake City, Utah MACFARLAN, SHANE b. 1976 Shane Macfarlan is from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is currently an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Utah. He recounts when the pandemic first came to Utah and how his classes handled the online transition. He discusses some technological issues he encounters regarding access to digital materials and how studentteacher interactions have changed. He also talks about his predictions for student performance and assessment. He talks about how quarantine has changed his research and how he conducts it. He also talks about how the pandemic reveals weaknesses in the education system and how things may change in the future. Keywords: COVID-19, teaching, online classes, University of Utah, issues with online classes, technology, student-teacher interactions, communication, lectures, education system, college THIS IS AN INTERVIEW WITH SHANE MACFARLAN ON NOVEMBER 17, 2020. THE INTERVIEWER IS JAMIE NAKANO. THIS IS THE UTAH COVID-19 DIGITAL COLLECTION PROJECT. THIS IS THE ONLY INTERVIEW WITH SHANE MACFARLAN. JN: This is Jamie Nakano with the University of Utah recording for the Marriott library COVID digital collection. It's 11:02 in Salt Lake City. It's October [note: meant to say November] 17th. You want to introduce yourself? SM: Yeah, hi, I'm Shane McFarlan, I'm an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Utah, and I'm getting interviewed. JN: Thank you for that. Yeah, so I guess we can start the questions. Just start with a little bit of background, like maybe how you became a professor at the university. SM: Yeah, so I grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where I was raised by people who really valued science and critical thinking. Like my maternal grandfather and my own father. And so I've always kind of had a passion for knowledge. Critiquing ideas, you know, questioning the universe. And so I think that plus watching Indiana Jones as a child, those two threads kind of wove together throughout my life for an interest in natural history, humans, so on and so forth. And so I got a dual degree in anthropology and history at the University of Pittsburgh. I then was a contract archaeologist for a year in the East Coast of the United States, where I followed that up by becoming a masters in museum studies—or, I got a degree in masters of museum studies from Texas Tech University. And I got bored of presenting other people's work in museums. And so I thought it'd be really cool if I could present my own research on the questions that I had. So I ended up getting a PhD in evolutionary anthropology from Washington State University. And then after a postdoctoral, you know, sort of research position at the University of Missouri, I ended up at University of Utah on 2014 as an anthropologist. Is that kind of answering the question or is there something else I'm supposed to answer about? 1 SHANE MACFARLAN 17 NOVEMBER 2020 JN: Yeah, no, that's great. That's great. So you've been teaching here for six years now. And do you remember where you were, what you were doing when COVID first came to Utah in March? SM: Um…yeah, what was I doing? I think when it first got here, I was actually really, really sick. And we're still not certain if we actually had early cases of COVID in our household. We never got it tested, but it ran through our household pretty strong for about three weeks. And so, when COVID hit, I was literally in a bed vomiting. JN: Oh wow. SM: Yeah. But I remember my wife, though. She was tracking it as early as December on the news cycles, and just kept on telling me, "Shane, this is gonna be bad. This is gonna be bad." And so it was kind of on our minds for a while before it actually got here. JN: Yeah, because it started in China, but no one was really paying attention to back then because— SM: Yeah, I mean, my wife who consumes media relentlessly was on it, basically, following it as it was spreading in China and then kind of hitting the global stage. So I was well aware of it. But it was quite odd, you know. I mean, it was right before spring break. And I remember being on campus with other faculty as the campus was basically getting more and more empty, and the faculty were just, you know, we were very, very concerned and curious as to what the state, what the university, what the United States was going to do with this pandemic. JN: Yeah, so…how would you say that things have changed, like, sort of…how would you compare your teaching to before to how it is now. Kind of how it was before. SM: So, definitely. I mean, I love teaching in-person classes and interacting regularly with students in a face-to-face basis. And I often had students outside my office every day waiting to come in and talk to me about research, classes, life, whatever. Also, I really enjoyed hanging out 2 SHANE MACFARLAN 17 NOVEMBER 2020 with other faculty members, you know, discussing things with them in our office spaces. So obviously, it's really radically changed how I interact with students on a day-to-day basis, and that includes undergrads and graduate students, where people just can't pop by anymore to ask a question on things. But it certainly has changed how I come to understand who students are, get to know them on a face-to-face basis so that we can start more conversations in the future. So it's not only changed, the actual learning environment, but it changed the process by which I often recruit undergraduate students into things like my own laboratory to do research with. And luckily for me, I had basically redone my entire Intro to Cultural Anthropology class, Anthropology 1010, about two years earlier for an online environment. So I prepared highproduction quality videos with TLT and the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence. So I was on a green screen where I was giving all my presentations on my lectures. And so, luckily, when all of the learning was moved online, at least my intro-level course was completely prepared to handle this. And the transition was seamless, at least by most students' accounts. And it's clearly made my life easier in some sense for that intro level class, because I don't have to show up to a class every day and lecture now for an hour and twenty minutes. Instead, students are just simply watching videos while I can do other things. But then I don't get to see the students faces, though, to understand whether ideas are being understood. You know, students can't ask questions immediately. And so I received a lot less feedback from students as the classes moved online. JN: So for your other classes, those that didn't have the online basis beforehand. So did you struggle with transitioning to online? SM: Oh, certainly. I think everyone struggled. So I would say in the spring semester, when we moved to an online learning environment, my upper-level class, Human Ecology, it was not 3 SHANE MACFARLAN 17 NOVEMBER 2020 prepared that way. So when we went to the online learning environment, I was doing exactly this here [note: Zoom], but with fifty students. And again, as great as Zoom is for this kind of remote conversations, I can't see fifty students' faces. And I can't tell who's understanding things and who's not. And it's not as rapid, you know, the kind of immediate feedback you get from students that happens in a face-to-face environment. Luckily, this semester, I'm actually on a teaching release, so I only had to teach one class, which was that Anth 1010 class that was already designed for the online environment. So I haven't really had to struggle as much as I did last semester. Right now, it's a lot easier for me. But I'm going to find out really quickly when I start teaching that class again in the spring semester. JN: Oh, so you're going to teach Human Ecology in spring? SM: Yep, like this. However many students, fifty or so. Trying to teach all the core concepts of human ecology, yeah. In this online environment as if it were like a classroom environment. Where I have a presentation, I'll be sitting there for an hour and twenty minutes and, like, probably an hour of it, I'll be lecturing, and then twenty minutes of students, hopefully, providing feedback on what's understandable, what's not understandable. JN: So do you do a screen share sort of thing with your lectures? SM: Exactly. And then I'll record those lectures and then post them online, so students can take a look at it afterwards. But they are nowhere near as good as high-production quality videos made with, you know, CTLE helping you out. JN: Sorry, I forgot what my next question was. So has how you sort of plan out and manage your classes, has that changed in any way? SM: Well, again, the Anth 1010 one, it was easy. Everything was already planned well in advance, and so it was seamless in terms of its presentation. I have yet to design my human 4 SHANE MACFARLAN 17 NOVEMBER 2020 ecology class in the same way. And my sense is, I'm not going to think about it until like two weeks before the class starts where I could start thinking like, okay, what am I going to do for this next semester? How am I going to improve the learning experience for students, given that it's not going to be as clean and neat as my other course? But I've been thinking about it in my head. Like, what can I do to improve the learning environment in these sort of non-traditional learning spaces like Zoom? We'll find out if it works, I guess. JN: Do you have problems with keeping students engaged in the course content? SM: Probably, I mean, that's always a concern in every class. No matter how exciting and interesting material I think it is doesn't mean it always resonates with the students. And sometimes when you're communicating, really, really high-level theoretical concepts to students, it doesn't always translate. Even in a face-to-face environment, let alone one like an electronic environment where it's a lot easier to be distracted. And I'm guilty, like everyone else. Right? Like you go on, Zoom, sometimes you're like, "I'm just going to tune out for a second, hit mute, and then go look and see what's going on online," right? Like, you're getting messages still from other aspects of your life. And at least in the in the face-to-face environment, it's a lot harder to do that. JN: Do you have a way to keep track of that? Because I know that some classes, they do discussion posts or something like that, that works some of the time, but. SM: Not now. I mean, usually what I'll do is I'll present concepts and then ask students for immediate feedback from them. Like, "What do you think about this thing?" or "What was understandable, what's not understandable? What do I need to explain again?" But many times in my courses, I will pose questions like, "What is this concept?" And that requires students to provide feedback. Invariably, in most classrooms, especially like upper-level classes, really only 5 SHANE MACFARLAN 17 NOVEMBER 2020 a handful of students ever really respond back. And my sense is, the same students who will be the ones, providing feedback in the class face-to-face environment are the same ones who will provide feedback to me in the online environment. It's just, you know, how students differently engage. And my sense is, it's not my responsibility to make sure that students are engaged. It's their responsibility to be engaged, you know? And so, I'm doing my best to provide the information and to make sure that it's resonating with students. But it's largely on their, you know, half of the responsibility's on their parts to actually stay focused and to be listening and reading, just like you would have in a face-to-face class. JN: What kinds of technological problems do you encounter in this? Because I—Sorry. SM: No, no, go ahead. Sorry. JN: You set up your Anthropology 1010 course already to perform online. But with that, and also with Human Ecology, what are the kinds of technological problems that you run into, either on your part or the students'? SM: Right, yeah, totally. So, I mean, I see this regularly, in at least the 1010 class that's online. Like, links will change, you know? Links to websites will change over time. And students will hit them and then nothing happens. And so you have to go back in and constantly sort of update what materials you're using to make sure that they're still present. And I see this a lot more often now that students are engaging more in the online environment. That's something you have to do every semester anyway, though. Other technical glitches, obviously, things like internet connection and speed. So like my household, you know, I've got three kids, plus a wife who teaches online. And so, two of my children are learning in online environments. And so that eats up bandwidth, right? And so, Internet connections go down regularly for us, but it also happens for other students. Specifically, I've had students from the West Side who are living in Native 6 SHANE MACFARLAN 17 NOVEMBER 2020 American communities that just don't have access to high-quality broadband internet access. That's clearly a major issue for students. Other things that have become problematic, for students who can't afford textbooks. I used to make my course textbooks available at the library. So you can check them out for a number of hours. Obviously, that's no longer the case. And so the question is, how do you provide access to students from low-income backgrounds to course material if we don't have a common repository for everyone to access it, like you would have at the Marriott Library? So this is just a couple of examples of technological glitches and issues that have emerged. JN: Do you have a way for students to reach out to you to communicate the problems they have or some issues? SM: I try to encourage students to talk to me regularly, whether it's through email, through Zoom office hours, or meeting outside those hours, to just, you know, come chat with me. Very rarely do students ever taken advantage of it. Even if students have missed exams. They don't even reach out to me to be like, "Hey, can I reschedule it?" And sometimes I'll look through my course roster and be like, hey, these students didn't do the exam. And then I kind of reach out to them like, "You missed the test. Do you want to take it?" Like, "I can open it back up for you, if you want to do this." So there might be difficulties in the parts of students, thinking about what the norms and expectations are. So they might just be hesitant to come right to me or talk to me. But I try my best to create an open environment for them to feel comfortable with communicating with me. And about 1% takes advantage of it. JN: Do you think this is sort of changed with moving online, that more or less people reach out than before? 7 SHANE MACFARLAN 17 NOVEMBER 2020 SM: It's a good question. I definitely feel like I get less student interaction now than I would have in the past. And again, many students would just come up to me after class period to talk to me. And it might be to question something that I presented. It might be something to challenge me on something I presented. Or it might be something about just wanting to talk about issues generically with me. And I get a lot less of that now than I would have in the past. Regularly every class period, I would have had, at a minimum, three students talking to me at the end of the class about something. Now, that never happens or very rarely happens. JN: What are kind of— SM: It's time consuming, I'll be honest with you. Writing individual emails to each student who would ask me a question if they did it takes a lot of time. And it's a lot easier for me at the end of the classes to say, "Okay, who's got issues on this topic?" And it might be like a couple of people. And so you can talk to all of them at once. Or they can walk with you as you're leaving your classroom, going to the next class, or whatever you're doing. And so just the entire process by which students and teachers communicate, I think, is a lot less efficient right now. JN: What are some of the most common problems that they that they reach out to you for? SM: It might be things on clarifying issues on assignments or quizzes, you know, are the kinds of things I'll often get. I would probably the most common one I'm getting now are just, "I'm sick. I can't do the assignment right now. Can you give me an extension?" That's probably the most common thing I've heard in the last six months. And I'm totally amenable to it. You know, it's just like, yeah, sure, whether or not you're sick with COVID, I'm going to be lenient to everybody on virtually on any item. JN: How do you think your students perform now compared to before the pandemic? 8 SHANE MACFARLAN 17 NOVEMBER 2020 SM: That's a really tough question. You know, I haven't seen the grades yet for the entire semester. So it's like, literally one of the things I do often after the end of my semester is compare the grades of my current class to the previous classes and to see where the performance has increased, decreased, or remained the same. From what I can see right now—and I had to modify my quizzes in order to make them fully grade-able by the auto-grader on Canvas. And that means I'm asking a lot more true-false and multiple choice and matching questions. Whereas in the past, I would have had them be a little bit more open-ended. So students could fill in with sentences. And that's partly due to the fact that I don't know if I'm going to get sick with COVID or some other illness. I don't know whether my TAs are going to get sick with these things. And so I've had to create an environment that is basically maximally efficient to getting grades done. And as a result, I think probably the quality of education might be—at least, the quality of the assessments might be different now than they were in the past. Which means probably students' grades will increase. [laughs] Which I'm sure they're okay with. JN: So in terms of actual grades, they're probably going to do better. SM: They're probably going to do better, because it's easier to answer a true-false question or multiple choice than it is to write a paragraph or a couple sentences. That's my guess. Now also, when they take their tests, they're at home in front of their computer screen. No one's proctoring them. I'm not using proctoring software. I don't really believe in it. I don't like it as a thing. But I mean, presumably students could be sitting there with like, their laptop right here and their computer here, taking the quiz while they're looking at the lecture notes directly. [shrugs] My sense is their scores will be inflated as a result of that. Versus being in the classroom, taking it, and not having any notes available. I'm sure my TAs are much happier, because now, instead of having to hand-grade all the quizzes that they normally would have to do beforehand in a face- 9 SHANE MACFARLAN 17 NOVEMBER 2020 to-face class, it is literally automatically graded by the auto-grader. So students are always happy that they get their grades faster. [laughs] JN: [laughs] That's helpful on both parts. SM: Yeah, it is. JN: So aside from teaching, you do a lot of research projects. How has the pandemic affected how you conduct those? SM: It has completely impacted it. Okay, so I had plans to go to rural Baja California Sur, Mexico to do research in the summer of 2020, and obviously all of those plans were cancelled. That affected not only my ability to do research, but it impacted a lot of people that I work with who depend on income that I bring to the community as I collect data. So I hire people and I pay them for interviews and whatnot. So my ability to collect data was definitely impacted by this. It's required me to think differently about what data and research might look like in the future, moving forward. If I can't go to these communities to do research, either because we're blocked because of the pandemic, or because I might be a vector to transmit it to folks, or vice versa, I started to think about, how can I sort of make the data collection process be done in an online environment? And so I've been piloting a few projects with people that I know very well in these rural communities who have access to things like computers, internet, electricity, or even smartphones. And so we've been playing around with ideas, like maybe they can be the ones collecting the data for me, who then transmit it over a secure electronic medium. And so this is what we've been thinking about doing in some of these cases. So I will be doing the data collection, people in the community might be doing the data collection for me now, and then I just give them money via Western Union, and then then they send me data on some secure 10 SHANE MACFARLAN 17 NOVEMBER 2020 platform. That's one way. But then, you know, Jamie, you were also in my research lab for a little bit. JN: Yeah. SM: And I've also been thinking about, like, how can I do cool research that I'm still interested in that doesn't involve face-to-face interactions with people? And this is about thinking about open data sources that exist freely, or sometimes paid, to people. Like a project where people can extract data from these online archives, like Human Relations Area File was one of these. Another example for projects that I'm working on with students that are completely 100% online are just using historical demographic records to test questions. So what I would say is the pandemic has changed me in terms of how I think about what kinds of questions I should be asking, because is the data available to me? Or, can I still do anthropological research, maybe just differently—devolving control to local communities to doing the data collection for me. So it's really changed a ton. And I'm really glad I was already thinking about this before the pandemic hit because, as you know, the pandemic hit, and you were still able to collect data using HRAF. And I prioritized a lot of this new research on historical demography simply because I know I can have students help me with it. It gives them research opportunities, and I can still ask questions that I'm still interested in. JN: How has it been, sort of balancing the different things that you've been doing: teaching, research, other responsibilities that you have? SM: Yeah, so I mean, I'm going to be honest. The pandemic, as horrible as it was and still is, for many aspects of life and livelihoods across the world, in terms of my own personal life, it's facilitated a couple things. So number one, over the last seven years, except for this past summer, I've been in Mexico or some other international field setting collecting data for months at a time. 11 SHANE MACFARLAN 17 NOVEMBER 2020 And that often means, then, I have no time to write in the summertime, to write scientific papers or to write grants. This summer, because I didn't travel to Mexico, I was able to sit down with all my data and write a couple of papers. And so as a result, I have been able to publish more now and write more grants as a result of not going into the field. So I'm just hunkered down at home in front of my computer and I can just bang away a bunch of stuff. And it's been really great because my productivity, in terms of things that the University of Utah cares about for things like tenure, I've been able to get them done faster because I'm not worrying about going into the field. Number two, having already designed a course for an online learning environment that's been roughly automated completely means I also have now more time to do all those exact same things. So I'm seeing the benefit of having your courses completely designed for an online learning environment, whenever I need to deploy them because it makes other aspects of my life easier. Also, I have a wife and children. Not going into the field, as it were, to Mexico for two months means I get two more months of being around my family all the time. And that's been really wonderful, because honestly, I love going and doing research internationally. I hate leaving my family. And it's particularly painful when you have to leave your kids and they're all crying because they know they're not going to see daddy for another two months. And so, you know, having basically 24-7 access to my children and my spouse has been really wonderful. And also a little challenging. [laughs] JN: Being stuck indoors, all the time. SM: We are, but like, I'm going to be honest with you, I am totally fine with being indoors all the time. My kids are going a little stir crazy. But like, for me, I'm happy to play board games and cards, and go outside and throw the ball with my kids, or go for walks or hikes. So for me, I'm fairly happy. And in the process, we've saved a lot of money because I'm no longer taking 12 SHANE MACFARLAN 17 NOVEMBER 2020 my kids on the weekends to, like, Jump Around Utah or some other place where I usually spend sixty bucks a pop to get all them playing. JN: They haven't gotten too insane with the quarantine and social distancing? SM: My kids are really happy to do stuff around home. They've been really happy to not go to school. Yeah, I think they're young enough that they don't really care about their friendship groups so much, but they do like the security of being at home. They are getting a little bit antsy not seeing other people are not doing stuff. But overall, we have been quite happy. And again, this is like a glimmer of hope. Or like, you know, a little bit of a positive thing in an otherwise sea of horribleness. JN: On that note, how has this pandemic affected you personally? Just in general, I guess. SM: Like, as a human? [laughs] Like, as a person? JN: Yeah. SM: I mean, you're hearing some of it, right? There's been some benefits, and I get a lot more quality time with my own family, and that, I would cherish. I worry about my mom. She's got pulmonary fibrosis, which is a really serious lung complication that affects her breathing. And obviously, you know, something like COVID, which, by and large, it affects the respiratory system. I'm really, really scared for my mom's health, moving forward. And so she is at very, very strong likelihood of dying to getting COVID. And so that scares me to no end, the idea that their prospects for life are diminishing in this. I'd say as a human—or as an American, it's really been challenging to see things like masks, you know…for some people it's a public health issue. Like, "I want to live and I want other people to live." And for other people, this has been an issue about, like, freedom. And it's been really, really odd and discouraging to see so many people, especially in our own state, who see things like wearing a mask as being deprived of liberties. 13 SHANE MACFARLAN 17 NOVEMBER 2020 That's ridiculous to me. And so, making mask-wearing a partisan issue highlights these deeper issues and American society that looks like we're fracturing at the seams. So that's been really problematic for me as a human, seeing this. It's challenging seeing people losing their jobs. It's challenging seeing people with high unemployment rates, being out of a job, potentially being kicked out of their homes. Or seeing these medical bills for things that they thought were going to be covered, and they are not. There's considerable worry for me, like in general. JN: Yeah, that's…It's been a crazy time. SM: Yeah. And honestly, all I care about right now is getting tenure. And I'm in the middle of the tenure process. And so, I want job security, and I hope that tenure provides that to me. So it's really accelerated my interest in getting tenure at this university. JN: Sort of also on the topic, again, of teaching, going back to that, how has the online experience with the pandemic, how do you think it's influencing…if we go back to in-person classes, how do you think it's going to change? Or maybe, what lessons you've learned from it and how it might affect how you teach in-person classes again? SM: Yeah. I can answer this question probably in a couple of different ways with very different answer types to you. On the one hand, I mean, if we're thinking about generically, I think there are a lot of people who are hoping just for return to normalcy. And so they'll go back to whatever status quo was in place beforehand. I think there are other people who are thinking about this as, this is an opportunity for me personally, or for themselves personally, to change incrementally on how they interact with the world or learning. Then there are other people who are really considering that this is a massive slap in the face that tells us we are completely unprepared for these kinds of issues moving forward, and they're looking for massive systemic change in how we approach education in general. Like things like…as you know, as a student, the cost of 14 SHANE MACFARLAN 17 NOVEMBER 2020 education at the university level is absolutely astronomical, and probably not necessary. Because we're paying for all these services and entities that really aren't necessary. Do we remove things like sports programs? Like, how necessary are sports programs to a collegiate education? On the one hand, it's like a well-rounded environment, and it's part of a historical tradition. For other folks like the Ivy Leagues, they just simply are basically saying like, "Yeah, it's not all that necessary." Or like, Division III colleges are just like, "Yeah, sports are not as necessary, the mandate is education." If we are simply moving towards a fully-online environment, do we maintain things like sports programs at the university? And I'm not falling on one side of the argument or the other. These are just questions that people are asking, and that I also consider. Like, would it behoove students to have a much cheaper education without all these services that universities typically provide? And I think these are important questions that both students, college and university administration need to think about, as well as things like state legislatures, who many times fund universities. What do we want colleges to look like? How do we want elementary school education to look like, moving forward? And again, there's three approaches: go back to the status quo, change incrementally, or massive systemic change. And we've seen programs like Khan Academy. Guess what? It does a pretty good job of what it does, online learning environment in a kind of decentralized sort of way. There's been talk about things like Google, basically saying, "You know what, we can disrupt the entire paid education environment by creating a novel learning system that is completely different than the current one." And I think there are reasons to want to challenge these things. Having that be said, as a guy who teaches at a university, I really like the university system as it's currently constructed, because I personally benefit from it. But are there improvements that can be made? Probably. JN: What are some of the improvements that you think could be made? 15 SHANE MACFARLAN 17 NOVEMBER 2020 SM: I mean, number one for the state of Utah, we need to be dedicating a lot more funding to our teachers and schools. Obviously, we rank either last or near last in terms of per pupil funding, we're one of the lowest for teacher pay, and there seems to be absolutely no interest in the part of the Utah citizenry to improve those. Yet we are asking something like school teachers to do more work under more hazardous conditions. That seems absolutely unethical to me. And if we are truly seeking to create a high-functioning society who can figure out the difference between disinformation and quality information, if we're thinking about creating a learned workforce because we want to engage in things like novel technologies in the future, we absolutely require better teachers, better pay for teachers, higher-quality learning environments for students, and in a setting that is less risky in terms of teacher health, student health, or the health of like the overall school system. At the university setting, I wish all my classes could be deployed. Face-to-face, normally, at the drop of a dime, if I needed to move it all online and have it be streamlined, that means university faculty need to be given dedicated time and resources to make all of those courses be done in that kind of way. And it takes time and resources to do so, but I doubt anyone at the administrative level is going to provide that environment to us. But it's what it requires. JN: Yeah, that's really interesting. I never thought about the sort of issues that they had before. Yeah. SM: Yeah, I mean, we're in a real problem in the state of Utah for teaching. We have an exodus of teachers leaving, and we can't recruit new teachers. So this means, by definition, the classrooms will get larger and larger and larger. And that's already in the context of a population that's growing from both inside forces, you know, people have a lot of kids in Utah, but a lot of people are moving into Utah, because it seems to be a desirable place to live. 16 SHANE MACFARLAN 17 NOVEMBER 2020 JN: Yeah, I think that's all my questions that you answered. So I guess this is a good place to stop. SM: Okay. JN: Yeah, so I can end the interview now, unless there's something else you want to talk about. SM: I don't think so. I mean, let's see what kind of questions [looking at computer], managing, students' engagement…yeah, I mean, this all seems about right. I guess this is a good time to end. It's been really disruptive, right? I mean COVID has been absolutely disruptive to our worlds, but it was not unforeseeable. People have been projecting this now for decades. And you know, as inequality increases in the world, poverty in every means in the world, we will always have breeding grounds for infectious diseases and other kinds of disruptive forces. And Americans cannot insulate themselves and just think that all we would need to do is concentrate on ourselves. We need to have a large footprint across the globe to help make sure these kinds of things don't occur in the future, and that we're more prepared. And that occurs across every level of governance at the United States. From federal administration, down to the states, down to local governments, and to individuals themselves like you and I. So we need to be cognizant of why they occur and how we can plan for them into the future. And I really hope that something like a vaccine doesn't cause complacency on the part of people to be more vigilant about these kinds of issues. JN: Yeah, that's really great. Thank you for doing this interview, you know, taking the time out of your day. Because I imagine you're really, really busy, but yeah. Thanks so much. SM: My pleasure to do so. JN: Yeah. SM: I like helping students, you know, just shooting it with someone is kind of fun. 17 SHANE MACFARLAN 17 NOVEMBER 2020 JN: Yeah, this has been a really interesting conversation, I learned a lot of things. Yeah. SM: And, you know, as you're going through your interview and thinking about, like, you know, various segments, you know, you're like, "Oh, I should have asked that question," feel free to hit me up if you want to do follow-up questions or follow-up Zoom, and I'm totally amenable to it. JN: Oh, okay, thank you. Thank you. SM: Sure. I know from personal experience having done interviews in Mexico and other field sites. And I'm like, "I wish I would have asked this question. And now I can't." You know, having the ability to do so is a really important part of the interview process, so feel free. JN: Okay, thank you. SM: No sweat. JN: So yeah, this is the end of the interview, this is Jamie Nakano from the University of Utah, signing off. END OF INTERVIEW 18