In a year marked by a global pandemic and renewed social justice protests, it’s not just publishers that have been forced to pivot. So too have the graduate programs that serve as feeders for trade houses and scholarly presses. To find out how graduate publishing programs have maintained their educational missions and reacted to calls for more diversity in publishing, PW spoke with directors and faculty at five of the largest programs: Emerson College, NYU School of Professional Studies, Pace University/Dyson School of Arts and Sciences, and Rosemont College in the U.S., as well as Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.

Going virtual

In March, when it became clear that the U.S. and Canada were heading to a public health crisis, colleges and universities moved classes online almost overnight. That was true even for programs like SFU’s, which didn’t offer virtual classes before. “Part of the attractiveness of our program is in-person,” says Suzanne Norman, lecturer and industry liaison at SFU Publishing Workshops. This year’s first-year class has 11 Master in Publishing (MPub) students, who are from Canada, India, Iran, Ireland, and Mexico.

“Overall the academic rigor has not faded or been diminished in any way,” Norman says, adding that in fall 2019 the program graduated its first PhD in publishing student, a first in Canada and likely North America. SFU is also heading to another milestone with the transition of MPub from a program to a separate School of Publishing in the coming year.

As for how the measures that SFU has taken during the pandemic have affected the program, Norman says the biggest impact has been on community. Quoting student comments, she notes that one of the biggest challenges has been connecting with classmates, since there is no time to talk before class on Zoom.

Another student says they find time zone differences particularly hard to bridge: “The group activities usually started after the morning class, that is, after 11 a.m.—which is 10:30 p.m. for me. I could only stay up two or three hours—until around 2 a.m.—to work with the other team members simultaneously. And it was even tougher since I couldn’t be more flexible to change my lifestyle based on that, with having a little child.”

An unexpected positive that one SFU student points to is learning how to work together as a team online. Norman cites the student as saying, “The pandemic has shown that people can work online, and there is a possibility that publishing may decrease physical spaces to cut overhead costs and better pay their staff members. If this is the case, our skills with Zoom meetings and working together remotely will be extremely important.”

Other publishing programs also were able to quickly create transitions at the beginning of the first Covid-19 wave. “Moving online in the spring of 2020 was a surprise, but it wasn’t a shock,” says Marshall Warfield, director of graduate publishing programs at Rosemont in suburban Philadelphia. That’s because he was already in the midst of planning to shift the Master’s in Publishing program to online only this fall, he says. Part of the reason for moving to asynchronous online classes, he explains, is to accommodate double-degree students, who may have scheduling conflicts with their MFA in Creative Writing classes.

“The MFA program is still on-ground,” Warfield says. “There is something special about being gathered around a writing workshop table.”

In Boston, Emerson, which has long offered online classes, held flex classes (online and in-person) this fall and will continue them again in the spring. As for moving fully online like Rosemont, assistant professor of digital publishing John Rodzvilla—who stepped down as graduate program director when William Beuttler took over the position in the fall—says the college is committed to offering both online and in-person classes whenever possible. That said, the college plans to expand online offerings.

To try to keep Covid in check, Emerson rented extra space at a nearby hotel to enable social distancing and provided weekly Covid tests for students and faculty to administer to themselves. “I felt safe and the students felt safe,” Rodzvilla says. “All our numbers stayed very low until right before Thanksgiving.”

But it wasn’t just Emerson. Numbers began to climb throughout the state and the rest of the country in mid-November.

Flexing options

One of the positive things to emerge from the pandemic, Rodzvilla says, is that it has given Emerson faculty and students a chance to experiment. Though most of the school’s online classes, as well as nonacademic meetings like book clubs and movie nights, have moved to Zoom, he has been using Discord in his e-publishing courses, which lets users talk over voice, video, and text. It’s made him ask, “What does it mean to have classes? Everything’s changing all the time. Why not have boot camp and hackathons instead of 14-week classes?”

Manuela Soares, director of Pace’s MS in Publishing program and of Pace University Press in New York City, also sees some silver linings, including the graduation of the program’s thousandth student in January. The Pace program, which began nearly two decades ago, has long held classes online and in-person. “I think the pandemic is really going to revolutionize that,” she says, referring to the university’s installation of Zoom stations in the classroom that allow teachers to offer classes simultaneously in-person and online.

In fall 2021, Soares looks forward to seeing Covid recede and getting back to “a semblance of normality,” she says. That’s also when she anticipates that the publishing program will be in its new space in Pace’s downtown campus on William Street. Over the summer, she oversaw the program’s move from Midtown Manhattan into temporary quarters. Other changes in the works include adding more combined BA/MS in publishing degrees: one with a BA in commerce and another in writing and rhetoric. Currently, the university offers a combined MS and a BA in English or a BA in modern languages and cultures (Spanish).

That’s not to say that there haven’t been issues along the way. Like her colleagues, Soares notes that students and faculty have experienced some mental health issues. For some students, it’s been exacerbated by being trapped with family and the lack of casual conversations with teachers before or after class. Her observations dovetail with a Gallup poll released earlier this month indicating that only 34% of Americans say their mental health is excellent, down from 43% in 2019.

NYU in Manhattan also offers online-only classes as well as hybrid classes that allow for in-person teaching in classrooms equipped with cameras and microphones that enable simultaneous participation online. Despite the pandemic and some students choosing to defer acceptance, the program has seen a slight uptick in the number of students, according to Andrea Chambers, executive director of both the Center for Publishing and the MS in Publishing: Digital and Print program. While the total number of graduate students hovers at 80, in fall 2020 the school admitted 32 students, up from 30 in 2019.

Reaching out globally

With a number of international book fairs canceled due to Covid, including BookExpo in New York as well as shows in London and Bologna, schools have had to find other ways to connect their students with the larger book world. “We have worked very hard this semester to keep our students engaged with the book industry through a roster of virtual events,” Chambers says. “We felt it was highly important to continue our tradition of industry visits, a hallmark of our program.”

Among the highlights has been a chance to take a virtual look at the launch of HarperAlley, a graphic novel imprint, with Rich Thomas, v-p and publishing director of HarperCollins Children’s Books. Last month, NYU partnered with PW to cohost its annual PubTechConnect series. This year’s program was titled, “Marketing Inside and Out: How Publishers and Retailers Are Moving Books Now.”

SFU took advantage of Zoom to enable students to meet industry leaders from around the world, including OR Books cofounder John Oakes and Picador UK publisher Philip Gwyn Jones. In 2021, the school’s annual Emerging Leaders in Publishing Summit will go virtual as representatives from the book business meet to discuss the topic of “change.”

Next spring, Pace has an ambitious set of virtual appearances lined up. Among them are a lecture by Wade and Cheryl Hudson, the school’s Distinguished Professors for the Year; a panel titled “Diversity in Publishing and the Life Cycle of a Book” with Atria Books; and a conversation about graphic novels with former DC president Paul Levitz. It has also moved its speed mentoring program to Zoom.

Interning and other offerings

The decision to cancel international book fairs spurred Rosemont’s Warfield to give the school’s students a different type of publishing experience by focusing on internships. “As a small school, finding the resources to make internships a required part of the program has been difficult,” he says. Upcoming changes to the program include creating more robust internships that place students with companies and work experiences that match their career objectives.

Other schools, like Pace, have dedicated faculty members who line up internship opportunities. This semester, 12 Pace students interned remotely with publishers.

At NYU, Chambers says that interning remotely “opened new doors” for students to gain experience outside the tristate area. One student interested in academic publishing worked with Louisiana State University Press.

SFU offers its students professional placements in lieu of internships. Their projects have to benefit the host, and the students have to be paid. Moving some placements online has worked well for projects that don’t require a physical presence, like one researching accessibility issues with Orca Book Publishers, which is based in Victoria, British Columbia.

For the past few years Emerson has been working with the Boston Globe and having students pitch ideas for a special section. Now students are working on the spring relaunch of the Independent, a nonprofit online magazine about independent film, which has transferred ownership to the college. Rodzvilla, who serves as lead editor, says that students have had to figure out how to create a style guide and how to write about film.

Though some students have complained that they don’t know anything about the subject, Rodzvilla doesn’t see that as an issue. “This is how publishing works,” he says. “You don’t know anything about the subject, and you’re going to have to learn it.”

Promoting diversity

Progress in creating a diverse student body has been mixed to date. Many colleges have a diverse student body through their international outreach. They have also sought out minority students in North America. “[Diversity] is something we have to be aware of, and we’ve been aware of it for a long time,” says Soares, noting that Pace was the number-one private college for intergenerational upward opportunity in a list published in 2017 by the Chronicle of Higher Education. “We’ve provided a lot of the diversity you see in the industry. Our motto is ‘opportunitas.’ ”

Soares adds that Pace was the only graduate publishing program to receive a Carolyn Kroll Reidy Memorial Scholarship for historically underrepresented groups in publishing. NYU’s SPS Summer Publishing Institute also received a grant.

“Emerson has done a big push to attract a diverse student population,” says Rodzvilla, adding that the school has not seen big numbers of Black or Native American students. Those who do attend, he adds, “are not finding a publishing industry that welcoming. It’s overwhelmingly white, straight, and female.”

Warfield acknowledges that Rosemont could do better and is working to make the program more diverse. “While some of our faculty and students during my time here may have self-identified as people of color, having numbers is not enough,” he says. “I know I have a thing or two to learn from operations here in Philadelphia like Harriett’s Bookshop, [a Black bookshop named for Harriet Tubman].”

As for fall 2021, the educators contacted by PW say it won’t be possible to predict what school will look like until a vaccine is rolled out widely and the health crisis begins to wane. Like her colleagues, NYU’s Chambers says, “We try very hard to maintain a sense of community with students and faculty via virtual events. It’s so important that they feel they are part of a vibrant virtual environment until they can again gather in person.”

For now, schools are trying to make virtual life as full as it can be and incorporate in-person classes whenever possible.