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Pence, DeVos Hold Call With 14 College Presidents

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May 14, 2020

Vice President Mike Pence held a call Wednesday with leaders of 14 colleges and universities. They were joined by Betsy DeVos, the U.S. secretary of education, and Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, in a discussion about "best practices to get students back to school in the fall," according to a news release from the vice president's office.

The group discussed a guidance document the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released earlier this year about how colleges should plan, prepare and respond to COVID-19.

"These college and university leaders discussed possible options to re-open their campuses for students, faculty and staff safely and responsibly," the release said. "Many participants on the call discussed working groups they developed on campus to provide data-driven strategies for re-opening. Participants discussed the importance of opening and maintaining research labs to assist with COVID-19 research, testing and tracing."

Participating in the call were:

President of Purdue University and the 49th governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels Jr.
President of the University of Texas-El Paso and the 24th secretary of the Air Force, Heather Wilson
President of Hillsdale College Larry Arnn
President of Marquette University Michael Lovell
President of the University of Virginia James E. Ryan
Chancellor of the University of Alabama system Fess St. John IV
President of the University of Florida W. Kent Fuchs
President of the University of Notre Dame Reverend John Jenkins
President of Carnegie Mellon University Farnam Jahanian
President of the Ohio State University Dr. Michael V. Drake
President of Stanford University Marc Tessier-Lavigne
President of Wake Forest University Nathan Hatch
President of Arizona State University Michael Crow
President of Hampton University William R. Harvey

Paul Fain

Paul Fain, Contributing Editor, came to Inside Higher Ed in September 2011, after a six-year stint covering leadership and finance for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Paul has also worked in higher ed P.R., with Widmeyer Communications, but couldn't stay away from reporting. A former staff writer for C-VILLE Weekly, a newspaper in Charlottesville, Va., Paul has written for The New York Times, Washington City Paper and Mother Jones. He's won a few journalism awards, including one for beat reporting from the Education Writers Association and the Dick Schaap Excellence in Sports Journalism Award. Paul got hooked on journalism while working too many hours at The Review, the student newspaper at the University of Delaware, where he earned a degree in political science in 1996. A native of Dayton, Ohio, and a long-suffering fan of the Cincinnati Bengals, Fain plays guitar in a band with more possible names than polished songs.