In mid-April of 2020, after colleges and universities across the United States pivoted to remote teaching and learning, Nandeeta and Alison contacted undergraduate student partners from ten institutions across the U.S. with pedagogical partnership programs with which Alison has worked closely, which had expressed a commitment to continue the partnership work through the pivot to online teaching and learning: Bryn Mawr College, Florida Gulf Coast University, Haverford College, Lewis & Clark College, Reed College, Smith College, Tufts University, University of Denver, Ursinus College, and Vassar College. We invited these student partners to join discussions about how to navigate—and support their staff partners in navigating—this unprecedented shift. These student partners reflected informally through dialogue in two Zoom conversations on their experiences, their efforts to support staff partners, the challenges they and their staff partners were experiencing, and the surprising and sometimes inspiring insights they gained into what is possible in teaching and learning even, perhaps especially, under novel and stressful circumstances. The group of student partners contributed to a set of recommendations, compiled by Alison and a student partner from Haverford College, that were shared across 15 institutions and posted on several institutions’ websites. A number of these students as well as faculty partners also published essays about their experiences of shifting to hybrid and remote teaching and learning that the two of us co-edited (see Cook-Sather & Bala, 2020, for an introduction to a special issue of Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education that includes those essays). The student partners who participated in this forum were very grateful for the opportunity to connect across different contexts and shared experiences.

With the goal of expanding student connections and collaboration supported by the two Zoom meetings described above, Nandeeta created Pairing Student Partners: An Intercollegiate Collaboration in collaboration with Alison. Nandeeta contacted students who worked in partnership in a wide range of institutions around the world where Alison had supported the launch of pedagogical partnership programs or was familiar with the partnership work at that institution, and she invited them to be paired with students at other institutions with the goal of developing new relationships and supporting pedagogical partnership during the Fall-2020 term. In that term, 26 student partners from nine universities in three countries were paired; in the Spring-2021 term, 32 student partners; and in the Fall-2021 term, 24 student partners. If you are interested in continuing the program, please contact Nandeeta at nbala@vassar.edu and/or Alison at acooksat@brynmawr.edu.