Mary Schmidt Campbell is the president of Spelman College.

This article is part of our latest Learning special report, which focuses on the challenges of online education during the coronavirus outbreak.

Spelman College recently celebrated its first virtual Founders Day. The virus had compelled the college (like all colleges) to empty its residence halls and abruptly shift from in-person to online instruction.

Determined not to be dispirited, students gathered digital images and videos from around the country for a week’s worth of events. A live stream of a recorded Founders Day convocation capped the week’s activities on the anniversary of the college’s founding on April 11, 1881.

As I watched the celebration on my laptop, I could feel the joy wash over me — a reprieve, a moment of reflection — after moving at breakneck speed to become something we were not meant to be. Overnight, our small liberal arts college, designed exclusively for the success of black women, which cherishes close relationships among its Spelman Sisters and between students and faculty, had become a bastion of distance and separation.