First, the bad news: nobody sees these problems disappearing anytime soon. Job satisfaction, employment prospects, work-life balance, the ability to conduct research — all have been dramatically, perhaps permanently, affected by the pandemic.

“This is a three- to four-year solution we’re looking at,” said Jonathan Holloway, president of Rutgers University. “There’s going to be a long tail to this virus.”

If there’s a positive note to the turbulence, said Katherine Rowe, president of the College of William & Mary, it is that it has made the invisible labor of women and faculty of color visible. Sometimes this happens literally, she noted: We now all see each other’s children in the background of videoconference calls, highlighting how professors who are also parents have had to do double duty since March.

That’s why, said Rowe, naming and recognizing these challenges, then making structural changes to address them, have to be part of any conversation around supporting faculty. Otherwise the inequities baked into academe will only worsen.

Kiernan Mathews, executive director of the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education at Harvard University, noted that research has shown that some gender-blind policies, like extending the tenure clock, tend to benefit men. So colleges also need to rethink the ways in which they evaluate faculty members, such as increasing the rewards for service.

“We’re just going to have … a whiter, more male academy in the future if we don’t change those tenure and promotion policies,” Mathews said.

While nobody offered any grand solutions, they discussed a few steps colleges can take.