Geospatial Analysis Project
Devon Margulies
12/3/2020
Introduction
I decided to look at Elon University and other colleges to see what their response to COVID-19 was and how many cases were reported at their school. As a student at Elon University, I felt the school did a fairly good job in maintaining while still remaining in-person courses. Elon’s plan can be found on their Ready and Resilient website.
Question
How effective was Elon’s Ready & Resilient plan in comparison to other Universities and Colleges?
To conduct a proper evaluation of Elon’s plan, I decided to look at other institutions in similar size and ranking as Elon. I used their Institutional Research site to determine which schools Elon considers peer institutions and which to evaluate. I as well looked at all colleges in North Carolina alone, to see how Elon compared to other schools in the state, as North Carolina is currently considered a hot spot for COVID-19.
Using Data from the New York Times article “Tracking the Coronavirus at U.S. Colleges and Universities” whose data was most recently updated November 19, I was able to make comparisons between specific schools and not just leave it up to states. I downloaded the data which could be found on GitHub through the site DownGit. From there I was able to use the “filter” and “write.csv” functions within R to create two more datasets, one look at Elon’s peer schools, and the other looking at all NC schools.
First I used Tableau to create geo-spatial analyses of the three data sets
This visualization shows every college in the US that reported cases of COVID-19.
Next I went to r to download the necessary packages and filter Elon’s peer schools:
library(tidyverse)
library(tidytext)
library(ggthemes)
library(wordcloud2)
library(textdata)colleges <- read_csv("~/Desktop/MEA_329/Tableau_Project/colleges.csv")
colleges %>%
filter(college %in% c("Bucknell University","Butler University",
"College of Charleston","William & Mary","Creighton University",
"Davidson College","Furman University","Ithaca College",
"James Madison University","Lehigh University",
"Loyola University Maryland", "Rollins College",
"Santa Clara University","University of Richmond",
"Villanova University","Elon University")) -> EU_peerSchools
View(EU_peerSchools)
write.csv(EU_peerSchools, 'EU_peerSchools.csv')By adding a visualization of just Elon’s peer institutions, we can see how effective Elon’s response was in comparision to other schools that are given the same regard. As seen in this visualization, Elon had a much higher number of cases than its peer schools.
EU_peerSchools %>%
arrange(desc(cases))## # A tibble: 16 x 8
## date state county city ipeds_id college cases notes
## <date> <chr> <chr> <chr> <dbl> <chr> <dbl> <chr>
## 1 2020-11-19 Virginia Rockingham Harriso… 232423 James Madison… 1650 <NA>
## 2 2020-11-19 North Ca… Alamance Elon 198516 Elon Universi… 785 <NA>
## 3 2020-11-19 Nebraska Douglas Omaha 181002 Creighton Uni… 613 <NA>
## 4 2020-11-19 South Ca… Charleston Charles… 217819 College of Ch… 523 <NA>
## 5 2020-11-19 Pennsylv… Delaware Villano… 216597 Villanova Uni… 363 <NA>
## 6 2020-11-19 Pennsylv… Northampton Bethleh… 213543 Lehigh Univer… 338 <NA>
## 7 2020-11-19 Indiana Marion Indiana… 150163 Butler Univer… 323 <NA>
## 8 2020-11-19 South Ca… Greenville Greenvi… 218070 Furman Univer… 133 <NA>
## 9 2020-11-19 Virginia Williamsbu… William… 231624 William & Mary 78 <NA>
## 10 2020-11-19 Florida Orange Winter … 136950 Rollins Colle… 73 <NA>
## 11 2020-11-19 Pennsylv… Union Lewisbu… 211291 Bucknell Univ… 62 <NA>
## 12 2020-11-19 Virginia Henrico Richmond 233374 University of… 53 <NA>
## 13 2020-11-19 New York Tompkins Ithaca 191968 Ithaca College 46 <NA>
## 14 2020-11-19 Californ… Santa Clara Santa C… 122931 Santa Clara U… 40 <NA>
## 15 2020-11-19 North Ca… Mecklenburg Davidson 198385 Davidson Coll… 32 <NA>
## 16 2020-11-19 Maryland Baltimore Baltimo… 163046 Loyola Univer… NA <NA>As proven by this table, it is important to note, James Madison University (JMU) had a reported 1,650 cases as of November 19th but for some reason did not register in tableau when making this map. While it is also important to realize JMU had similar in-person, online, and hybrid learning to Elon’s, JMU has around 13,000 more students than Elon (JMU ~ 20,000 / Elon ~ 7,000). But what does that say about Elon’s plan only having 865 cases less than JMU when there are about 13,000 students less?
EU_peerSchools %>%
filter(!college %in% "Loyola University Maryland") %>%
ggplot(aes(reorder(college,cases),cases)) + geom_col(fill ="blue" ) + coord_flip()+
theme_economist() + ylab("Number of Cases") + xlab("School Name") +
labs(title = " Covid-19 Cases per School", subtitle = "Elon University Peer Schools")
**It is important to note Loyola Maryland was removed from this chart because they reported zero cases this Fall semester. This could largely be due to the fact that Loyola Maryland students were sent home in the first week of school this year.
According to the CDC site, the states within our list that have the highest case rates are Nebraska and Indiana, home to Creighton (Nebraska) and Butler University (Indiana). Creighton University is home to about 9,000 students, and Butler University is home to about 5,000.
EU_peerSchools %>%
filter(college %in% c("Elon University", "Creighton University", "Butler University")) %>%
arrange(desc(cases))## # A tibble: 3 x 8
## date state county city ipeds_id college cases notes
## <date> <chr> <chr> <chr> <dbl> <chr> <dbl> <chr>
## 1 2020-11-19 North Caro… Alamance Elon 198516 Elon University 785 <NA>
## 2 2020-11-19 Nebraska Douglas Omaha 181002 Creighton Univ… 613 <NA>
## 3 2020-11-19 Indiana Marion Indianap… 150163 Butler Univers… 323 <NA>This shows how even though North Carolina is less of a hot spot right now, cases are still spreading more prominently. Like Elon, Creighton resumed in-person learning for this fall semester and has about 2,000 more students than Elon, yet reported about 172 less cases. This lead to the question that if other schools with more students were able to have in-person classes and yet less cases, how much does the number of cases have to do with off-campus activities rather than in-person classes?
Next I decided to look at NC schools alone and see how they compare
colleges %>%
filter(state %in% c("North Carolina")) -> NC_colleges
View(NC_colleges)
write.csv(NC_colleges,'NC_colleges.csv')As seen in this visualization, Elon did an okay job in comparison to other schools in the state of North Carolina. But, most of the schools who reported more cases than Elon are schools with much bigger student bodies. High Point University (HPU), a school often regarded in tandem with Elon University, only has about 1,000 less students, yet had about 632 less cases than Elon. Should HPU’s security gated campus be taken into consideration when looking at the spread of COVID-19 cases? Could the fact that everyone who goes onto their campus is monitored upon entering be a reason they were able to have so little? One factor to consider in Elon’s high case rates is the inclusion of off-campus housed students in their reporting. If other schools only included their on-campus students, this could be a reason for higher case rates.
NC_colleges %>%
arrange(desc(cases)) %>%
head(20)## # A tibble: 20 x 8
## date state county city ipeds_id college cases notes
## <date> <chr> <chr> <chr> <dbl> <chr> <dbl> <chr>
## 1 2020-11-19 North C… Pitt Greenvi… 198464 East Carolina Uni… 1494 <NA>
## 2 2020-11-19 North C… Orange Chapel … 199120 University of Nor… 1374 <NA>
## 3 2020-11-19 North C… Wake Raleigh 199193 North Carolina St… 1333 <NA>
## 4 2020-11-19 North C… Watauga Boone 197869 Appalachian State… 1192 <NA>
## 5 2020-11-19 North C… Alamance Elon 198516 Elon University 785 <NA>
## 6 2020-11-19 North C… New Han… Wilming… 199218 University of Nor… 755 <NA>
## 7 2020-11-19 North C… Mecklen… Charlot… 199139 University of Nor… 716 <NA>
## 8 2020-11-19 North C… Forsyth Winston… 199847 Wake Forest Unive… 539 <NA>
## 9 2020-11-19 North C… Guilford Greensb… 199102 North Carolina A&… 475 <NA>
## 10 2020-11-19 North C… Robeson Pembroke 199281 University of Nor… 446 <NA>
## 11 2020-11-19 North C… Jackson Cullowh… 200004 Western Carolina … 423 <NA>
## 12 2020-11-19 North C… Guilford Greensb… 199148 University of Nor… 255 <NA>
## 13 2020-11-19 North C… Durham Durham 198419 Duke University 243 <NA>
## 14 2020-11-19 North C… Guilford High Po… 198695 High Point Univer… 153 <NA>
## 15 2020-11-19 North C… Harnett Bules C… 198136 Campbell Universi… 149 <NA>
## 16 2020-11-19 North C… Cumberl… Fayette… 198543 Fayetteville Stat… 140 <NA>
## 17 2020-11-19 North C… Clevela… Boiling… 198561 Gardner-Webb Univ… 140 <NA>
## 18 2020-11-19 North C… Wilson Wilson 197911 Barton College 108 <NA>
## 19 2020-11-19 North C… Durham Durham 199157 North Carolina Ce… 105 <NA>
## 20 2020-11-19 North C… Forsyth Winston… 199999 Winston-Salem Sta… 85 <NA>NC_colleges %>%
ggplot(aes(reorder(college,cases),cases)) + geom_col(fill ="blue" ) + coord_flip()+
theme_economist() + ylab("Number of Cases") + xlab("School Name") +
theme(axis.text.y = element_text(size = 5))+
labs(title = " Covid-19 Cases per School", subtitle = "North Carolina Colleges")## Warning: Removed 1 rows containing missing values (position_stack).
Although Elon is one of the smaller universties within the state of North Carolina, it was still 6th highest in number of cases at schools in NC.
Conclusion
While it is hard to draw a direct conclusion between the number of cases reported at Elon and the effectiveness of their Ready and Resilient plan, It is almost easy to say their plan was not effective in comparison to other colleges and universities. To be a school that is on the smaller side of both its peer schools and the schools in it’s state, to be one of the highest number of cases makes one want to conclude clear inefficiency. The reason why said conclusion cannot be made is because every school had their own guidelines and restrictions.It is interesting though to continue this work to see what those guidelines and restrictions are and how they would compare to Elon’s.