This session presents findings on various challenges that COVID-19 has created for continuing the human-focused work done by members and sections in the ESA human-dimension collaborative. To keep the focus on overcoming challenges rather than listing problems a Solutions Journal format is proposed, where no more than one third of the presentation is on the problem (i.e. 5 minutes) and two thirds are on practical solutions and even benefits (i.e. 10 minutes). The series of talks discuss how COVID-19 has disrupted vital human connections in ecology, but has also prompted the opening of new avenues for ESA to expand its tent. The Session’s first talk focuses on new pathways through which human connections in ecology can be maintained and strengthened. The second presentation explores the challenge of maintaining community-university partnerships during times of transition and opportunities for virtual connections among ESA members and local communities during the annual conference. The third talk takes the topic of inclusion, and considers whether online access to workshops, meetings, and policy forums has expanded avenues for inclusion, or trivialized them. The 2020 virtual conference, for example, was notable for the number of students, including international students, who were able to participate. The presentation discusses ways that COVID-19 responses can promote true inclusivity. The fourth speaker examines how COVID-19 has changed access to sources of knowledge, research, and learning. This talk discusses the dynamics of changing learning platforms and journal readership and asks if COVID-19 can lead towards a positive expansion, opening up and democratizing knowledge access. One of the meta-lessons of COVID-19 is the need to have effective transdisciplinary practitioners and policy makers to help coordinate and synthesize the many sources of knowledge demanded by an effective societal response. Budgetary limits often encourage competitive attitudes between disciplines, thereby hindering creative solutions that come from transdisciplinary dialogue. Our fifth talk will consider these issues more closely. The final presentation discusses the kinds of knowledge, including but not limited to applied ecological sciences, which will be used to build back environment-society interactions once the immediate pressure of COVID-19 is lifted. This goes to the heart of the question concerning whether the goal of recovery is the old normal, which created the ecological conditions for COVID-19 to flourish, or a new normal where fewer pathways for epidemiological catastrophes are present and better informed and integrated policy responses are enabled, should similar outbreaks arise.