Have your colleges announced what they plan to do for fall? I saw from another post that Mary Anna's is telling her she needs to be face to face in the classroom. Curious whether they've said whether they plan to put large lectures online? How are they housing and feeding everyone? If it's business as usual in the dorms with the doubles and triples and 25 people sharing a bathroom and people going to parties and hanging out with their friends, I don't see how keeping class sizes small will matter at all.

I have been following this whole topic like mad because LL#1 is dying to get back to school but also very fearful of Corona (she has some preexisting health stuff that she worries would make it worse for her than would be normal for someone in her age group). Schools (including hers) seem to be all over the map....most of them seem to be promising that they are "planning" or "have every intention" of being back in the classroom but I really don't see how that can be done safely. And of course they are all being very sketchy with the details (probably because they don't know). I assume some of this is to try to get new freshmen to commit (who wants to commit to a school that has already said classes will be online). And I'm sure they're hoping to stem the tide of current students asking for gap years.

I'm honestly not sure what to do in LL#1's situation. Her classes are such that she has 2 2-semester sequences next year - if she skips fall, she can't take them til next fall. So there's no chance of a gap semester - it's the whole year or not, at least where those classes are concerned. There's no gainful employment or internships around here right now and she's certainly not going to be traveling the world, etc so I don't even know what she'd do for a gap year...I suspect sit in our house and be pretty miserable. On the other hand, both those classes have labs (organic chemistry is one of them) and I can't see her learning that stuff effectively online....what's she going to do - at-home synthesis in our basement??? Both sets of classes are foundational so she can't do the next 2 years of chem classes without them, so putting them off a year (even if she found enough other classes that she still needs to fill in the next year - and I think she's done all her gen-eds so I'm not sure she could without taking completely useless stuff that won't count towards her degree) means 3 more years of school....there's no way to just slot them in and still finish at her normal time. Her schedule for the next 3 years is super tightly packed because she's trying to end up with 2 majors and 2 minors so really any disruption to anything .... a single class not being offered online.... might be enough to screw up the whole plan.

She also was recently hired to be a researcher in the lab that was the whole reason she chose her college. It was uber-competitive to get in there and she can't wait to start - the position starts in the fall. I assume they'd hold her spot if all classes are online because no one would be there, but if she opts for a gap year, I don't know that she'd get back in. I think for this reason alone, she'd return to campus if it's an option...and then she's 10 hours away in a rural town with the dinkiest of dinky hospitals. It's terrifying for me to think what it would be like if she does get seriously sick.

And just for more twists in the plot, she's also a member of the marching band. They are pretty much proceeding business as usual, sending out audition music and recruiting videos. I have no clue if there will even be football (they make a LOT of $$$ off football so I'm guessing they'll try to do it if at all possible, even if risky). But really - cramming the whole team on a bus and schlepping them around to other campuses for a game that will certainly be played without masks and involve getting up close and personal with others??? Then bringing home whatever germs the other team had? Seems like the perfect petri dish. And if there's football -- there's talk of allowing it without fans -- will there be band? With all that air blown through wind instruments? And spit from spit valves? It is outside but still.....what would be the point if there's no fans in the stands? (Also that brings me to another question - what are actual wind instrument music majors supposed to do? How can they take any indoor classes safely? And their poor professors!!!!)

Also some colleges are moving their semester start dates earlier (Notre Dame moved theirs back to Aug 10) and some later (Ithaca went to an October start). Her school hasn't said either way yet but if they move it earlier, it's going to mess with her summer classes (and marching band camp, if band happens) - she'll have to start fall before she's done summer -- I don't see that going well. If they do this, she may have to drop the class she is signed up for for the second half of the summer but I'd like to know that now, while I can still get my tuition money back! And of course, dropping that class means she'll have to pick it up somewhere else in her already tightly planned schedule (it's not typically offered online during the summer - this was a 1 year pandemic exception). Ugh!

I figure they'll have to make a firm decision on this stuff pretty soon but sheesh, this is making it hard to plan anything.

Also, sorry - this post turned into such a long brain dump!

You saw on the other thread how they're handling classes. They haven't said what they're going to do about the dorms.

Her situation sounds really frustrating. One thing to consider is how likely you think it is that she will actually complete the semester on campus. I think there's a substantial likelihood that they'll end up having to send everybody home, and then she'll be halfway into her organic lab. Then what?

I've been talking real big by saying that there's no way that I'd send a kid to campus this year, but complications like the research position and the marching band make things murky. It's too bad that you're being put in the position of having to make decisions without knowing how things are really going to play out.

My mantra: no one has a freaking clue what's going to happen in three months. Look back three months, and see whether anyone would have predicted where we are now.

This is all hopeful optimism. Maybe it'll work out that way. Maybe not. No one really knows.

quote:

If it's business as usual in the dorms with the doubles and triples and 25 people sharing a bathroom and people going to parties and hanging out with their friends, I don't see how keeping class sizes small will matter at all.

This.

We have a town hall today, so I'll post what they say.

There are lots of ideas being thrown around (like, I mean in communications from our dean, not in the random FB faculty gossip threads), and one of them is the magical thinking about "we'll offer all of our classes simultaneously online and in-person, and each student can choose who to attend." The people floating this idea have obviously never taught, and never taught in an insufficiently tech-equipped classroom....

Lisa, re LL#1, is she on someone's radar? By which I mean, has she communicated with an advisor that she's high risk? Has she communicated that with her lab super? If not, it might be a good idea to be proactive here. I have one student in my class this fall who I know has MS and I am 99% certain that most MS meds are immune-suppressing. So, she's on my radar, and that will inform the kinds of decisions I make.

The two-semester sequence courses are tricky. We have a four-semester sequence that is just essential. But we are lucky in that, thus far, we have always been able to offer all of those classes every semester, IOW someone can start in a fall or spring semester and still be able to take all the courses etc. But, we just had a lecturer in our language section quit (yay) and that is throwing a wrench in everything *and* there's a hiring freeze. Also yay.

-_-

Here is the Chronicle's current listing of which schools are planning for which environment:

List of Colleges' Plans

I haven't done the math, but I'm very confident in making the following claim ...

"Small" and "private" will be strongly positively correlated with "planning to be open for face-to-face."

My own institution (W&M) doesn't fit that mold. We're public and medium sized, but planning for being open.

Most schools will not commit just yet. We all know the adages ...

"Don't decide until decision time."

"Decide in haste. Repent in leisure."

It's very sensible at this point to lay out your hopes, convince people that you're actually constructing a plan to turn those hopes into reality, and giving people confidence that you have safety procedures and backups built into your planning.


A sample non-committal statement sent to our students on May 6

quote:

May 6, 2020

Dear William & Mary Community,

Even as we move through the exam period for the spring semester, William & Mary is actively planning for the year ahead. Our goal is to be able to resume learning in-person in the fall, so long as it is safe to do so. We recognize the uncertainty so many are feeling. So this email aims to add clarity where we are able. Below my signature, you will find a high-level view of our current operations under the pandemic and an introduction to our planning process for next year.

In June we will have more details to share about ways we can prepare for the upcoming academic year. Next week we will update the campus on financial projections for FY21. Next week we will also share our expectations about work conditions after June 10, based on the Governor’s evolving guidance. We are continuing to make decisions in a measured, phased way, taking the steps required to flatten the curve of financial impact due to COVID-19.

This spring has clarified much about why we value face-to-face learning at William & Mary – and why we seek to return to it with such a strong sense of purpose. Cognitively: studying together speeds and deepens learning in myriad ways. Research has shown this; the challenges of learning under quarantine prove it by direct experience. Socially: collaboration accelerates the creation of new knowledge much faster than solo effort. Above all, working and learning in company strengthens the deep human connections we prize at William & Mary.

With these values in mind, we have much work to do to assess the adaptations to campus and curriculum that will be needed next year. In this effort, we have good partners. The May planning process described below aligns with similar planning at Virginia’s public higher education institutions and with the Dept. of Education. We track the Virginia Department of Health guidelines daily.

Bringing our campus back together safely is an enormous task and also a hopeful one because it is a key step in the path forward to a post-COVID-19 William & Mary. We will continue to share updates as new information becomes available, create opportunities for feedback and find ways to connect virtually. While planning within such an uncertain environment is stressful, the strength and creativity we can bring to that task – working together – is rewarding and sustaining.

Stay well,

Katherine A. Rowe

President

quote:

Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
My mantra: no one has a freaking clue what's going to happen in three months. Look back three months, and see whether anyone would have predicted where we are now.

This is all hopeful optimism. Maybe it'll work out that way. Maybe not. No one really knows.

This. It’s all over the freaking map. Things are changing daily. People (Faculty, unions, administrators) up in arms because *they* are doing too much, or not doing enough. There is a serious need prepare for anything. The places that have a good online instruction already will have it easier than other places that depend on face to face. Some places talk about starting early so the semester can be done by thanksgiving (so no students going home then coming back with extra risk of exposure, but how tf do you make that happen.

Truthfully Nobody has a ******* clue what is going to happen, and they have to prepare for all sorts of scenarios. Some large places have already said “everything online in the fall” - but doing that everywhere may be the end of some places. It’s super super stressful on those who are in charge of making these decisions, and gets more complicated when you also have to take direction from above to make those decisions. (States with system offices).

quote:

Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
My mantra: no one has a freaking clue what's going to happen in three months. Look back three months, and see whether anyone would have predicted where we are now.

This is all hopeful optimism. Maybe it'll work out that way. Maybe not. No one really knows.

Word. We're all running on faith.

Yeah, so you guys have just confirmed my assessment that no one really knows anything. I guess it's not even possible to know at this point.

Mary Anna - I think she is thinking that half a semester is better than nothing -- that she'd have time to get comfortable in the research lab and at least have a bit of in person experience in the ochem lab. I dunno. I wouldn't be so against a gap year if there was something productive she could do for the year but I can't see her getting any kind of internship or anything - everything around here has gone back to just essential work only. And if she's too at risk to go to school, she's certainly not going to be getting a job at the local grocery store. She'd be stuck in our house miserable. At least if she got sent home halfway through the semester to take online classes, she'd have something to do. And the college would have to find a way to make the labs work online at that point, I guess, like they did for her gen chem lab this year.

SK - she is registered with the disabilities office so I suppose she could maybe use that to petition for the lab to hold her position if she had to take a gap year. But see above regarding her misery. And she's not definitively at risk, I guess - not like someone taking immunocompromising drugs would be. Back in 10th grade, she had a bad case of walking pneumonia and it may or may not have caused her to develop POTS. That's a disorder of the autonomic nervous system where the doctors don't know what causes it - sometimes brought on by a viral infection, sometimes it just happens randomly, so we don't know for sure it was the walking pneumonia. But either way, for like a year, she could barely stand up without passing out - POTS causes your body to be unable to do things like adjust your blood pressure and pulse rate relative to your level of activity. (It also affects other autonomic things like your pupil dilation and contraction in bright light, digestion, etc. -- she has issues in all those areas!) There's no cure - for some people it goes away on its own within a few years, other people are utterly debilitated forever. She's been dealing with it for like 3 years now and it seems to be about 80% improved but it isn't totally gone. And there's no telling if a covid infection (or really any solid hit to her immune system I guess - flu, mono, etc.) would bring it back, which is why she worries.

Lisa, that's hard, I don't know much (anything) about POTS, but you're wise to want to avoid covid as much as possible!

So we just had out town hall and everything is now clear as mud.

I think what isn't being said, but appears increasingly to be the case, is that the university is bound and determined to open for in-person classes in the fall, even if it's on the backs of dead faculty and students.

More news is coming out, although most of it is coming from the school newspaper.

Most important from my standpoint--They are expanding the time between classes from ten minutes to thirty, and thus each class through the day is being moved progressively further back from its original time. The upshot is that night classes are being shoved out of their classrooms completely and will be online. My biggest class is a night class.

There are a lot of details that I won't go through, although none of them tells us how they're going to manage the residence halls. One notable detail is that that they're going to require professors to wear masks but not students. So they want to prevent us from giving it to them, but they don't want to prevent them from giving it to us or to each other.

It's an evolving situation, but that's the news of the day.

Our thinking is nowhere near that specific yet. I suspect we'll get that kind of detail in June. Right now, summer classes are remote only.

Yes, I would think that masking the students makes more sense than masking the person giving the talk.

Dormitories are a problem, as are confined spaces like bathrooms in public building. Truly large classes need to go online because no building can house a class of 500 with students maintaining any semblance of social distancing. All scheduling goes to heck, because rooms that are good for 15 can't be used. Instead you have to have those classes in classrooms designed for forty. Classes of 35 now need to be in larger halls, and classes of 100 have to be in what were used in the past for giant lectures.

quote:

One notable detail is that that they're going to require professors to wear masks but not students.

We're getting the "strongly encouraged" language, but no requirements. It's absolutely ridiculous.

quote:

masking the students makes more sense than masking the person giving the talk.

Actually, both (all) parties need to be masked for the masks to be effective, and, crucially, speaking expels more than just sitting there breathing through your nose, so the prof might actually be the person most needed to wear a mask.

I pointed out that having all rooms equipped with a PA system and getting pin mics for the teacher will be important because it's hard to hear when someone's talking through a mask.

Oh and btw there were over 700 in the Zoom session for our town hall.

They did a great job of wrangling it, in my opinion.

quote:

Actually, both (all) parties need to be masked for the masks to be effective, and, crucially, speaking expels more than just sitting there breathing through your nose, so the prof might actually be the person most needed to wear a mask.

I understand that, but it can be mitigated. The professor can be placed at quite a distance from the nearest student. Masking the professor may make it impossible for students to understand the lecture, in which case what's the point. This is especially true for a non-native speaker with a significant accent.

Having said that, I'll probably wear a mask ...

quote:

Originally posted by Piano*Dad:

quote:

Actually, both (all) parties need to be masked for the masks to be effective, and, crucially, speaking expels more than just sitting there breathing through your nose, so the prof might actually be the person most needed to wear a mask.

I understand that, but it can be mitigated. The professor can be placed at quite a distance from the nearest student. Masking the professor may make it impossible for students to understand the lecture, in which case what's the point. This is especially true for a non-native speaker with a significant accent.

Even with respect to native speakers of the English language, I think there are visual cues (even at a distance) from watching the way the lips and tongue move and the mouth forms words that aid listening comprehension. You lose that with a mask.