School in the 2020-2021 Academic Year & Coronavirus (Part 1)

Parents Forum
2502

IMO, unlimited students taking gap years will never happen. Colleges NEED students attending classes (preferably in-person) so they pay the R&B, tuition, etc. Colleges plan for only a handful of freshman taking gap years every year, there is no way they are going to let 30, 40, 50+% of the class take gap years this fall. Not going to happen unless colleges want to go insolvent, they are bleeding money already from loss of revenue from all sources…this would only compound the problem and greatly effect next year’s class and the year after, etc.

They will want to keep things as “normal” as possible this academic year: kids back on campus; hybrid learning experience, staggered smaller classes, lots of PPE, social distancing, testing and quarantining, as necessary. Letting a bunch of kids take gap years is not a viable solution.

2503

My S20 had already decided on cc before this pandemic started and his cc just announced that Fall 2020 classes will either be online or a hybrid/partial online which will allow for social distancing. We are in the Bay Area of California. He registers for his classes on 5/28 (he has priority registration), so we’re just hoping he can at least get the hybrid/partial online classes so he can spend some time on campus versus being in his bedroom for another semester. Hopefully, he’ll then get the full college experience when he transfers.

On a positive note, cc is free for 2 years in California if they are first time college students going full time :slight_smile:

2504

President of University of Arizona and cardiac surgeon says they are opening up…in person teaching as much as possible except for at risk faculty (i.e. someone that has undergone a transplant)

https://www.today.com/video/university-of-arizona-president-outlines-plans-for-bringing-students-backuniversity-of-arizona-president-outlines-plans-for-bringing-students-back-83035717740

2505

UofSC just announce they’ll have students back in fall.

2506

This was my point somewhere else in this thread. Lots of Asian countries wear masks for pollution. For years. It’s actually fashionable. So seeing peers wearing masks will make it more acceptable to everyone doing it. Get your kids used to wearing them now so it’s not such a shock once they are back to school. This is “their” new normal

2507

Denmark has had K-5 schools open since the week of 4/13.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/europe/denmark-coronavirus-first-school-intl/index.html

Looking at Worldometer, the 7 day moving average of new cases for Denmark now (139) is lower than it was on 4/13 (205). This is a good sign.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/denmark/

2508

Agree no college will allow unlimited gap years. Some schools that allow gap years may cap at the normal rate, while others may allow more, but not an unlimited amount.

Regardless, the spots of students who take gap years are back filled with waitlist students…so there should not be a revenue hit. If a school can’t back fill these students with waitlisted students they will be less likely to offer gap years.

2509

Maybe your 18 year old has the maturity, drive, and raw brainpower of a 23 year old Isaac Newton, but mine certainly didn’t! ?

2510

@sylvan8798 Okay I concede they will probably be surgical masks, not N95s, but I promise you the vast majority of college students would agree to wear masks if it meant they could return to campus. We are very desperate at this point, and would agree to virtually anything. And the same goes for professors who would much rather be teaching in-person to students than from their homes, and especially for staff members who have to teach on-campus for their jobs. All people on-campus at Amherst College right now are being required to wear face masks; they got their first confirmed on-campus student case yesterday.

2511

I’d like to know how you are able to peer into the minds of professors and know what they think, @ChemAM. You seem to be speaking about what professors think with a lot of authority.

2512

@ChemAM Lol. Love it. Youthful exuberance. I really do hope everyone has a good and safe experience this fall.

2513

You don’t remember because, like most of us, your most vivid memories are of the second half of 20th century. But they certainly happened earlier.

Read up about the polio epidemic of 1949… in many parts of the country, kids were on lockdown for weeks, not allowed OUT OF THEIR HOMES. Schools, daycares, playgrounds were closed, kids weren’t allowed to church.

Against doctors’ and scientists’ recommendations, the quarantine was lifted in many places… and polio cases increased within weeks.

Kids died, were disabled… landed in iron lungs. And so the lockdown resumed.

2514

@“Cardinal Fang” Because I have talked with my college professors, and they have made it quite clear that they really hate online learning and would agree to virtually anything to resume in-person classes as well. Staff who have to be on-campus would probably agree because they would need to in-order to keep their jobs. It seems from conversations with friends who have other college professors that virtually all the Amherst professors feel this way.

2515

double posted

2516

The latest from Davidson College on plans for the fall:

President Quillen’s Message About Fall Semester Planning

I mentioned earlier that we are planning for a number of options for the fall, guided by values of access and equity, community and connection, continuity, flexibility, quality, intentionality and transparency, and feasibility. By thinking through, and in some cases planning for, multiple options, we can adapt to changing circumstances. We all want to come back together as a residential community as soon as possible. We don’t want to preclude that with a decision we make now.

Last week, we formed seven Design Teams to think through specific aspects of our plans for Fall 2020.

I am writing today to share more about these teams. Each Design Team includes students, staff, and faculty. Below is a short description of each team.

Academic Calendar Team: The academic calendar team will explore scheduling options that maximize the opportunity for face to face learning in a residential setting, recognizing that COVID may make it impossible for us to operate in a fully residential mode in 2020-21.

First Year Experience Team: The first-year experience team will explore how the courses (possibly following a 2x2 block in a remote setting) can be re-imagined to integrate first year students into the life of the mind and the Davidson Community. This includes courses that are necessary for first year students to thrive in later years (including writing courses), and may lead to the development of courses that share topics, lectures, resources. Student orientation, holistic advising, and other processes key to first year success and retention will also be examined.

The Well-Examined Life under COVID-19 Team: This team will explore the feasibility of a common learning experience that would be structured around teaching, learning, and research opportunities specific to these extraordinary times. 

Digital Learning Advisory Team: This team will develop topics for the summer Digital Learning Institute and provide feedback, guidance and recommendations for changes that can improve the experience of faculty and students in any remote learning environment. 

High Impact Experiential Learning Team: This group will research and design models for high impact experiential learning (e.g., community-based learning, internships, undergraduate research) given several potential, fall semester scenarios. Asset map current resources / existing infrastructure, recommend implementation.

Student Support Services Team: This group will discuss how to provide students with a central advocacy model for supportive services  (e.g., academic, health/wellbeing, technology) should Davidson be in a remote learning environment in fall 2020. This includes both best practices that individual units can/should pursue, as well as whether any new services or functions are needed (e.g., unified referral/information point).

Building Student Community Team: This group will develop ways to build community and connection amongst students in their co-curricular/extracurricular lives (e.g., leadership development, health & wellbeing, community engagement, new student welcome, etc) given several, potential fall semester scenarios.
2517

@ChemAM Speaking on behalf of professors at both your school and others is not wise. I would not assume anything at this point (even schools that have promised to open campus). Everything is very fluid right now.

2518

Yes, the virus has limited greatly gap year opportunities. I know someone doing an online international internship - working for a New Zealand company from home in the US. But travel is complicated by many things, including that there is the perception that the US has mishandled the virus, and its people are considered poorly screened, etc. Some nations are planning to create all kinds of barriers of entry for Americans, including mandatory 2-weeks quarantines.

2519

I would give @ChemAM a break on this one. S19 has also been given the impression that, as a whole, professors really want to be back on campus. He gets this from his four professors as well as a multitude of Instagram posts from the college with professors saying as much. Bowdoin town halls always seem to have a “we desperately want you all back on campus, we all miss you” theme. Of course there might be a few professors who have concerns but, overall, I bet many of the LACs (which are places where professors specifically go to teach because they want connections with undergrads) are genuine in that regard. They also seem to be the schools being most honest about what campus life will be like and have warned it will not be the same. These big universities are like “come on down! school open!” and mention that there might be some social distancing and a hybrid teaching model but they don’t seem very sensitive to how this campus life could be very different.

2520

@MBNC1755 I am just repeating what I think and what others have said to me. I am not speaking on anyone’s behalf but my own. We are making many assumptions in this thread by nature. Without assumptions, there can be no discussion, and this whole thread might as well be shut down.

2521

See ^^^^

this is an honest approach to the problem. There’s a group that will "discuss how to provide students with a central advocacy model for supportive services should Davidson be a remote learning environment.

Why are the small schools not making the big call back to campus? None of them have done that yet. Why would there be two types of announcements as of late? Small schools calling for focus groups to decide if school can even be on campus and larger schools already saying that it will? What’s really interesting to me is that you’d think smaller schools would actually have an easier time with making all of the details work out yet it’s the large schools that are acting like it’s all a go.