@circuitrider Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I’m not talking about Bowdoin here. I’m talking about these posters on this thread who are fighting going back to teach in person. I absolutely think most Bowdoin professors will come to campus if they can.
@twogirls there are definitely faculty on this thread who have said they won’t go back. And I’ve read posts on other sites where professors are pleading with their college to not go back to campus.
Davidson just announced a “13-week Plus,” 4-course schedule (i.e., not the 2+2 model) for the Fall. Students will not return to campus after Thanksgiving and finals will be at-home. They surveyed students and they apparently preferred sticking with 4-courses over the 2+2 model. (My D, a student there, agrees. She said she feels like it would be harder for faculty to effectively teach a 7 week course b/c they aren’t use to the pacing. She thinks sticking to more traditional model will result in higher quality classes in the end.)
They have no set start date right now, but may bring first-years to campus first. More decisions to follow, but for now, they are starting by telling professors to adjust their syllabi for the shorter semester and to prepare for both in-person and online delivery in case things change.
@homerdog I gave you an account of what my load looks like last night; not sure if you read it or just went by it. You still seem to think that adding another twelve hours of work to my fifty-sixty-hour-a-week workweeks would be nbd. You can keep walking back your assertions, but the intent is clear.
Homerdog, at this point in the thread it seems safe to me to assume any questions you pose are merely rhetorical. You do you. Good luck.
Maybe her school would allow her to attend classes at another school and take them as transfer credits. Her school would still issue the diploma and she would have taken most of her classes at that school.
I know some schools require your last 30 credits be at that school, but times are different now. It would really be no different than taking a junior year exchange, just out of order to take the senior year as an exchange.
I think what @homerdog was trying to articulate was that we all (students, faculty, admin, support staff) will have to make sacrifices and change our behaviors to make college in the fall work.
If students have to take most of their general education classes online, while sitting in their dorm room, they will have to do it. Some faculty might have to teach a half-filled class in-person behind a glass partition, in a larger lecture hall and not mingle with students after class. Administrators will have to wear masks in buildings and not take elevators with more than one person in it. Building maintenance will have to wipe and clean common areas and classrooms more often. Food workers will have to better sanitize and serve food directly to students and faculty instead of buffet style. People will have to eat outside and be encouraged not to socialize with more than x number of people. There will be a lot of testing, tracking, trace contacting, and quarantining as necessary.
Everyone will be making sacrifices, from students to professors to administrators. We are all in this together. Universities will mostly get this right in the fall and as each month goes by, will get better at it. I have a lot of faith that our U.S. university system will take a cautious and thoughtful approach to how they conduct the business of college this academic year.
I believe that there will be a workable vaccine before or during 2nd semester this coming year, so to me, this “hurry up and come back and who cares if you get infected” seems ill-advised. For faculty or students.
I know that it’s a talking point of those who want to “reopen” that there won’t be a vaccine anyway, but that’s not consistent with the news updates.
And, I don’t know anyone who posits that treatments/survival won’t be much better in eight months than they are now (i.e. good to delay as many infections as possible). Plus, the way exponential mathematics works, if we can nip transmission in the bud as early as possible, it has huge (sometimes invisible) effects down the road.
Although there has never been a vaccine this quickly before, I would compare the race for vaccines to the space race back in olden times 
- it had never been done before, but by throwing vast sums of money and vast reserves of talent at the problem, it got solved.
I think that if we knew that a vaccine would be widely available in early 2021, that it would be an easy decision to keep things online for the fall everywhere. That’s what I’m leaning toward as the wise decision for my kids, even if it ends up being impossible for me and my job.
College profs, teachers, staff, and administrators need to individually access their risk based how a school intends to open. No one should return if they are not comfortable. That’s really no different than any other profession, the risk profile is just different.
What they do, and how they do it, if they return, will determine their success as a school. It will be very interesting to see what the schools do. I’ve read many individual posts of how classes will be taught, but I’m not sure if they represent the official position of any school or are just ideas of individuals.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I do think that some out of the box thinking is called for in how classes are prepared and delivered (over the next few semesters). If a given class has historically been taught using plan “X”, I doubt that plan “X” will be viable this fall. Time for plan “Y”.
Many pages back someone accused folks of being against going back to campus in the fall, no matter what. Upon review, I see it very differently - there are those who want their kids to go back to in person college in the fall - period. And I get it, I want my kid to go back. However, I understand why others would have great reservations.
I know many office workers who are being told they will be working from home until the end of the year. Office space is being revamped, concern about ventilation etc
People think cruise lines talking about starting up again is crazy and irresponsible and who would be dumb enough to get on a ship?
So why is it so blasphemous to air the same concerns about colleges? Or to worry about the residents of the college towns? Or not wanting to have your workload doubled? Or maybe not trusting that safety measures will be followed and/or enforced?
I’m just saying you can want something all you want for all sorts of reasons, but others also have legitimate reasons to disagree.
My hope is that more colleges share some real information with us in the near future.
A lot of ideas have been put forth in this thread, some good, some problematic, some downright offensive, hopefully all with good faith intentions. I try to address them from an adjunct/faculty perspective. (DS is in grad school, so my parent perspective is pretty well done.)
As an adjunct, however, I have some insight into the sorts of problems which different ideas or suggestions would raise. Things that might sound easy, like just having the school split courses in two and run multiple smaller sections, raise all sorts of issues around who would teach them, how that would be paid for, classroom space, scheduling around other courses, union/contract situations, and so on. Suggesting that faculty are being selfish, not sharing the pain, cowards, as interchangeable or replaceable as light bulbs, etc., is not helpful, nor does it address these other very real issues.
That’s not to say that some or all of these things are insurmountable, or that it wouldn’t work for SOME courses. Just that these things are a lot more complex and nuanced than people might realize. Why is my tech department working on Spring 2021 schedule NOW, 8 months in advance? Because lining all that up is like putting a big, multi-level jigsaw puzzle together while the picture on the puzzle keeps changing.
I think the issue with some is that they understand that sacrifices and changes need to be made…but they don’t want these changes to impact their own children.
I also think most professors will return if they are adequately protected and if students follow the rules. The issue…IMO…is that many students will not.
I think it is more likely the colleges will split the courses and have half attend the class and half log on and watch or participate remotely. They may alternate who attends in person or may just ask who wants to attend live and who wants to watch from the dorm room. The professor will still have the same number in the class for exams and office hour planning purposes, but social distancing will maintained.
That is pretty much true for every industry and business now. And for most, it was true pre-Covid too. Universities are slow adapters, but change and adaptation is the norm in the commercial world this century.
@Leigh22 I could not agree more.
A dorm and a cruise ship are very similar in terms of how easily the virus can spread. While the age of students puts them at a lower risk for fatality it doesn’t change how easily a virus can be transmitted via a dorm and then to others in the community.
Summer interviews
So many things to keep track of these days. Was reading through college emails (online info sessions etc) and thought I’d click onto one about scheduling webcam interviews…
Well, sheez!
There was only ONE time slot left for the entire month of June for an LAC on S21’s college list. (Yes, they will add more after July they said…But still…it lit a candle on our family for sure.)
So we grabbed it. Next week. 9:00 am. ?
One more day of junior year then bam…college app time begins in earnest.
Purdue sent another communication yesterday. The new information was that students who aren’t comfortable coming to campus can do online courses from home. The president also stressed that those students who won’t follow the guidelines for masks/social distancing, etc… should remain home as well because not following the rules won’t be tolerated.
This was the quote: “If you’re not prepared to accept some inconveniences for the protection of others," he said again, "don’t come. You’re not for us. At least, not right now.”
He also said that dining will be restaurant style - students will be seated and the meal brought to them. There will not be choices of meals and just one option (with the exception for dietary restrictions). I expect most students will do take out boxes which will remain unchanged.
Please don’t take this the wrong way, I’d wager that the reason your tech department is working on spring 2021 schedule is because they are not using the latest technology to make scheduling (running, and analyzing various scheduling scenarios) easy and fast.
As a reformed mid-level manager at a large (extremely so) tech company I would always run into people that would say- “here’s how we do things: “a” then “b” then “c” so there is no way to improve or streamline the process or save $$”. When I heard that I knew two things. First, this person either did not want to change or was incapable of doing so. Second, was that this person would soon be replaced with someone who could.
I was reminded of this I was watching SpaceX attempt the first manned US space launch in almost 10 years. Why? Because SpaceX beat out Boeing. How could a company founded in 2002 beat out Boing that was founded in 1916? Because they looked at the problem with different eyes and less baggage.
It’s all relative, homer. I know a couple of Stanford tenure track faculty members and they are working 55+ hour weeks (to make tenure). Thus, perhaps your tenured friends were able to cut ‘back’ to a more manageable 40+ hour week.
@momofsenior1 love how proactive Purdue continues to be with communication. I wonder if board will cost less if food service is restaurant style. At Bowdoin, kids can eat as much as they want and have tons of choices. I understand that could be different for at least next semester but, if so, I hope the savings in food purchases will be passed on to students.
The disease won’t change, and it’s unlikely that we’ll eradicate it, but our ability to prevent, treat and mitigate it will certainly change. After all, we still have HIV, but whereas it used to be a horrible death sentence, now it isn’t.
We might have a vaccine in a year and a half, and we will certainly have better treatments.