Like all other colleges and universities, Western Illinois University typically offers several summer classes and activities on campus. In these unprecedented times, all on campus activities have been cancelled through the end of June says Interim President Dr. Martin Abraham:
“We turned the remaining classes normally that we would have had face to face into online activities. We do have some efforts where we have some clinical activities, some things of that nature where students are working one on one with instructors. They are still listed as on campus classes, but in fact they are also virtual sessions. So all of our classes will be virtual in one way or another. All of our events are shut down through the end of June,” Dr. Abraham shares.
Dr. Abraham states the college is hoping to bring faculty and staff back onto campus throughout June and students beginning in July. All leading up to face to face fall semester beginning at the end of August.
Several questions still linger regarding guidelines and actions needed for face to face education in the fall. Dr. Abraham reports they have two groups working on the matter:
“How many students can we put into a classroom, how do we meet the six foot social distancing expectations, and what are we going to have for face coverings? All of those rules and questions we have a work group that is looking at that and trying to evaluate exactly what that is going to look like. Then another work group that is trying to evaluate how we implement those sorts of rules. If we have limited space in our classrooms, what do we need to do with our classes that allow us to achieve those limited space targets? Do we do more online opportunities so that we are able to space out our classes further? What are the cleaning requirements from class to class as we go from one section to another section? How long is it going to take to do the deep cleaning that is need between two different classes that might be in the same room? All of these questions are out there,” reports Dr. Abraham.
The goal is to have a plan by July 1st as to how the fall semester will look at Western.
Despite the challenges colleges and universities have faced for student recruitment during these times, Dr. Abraham is optimist for a successful fall semester:
“We continue to be highly successful. Our enrollment numbers continue to track very positive. We are still running ahead of where we were at this time last year. Our numbers that are planning to be residential in the dorms is continuing to grow. The number of students that have already registered for classes in continuing to grow. We are very optimist that we are going to have a very successful fall semester. With a higher enrollment of new students in the fall than we have had in the past year and we think we have a handle on some of the things our students are looking for and providing them the services that we can through virtual technologies. We put a lot of programs in place to reach out to the students, reach out to prospective students and we feel like we have been successful in those modalities,” Dr. Abraham states.
