One week of classes is in the books for Monmouth College students. Being flexible has been the trend this year and the faculty had development opportunities over the summer to train and prepare for online teaching to interact with those students learning remotely. To maintain social distancing on campus, the College got creative with providing open air classrooms, says Dean of Faculty Mark Willhardt:
“With social distancing, we can’t have the same number of students in a classroom. So we went out and measured, there was a team that went around to every single classroom and measured what six feet around every desk was going to look like. They pulled out desks, but we are going to have a bunch of teachers outside in tents. Part of what we realized was that some open air teaching would be worthwhile. So we have six tent sites across campus. We also have about another fifteen open air sites, so if a teacher wants to move a class outside, they can just move it out on the lawn and we have them all labeled,” Willhardt states.
874 students are enrolled at Monmouth College this fall with 63 learning remotely.
