Wisconsin colleges hope to reopen this fall. But questions outnumber answers on how they will operate.
Devi Shastri
Widespread testing and temperature checks. Socially distanced classes and labs. Isolation protocols. Contact tracing and cellphone tracking devices. Hybrid in-person and online classes. Modified academic calendars.
These are just some of the options Wisconsin colleges and universities are exploring as they investigate what it would take to reopen campuses in the fall.
Nationally, some campuses have moved, some would say bullishly, ahead. Purdue University President Mitch Daniels was one of the first to make that call, citing a "close to zero lethal threat” to young people. California State University system — the country’s largest public four-year university system — went in the other direction, announcing it would remain online this fall.
Local college leaders say they're becoming increasingly confident they will bring some number of students back to campuses.
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But as the rest of Wisconsin begins its reopening process, most colleges have delayed final decisions, opting instead to gather as much information as possible before determining what it will take to bring students back. University of Wisconsin System schools may not decide until sometime in July.
All face a daunting number of questions.
Will dorms, with their communal bathrooms and tight quarters, be able to house students? Will dining halls, with their buffet lines and cramped seating, be safe? Will large lectures, sports events and theater performances be possible? How will universities isolate people when they fall ill and track down those who may have been exposed? Would all classes be back in session or just some? What if there's a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the fall?
"It isn’t quick or easy to open a campus that has 65,000 people on it when things are operating normally, and we are going to have to make some fundamental changes to the way that we work," Rebecca Blank, chancellor at UW-Madison, said at a Board of Regents meeting this month.
And the risks of not fully preparing are equally daunting.
"We have a hospital here in Platteville, there's 25 beds. If they expand and use all the emergency room beds, it's 45 beds," Dennis Shields, chancellor of UW-Platteville, told regents. "So, I bring 7,000 people back into close contact on a daily basis and there's an outbreak — it can overwhelm that facility and put all of Grant County in danger. So we've got to be really careful about how we proceed."
Hybrid campuses, modified calendars
At UW-Milwaukee, Chancellor Mark Mone and a team of work groups are trying to determine just what it would take to bring people back in the fall.
"I'd say it is realistic for us to plan — we haven't decided yet — but to plan to have student, faculty and staff back this fall," Mone said. "How many and what percentage? I can't begin to say."
Mone said that one of several options is to provide "two types of UWMs": one online and the other in-person. This option may not be possible for every class, Mone said, but would provide flexibility for many.
An early survey of more than 1,000 UWM students found mixed responses to coming back to in-person classes in the fall and online learning. Some students said they'd only feel safe online. Others want the in-person experience.
Michael Alexander, chancellor of UW-Green Bay, said his university is looking at a hybrid model. UW-Green Bay announced this week it would reopen campuses to faculty and staff July 1, to begin preparation for the fall.
Some campuses have hinted at breaking up large lectures into smaller sections, or keeping them online but holding small in-person group discussions.
An advantage to having courses ready to deliver online and in-person is the flexibility created should a spike in cases force campuses to close once again. And there's one Wisconsin college that's taken the idea of flexibility one step further.
Beloit College decided in the spring semester that it would re-imagine its entire academic calendar. Rather than taking four courses across each of two 15-week semesters, students will take two courses in four 7.5-week sessions called "mods."
This allows Beloit more decision points: It could have Mod 1 online if the situation doesn't improve and move in-person in Mod 2 without losing a whole semester. Lab courses and other hands-on courses are concentrated in Mod 2, to buy more time.
Beloit plans to make a decision on fall classes by early July. But plans could still change.
"I can tell you with certainty that when we decide in July, I mean the way it's happened for the last eight weeks, there's no way that I could tell you that it would last," said Eric Boynton, provost and dean of the college.
Test, track, isolate and separate
For universities in the UW System, some major logistics for reopening campuses are being handled on a systemwide level.
In a meeting with the Board of Regents May 7, System President Ray Cross outlined five areas that will be managed by central administration: Widespread testing; tracing and tracking people who may have been exposed; isolation of those who are positive or exposed; separation and social distancing in public areas and large spaces; and providing personal protective equipment.
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The system is looking into various testing technologies to track the spread of the disease on campuses, including new tests that might detect the virus in saliva. And the tracking of people's movement would require buy-in from the people being monitored.
“We’re already testing tracing and tracking devices to see if they’ll work — I’ve got one on my phone — trying to figure out if we can follow people without being so intrusive that we’re invading their privacy," Cross said.
Protocols to sanitize and clean campuses, in addition to investments in other equipment and technology, will likely come at significant cost.
At UWM, every area of campus has been asked to compile a list of equipment needs should they reopen. Mone said he doesn't have an exact number, but the cost will be "substantial."
Milwaukee Area Technical College is on a much faster track. It restarted its in-person police academy this week and is offering labs with social distancing protocols on all its campuses June 8.
The college has some classes, like truck driving and health care clinicals, that are all but impossible to put online, President Vicki Martin said. MATC has 68% of its classes online for fall and plans to offer some in-person instruction if allowed by health officials.
"Moving forward, to be able to sanitize all our areas on a regular basis, to bring in additional folks to help with taking temperatures, some of the other things we're going to need to do to make sure that we have a safe and healthy environment in the summer will probably result in additional costs," Martin said.
Dorms? Dining halls? Campus culture?
As daunting as all that may be — modifying schedules, acquiring PPE, paying for cleaning and testing — perhaps the biggest wildcard in the reopening process is human behavior.
The interactions that happen outside the classroom are critical to students' college educations. Leaders across the state say they're still working out the details of how to reopen campus housing, if at all.
Campuses across the country have taken steps such as limiting each room to just one person, or allowing family members to live together.
A big question would be dorms with communal bathrooms. Marquette University, for example, has a dorm in which — at capacity — some 70 students on one floor share one communal bathroom with toilet and shower stalls.
Boynton said Beloit is looking at having time slots for students to eat in the dining halls, to prevent large crowds.
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And campuses must consider that they do not operate in a vacuum, leaders said. Students and staff travel on and off campuses and into the surrounding communities, making campus decisions community decisions.
Mone said one question will be how rules and best practices could be enforced when people's behavior on and off campus could affect the health of the campus community. He envisioned an "huge behavioral and public health campaign."
"I do think, to be realistic here, across campuses, there will be positive cases," Mone said. "We have porous boundaries on a campus like UWM."
Beloit College students are involved in the process of creating a "statement of campus culture," that would establish how they will engage with each other, with faculty and the neighborhoods they live in.
"You can have all of the planning and processes in the world in preparation, but so much of this is behavioral," Leslie Davidson, vice president of enrollment management at Beloit, said.
As communities navigate reopening in the wake of the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision overturning Gov. Tony Evers' safer-at-home order, educators hope they can be leaders finding a path forward.
"We are bellwethers — we're a signal post for what a lot of society is able to do," Mone said. "My own personal view is we have to make the efforts to live safely in a COVID world and I think societally, we will be with COVID for some time. So how do you operate in a manner that allows you to contribute to what we feel in education is so vitally important?"
Contact Devi Shastri at 414-224-2193 or DAShastri@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @DeviShastri.