Syracuse University will resume on-campus classes in August unless instructed otherwise by public health officials, Chancellor Kent Syverud said Sunday.

The university can better serve its students and remedy its financial situation by bringing students back to campus in the fall, Syverud said in an episode of the podcast “Swing State” published April 26. A return to in-person instruction will require SU to adopt measures that will limit the spread of the coronavirus on campus, he said.

“Unless public health officials say we can’t, Syracuse University will open in the beginning of the fall,” Syverud said. “I think that’s going to be financially hard, and I think that’s going to require a lot of people to work really hard to do things differently.”

SU announced March 16 it would transition to online classes for the remainder of the semester in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Coronavirus causes COVID-19, a respiratory disease that has infected 295,106 and killed 17,638 in New York state as of Tuesday.

The university may consider keeping large lecture classes virtual in the fall, supplementing them with smaller, in-person discussion sections, Syverud said. SU is also seeking the capability to conduct COVID-19 testing on students, he said.

Ideally, any students who test positive for the virus at SU in the fall would enter quarantine and receive treatment while continuing their classes virtually, Syverud said. He said these measures would help protect older faculty and staff who are especially vulnerable to COVID-19.

“We have to spend the resources on thermometers and testing and protection for elderly faculty or faculty that are at risk,” Syverud said. “The key thing is being ready with better testing, quicker and better treatment and better ability to separate and contact monitor.”

Christopher Newfield, professor of literature and American studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, joined Syverud as a guest on the podcast. Newfield suggested colleges may also employ technology to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in classes, such as thermal sensors that can take students’ temperatures before they enter a classroom.

Syverud said he agreed with Newfield on this point.

One of the podcast’s hosts, Heidi Legg, asked Syverud how families who have struggled financially during the COVID-19 pandemic can justify paying for college tuition.

“That’s the $65,000 cost of attendance question,” Syverud answered. “All I can say is we have to deliver an experience that’s worth the cost and we have to come up with better ways for people to bear it.”

SU officials announced on April 20 that the university had lost $35 million due to COVID-19. The university plans to enact several measures to minimize the virus’s financial impact on the 2020-21 academic year, including freezing salaries and hiring for faculty and staff, reducing university-wide costs and halting non-essential campus construction projects.

Under the new measures, Syverud will join SU’s senior administrators, athletic directors and some coaches in taking a 10% pay reduction.

The university is also considering ways it can allocate its resources to assist in the fight against COVID-19, Syverud said.

“We’re turning our hotels into places for people to stay, first responders to stay,” he said. “We’re looking at one of our main athletic facilities and turning it into a hospital. We’re donating our people and our expertise.”

Politicians, public health officials and university leaders should work to allow in-person education to resume in the fall, Syverud said. There are elements of the college experience that a virtual learning environment can’t recreate, he said.

“I think that people go to American universities and have over everywhere in the world, because it’s not just the classes. It’s the parties and protests and the guest lectures and the performances,” Syverud said. “People aren’t going to pay for the emergency experience we were able to provide in the quick transition to digital learning.”

Published on April 28, 2020 at 9:06 pm

Contact Chris: cjhippen@syr.edu