BOULDER, Colo. — The University of Colorado Boulder on Tuesday announced that classes will return to campus in the fall with an array of social distancing requirements and a shortened in-person semester.
Fall classes will begin Aug. 24, as scheduled, and the semester will be completed online after Thanksgiving break, CU Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano wrote in a letter faculty, staff and students.
DiStefano's letter outlined a "Road Map to Fall 2020," which includes plans for on-campus testing, requiring masks for all students and employees and an effort to reduce a person's potential for infection by at least 55 percent.
The academic calendar would be a standard 16-week semester, with in-person classes through Nov. 25 and remote learning after Thanksgiving until the spring semester begins.
Classes would be split into multiple sessions and held in larger spaces to reduce density among students, and class scheduling would be across the entire day, from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday through Friday.
DiStefano said the plan "prioritizes health and safety considerations required to minimize risk and enable an on-campus academic model that accommodates both in-person and remote learning."
Go here to read the full road map plan.
The social distancing measures will include:
- Requiring masks for all students and employees.
- Reducing density of people from normal operations.
- Forming cohorts of first-year students to minimize the number of overall person-to-person interactions in classrooms and residence halls.
- Implementing building control measures, such as physical distancing in all classrooms and learning spaces.
- Providing greater sanitization measures, including ensuring surface hygiene.
- Reserving residence hall space for quarantining and isolation.
