CHAPEL HILL – Some of the plans are still coming together. But UNC Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz says he’s confident students can safely return to campus this fall.

“Most people are eager to get back,” Guskiewicz says in the accompanying video from a Zoom interview. “We’ll only do that if it is safe to do such.”

In what he refers to as The Roadmap for Fall 2020, Carolina students will start classes eight days early, on Aug. 10, and finish before Thanksgiving in an attempt to avoid a potential second wave of the coronavirus.

Students will generally experience smaller classes – large lectures will either be taught online or broken into smaller sections. Some professors will use a “high-flex” model where they teach in person and online at the same time to reach off-campus and international students.

“It’s going to look and feel very different this fall, but I’m confident that we can do this safely,” Guskiewicz says.

But it will require students, faculty and staff to abide by a shared set of expectations, he says.

“It’s going to take an acceptance of these community standards for us to do this safely.”

Masks

One of those standards will be an expectation that students wear masks in classrooms and confined spaces.

“The adherence to these community standards is going to be critical to us having a successful fall semester,” Guskiewicz says.

Assurance for parents

The university is still developing plans for testing students, faculty and staff, Guskiewicz says, but it is fortunate to have some of the world’s best experts on infectious diseases.

“We have incredible faculty-scholars in this area that are guiding our decision-making,” he says.

Officials are planning for multiple possible scenarios. If a student is infected, the university will pursue contact tracing to try to identify the source, and it has reserved isolation dorms for those students.

“If I wasn’t comfortable sending my own child to school here at Carolina this fall, I wouldn’t ask another parent to do so,” says Guskiewicz, who has a rising junior at the school.

The university will offer community sessions and webinars before the semester to inform students and parents about expectations, he says. All students will have the option of remote learning. It will also offer Carolina Away, a remote-study option in general education subjects for as many as 1,000 first-year students.

Flexibility for faculty

Not every faculty member will want to resume teaching in person, Guskiewicz says, and that will require balancing individual needs with institutional ones. 

Some instructors might teach in person. Some might hold office hours via Zoom. Some might try a combination of remote and in-person. Some might teach entirely online.

“We’re really providing a lot of flexibility,” he says. “We want to ensure the safety and well-being of our campus community. That remains our top priority.”

Guskiewicz says he knows most students thrive on campus.

“We want to provide as much of that as we can, safely,” he says. He adds that he remains impressed by how faculty adapted in March to shift their classes online in a “force experiment.”