RALEIGH – NC State University learned quite a bit about managing through the coronavirus pandemic this fall.

“The first thing we learned is that we can educate students safely in the classroom,” NC State Chancellor Randy Woodson says in the accompanying video. There wasn’t a single case of community spread in the university’s classrooms or labs.

“The other thing we’ve learned is that the most critical chokepoint within the university for the spread of the virus is in the congregate living arrangements – whether it’s Greek houses or residence halls or off-campus apartment complexes,” Woodson says.

So when students return for spring semester, there will be policies to limit student interactions if they aren’t wearing masks, and the university will reduce housing density. It will reopen at less than 50% of capacity. 

“We’ll have about 4,100 students in on-campus housing, and we can handle 10,000,” Woodson says. “So we can have one per room.

“The other thing we’ve learned is that it’s critically important to have adequate quarantine and isolation space,” Woodson adds.

BUT THE BIGGEST LESSON of the fall involved testing, Woodson says in a second segment.

“The ability to have an adequate re-entry testing in addition to surveillance testing during the semester is just critically important, so that you get ahead of the virus before it spreads dramatically,” he says.

Testing was not as widely available when students came to campus in August as it is now, Woodson says, plus results took four to seven days to come back – not very useful for a prompt response.

More robust testing “will give us much more confidence that we know what we have and where we have it, and … as Barney Fife once said on Andy Griffith, ‘Nip it in the bud’ – and so get ahead of it before it’s out of control,” Woodson says.

Asymptomatic or surveillance testing involves routinely and sometimes randomly testing a sample of students, faculty and staff. The university tested a sample of 500 people a week in the fall, Woodson says, but that number will be closer to 2,500 a week during spring semester.

“That’ll help us know that we’ve got things under control,” he says.