Fall

It’s painful to even ask the question at this point, but what do we do if there’s a second wave of virus in, say, October?

It’s plausible enough that it seems worth thinking about.

I’m less concerned about September, honestly. If this virus acts like the 1918 flu, we could see major remission in the warmer months, followed by a second wave when the weather cools. And if we can’t get back onto campus in September, we’ll know at least somewhat in advance. It would still be terrible, but we wouldn’t be forced to switch modes midstream.

But if we were forced out in, say, late October or early November, things would be much more awkward. And it could happen.

So assuming the following:

1. We don’t know whether or when the virus will stage a rip-roaring comeback.

2. Abrupt midsemester shifts of format are suboptimal.

3. People who were forgiving of being displaced the first time around would be much less forgiving the second time around.

It seems worth coming up with contingency plans now.

For present purposes, I’ll focus on the teaching/learning side, as opposed to the financial side. Finances deserve their own analysis, but they tend to be more idiosyncratic by state. Some states have local funding and some don’t; some states have zeroed out state funding altogether; some use "millages" or dedicated taxes and others use annual appropriations. I’ve already made my recommendations for federal stimuli, so I’ll leave that there.

Obviously, the fewer classes students are taking at any one time, the less devastating an interruption and shift of format would be. In its way, that’s an argument for something like a quarter system, rather than a semester system. But while the math behind that is solid, it would require more preparation time than we have for September.

Certainly, we can move more classes online in advance. But many faculty and students still prefer in-person classes, given the option. And some fields of study really require some sort of physical presence, whether in a lab, a studio or a theater.

One professor locally suggested moving classes to every-other-week hybrids, with alternating weeks. Half of the courses could be on campus for even-numbered weeks, and the other half on odd-numbered weeks. The idea is that a class built as a hybrid can shift to online more easily, because the infrastructure is already there, but that in the meantime, professors could build that personal rapport with students. It could also work as a light version of social distancing, with only half as many faculty and students around at any given time. I’m intrigued by the thought, though experience tells me that a change like that at scale would have a host of unintended consequences. I’d love to get my wise and worldly readers’ thoughts on that one.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see new experimentation with synchronous online instruction. Enthusiasm for the forced remote format has been higher than any of us expected; for some classes, we may have backed into something good. Accidental discoveries still count.

Even if the virus goes away and never comes back, I could imagine us moving some of our larger meetings online when we get back. I’ve been struck by how much smoother some of them have been in the new format.

It’s hard to build classes, let alone entire schedules, to make a midsemester pivot graceful. But that’s the task before us.

Wise and worldly readers, do you have (or have you seen) any good ways to build a fall schedule that would allow for a more graceful pivot if the virus comes roaring back?