Cal U planning to open campus for fall semester

By DEB ERDLEY and TEGHAN SIMONTON

Trib Total Media

Universities that bring thousands of students to Southwestern Pennsylvania every fall are offering reassurances that they hope to reopen shuttered classrooms and dormitories in August.

Although the region is scheduled to begin reopening on May 15, colleges and universities are not yet permitted to resume face-to-face operations in classrooms and labs. They remained in distance learning mode as students completed the spring semester, with no firm date on when they will be permitted to resume operations on campus.

Officials at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and California University of Pennsylvania — a trio of private, quasi-public and public schools that collectively enrolled more than 50,000 students — tried to address some of the uncertainties the coronavirus has created for families and students:

• Geraldine Jones, president of Cal U, said the state-owned university is making plans to reopen its campus this fall.

• CMU President Farnam Jahanian said he expect the private Oakland-based research university will have “thousands and thousands of students” on campus this fall.

• Pitt Chancellor Patrick Gallagher said three task forces are working to transition back to life on campus amid a new normal.

Colleges and universities across the country that were forced to shift to distance learning in March are weighing the impact the pandemic will have on enrollment and operations this fall. Some universities, including the three local schools, are planning for hybrid operations that would include on-campus and online learning.

Their announcements came amid indications that the pandemic will spur declines in enrollment this fall.

The Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, the organization that oversees state grants to Pennsylvania students, raised concerns that some students are rethinking college plans. PHEAA officials said between mid-March and the end of April, applications for financial aid declined by 31,000 from the same period last year.

That decline reflects trends across the country, where financial aid applications for the coming year have dropped 6% as high school seniors here and across the nation say they are reconsidering college.

Colleges and universities here said they plan to offer options.

“We know how to operate without covid-19, and we know — painfully — how to operate amid an acute outbreak in our region,” Gallagher wrote in message to the Pitt community. “Moving forward, we must explore the uncharted territory between these two extremes.”

Speaking to Pittsburgh’s technology community on Friday, CMU’s Jahanian said he was impressed by how quickly his faculty was able to pivot to offering 2,500 courses online in a three-day period in March.

“Enrollment looks good,” Jahanian said when asked about numbers for the coming year.

CMU is planning for a hybrid model this fall that will see some students back on campus and others taking advantage of remote learning options, he said.

At Pitt, Gallagher first broached the topic of a hybrid semester several weeks ago. He said the task forces will address a range of scenarios.

“No later than early June, we will identify specific strategies to respond to each scenario and offer specific guidance so that faculty and staff can prepare for the year ahead,” Gallagher wrote. “By early July, we will share explicit guidance with students and their families so that they can begin to make plans for the fall.”

At Cal U, Jones said planning is being driven both by concerns for student health and welfare and the recognition that “many students prefer to learn in on-campus classes.” She said arrangements are under way to permit those who prefer remote instruction to take all of their classes online. Before the pandemic, the university had an online enrollment of about 2,000 students.

At CMU, where computer scientists began pioneering in the digital world decades ago, Jahanian predicted the pandemic will expedite changes already underway across higher education.

“I love Zoom,” he said, referring to the video conferencing service that has rocketed to widespread use. “But don’t get me wrong , learning goes beyond delivering bits and bytes on Zoom. … You need that face-to-face interaction. But we’re discovering new ways of enhancing their experience through technology. I hope Carnegie Mellon will be a model for the rest of the nation to follow.”