President Floyd’s Update to Parents Sept. 15

September 15, 2020

Dear Parents,

Your students have been attending class, in-person, for exactly one week now. I want to let you know how things are going as we have reached the midterm point of classes. I am impressed with the work and effort students have put forth in making the transition between remote learning to in-person, socially-distanced learning.

Beyond the classroom, we have had an incredible turnout and engagement in the many activities that our Student Life team has put together. We know that it is difficult to stay distanced and have a social life, but our students have been adapting. We have stepped up our efforts to provide quality programming in settings that have appropriate social distancing. Students are still interacting and having fun and they are in class! We can see people smiling from their noses up and having a good time.

We have encouraged all students, as well as staff and faculty, to alert our student health services if they are experiencing any symptoms that could be coronavirus-related. Out of caution, we have acted quickly to quarantine or isolate those individuals. Even with that, we have only quarantined 17 students so far,several of those are off-campus, and at the time I’m writing this, we have had 0 positive COVID-19 tests. We are off to a very strong start and we feel that the commitment of students to being here and following the guidelines is helping us stay healthy and safe. I have been meeting with various groups to reinforce this mindset.

We have a COVID-19 taskforce of leaders that meet daily to analyze and assess the situation on campus. We are grateful for our new Student Health Center, that is allowing students to be cared for in a nice, new environment. We anticipate that there will be positive tests at some point, as there have been on all college campuses. We remain confident in our ability to isolate the students, whether they are going home or staying in designated places on campus, so that we can limit the number of people affected by the virus and continue to keep our campus open. We will update our public dashboard regularly in an effort to keep you informed in between these messages.

We will carry on. I will keep you informed as we move through the semester. Please continue to encourage your students to keep up the mask wearing, social distancing, and hand washing. Thank you for the incredible parent support as we work through this semester together. I appreciate you!

Tony