The new plan to start Stanford in September

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fall quarter might start early - 82lsju - 06-02-2020

Quote:The Faculty Senate Steering Committee will vote on Tuesday on whether to start fall quarter on Sept. 14, one week earlier than planned, and end classes before Thanksgiving break for students outside of the Graduate School of Business, the Law School, the School of Medicine and the Graduate School of Education.

Under the proposed plan, “students in residence” would be expected to leave campus after classes end on Nov. 20, and they would take exams remotely from Nov. 30 through Dec. 4.

https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/06/01/faculty-senate-steering-committee-to-vote-tomorrow-on-starting-fall-quarter-one-week-early/

RE: fall quarter might start early - BobK - 06-02-2020

Thanks I was about to post but got carried away by the fake news by two

Hope this works. We all want normal

RE: fall quarter might start early - Farm93 - 06-02-2020

This idea makes a lot of sense.

Thanksgiving will create massive COVID-19 concerns as thousands of students would spend just enough time in airports, airplanes, public transportation and friends & family from all over the USA to then have COVID-19 symptoms on campus.

Starting the quarter with a plan to have finals off site should also increase the odds that the courses will ultimately conclude with grades rather than S/NC.

And for this board...while I don't think students will be in the stands I suspect having everyone settled in to their dorms should create a better campus environment for the game vs USC on Sept 19.

RE: fall quarter might start early - 2006alum - 06-02-2020

This seems eminently sensible. To be honest, I'm somewhat hopeful they make this a permanent change; having spent a fair amount of time in higher ed, I've always found the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas to be of such marginal use anyway. And if finals can be administered remotely, there really is no good reason to come back to campus after Thanksgiving. For both financial and public health reasons, the less people have to shuttle back and forth across the country, the better.

RE: fall quarter might start early - Papa John - 06-02-2020

Agree with 2006alum, and would add that my classroom attendance goes down if I'm teaching Monday/Wednesday during Thanksgiving Week because my students are travelling. Down a bit on Monday, and there's almost no point in having Wednesday-day-before-Thanksgiving class--although I do because it's required. Then we usually have one full week of classes--used to be called dead week--and finals the following week.

So my preference would be to start the quarter two weeks early and end the week before Thanksgiving. But that would probably overlap with summer sessions, so you solve one problem and create another...

RE: fall quarter might start early - Jamesy - 06-02-2020

(06-02-2020, 11:35 AM)Papa John Wrote: Agree with 2006alum, and would add that my classroom attendance goes down if I'm teaching Monday/Wednesday during Thanksgiving Week because my students are travelling. Down a bit on Monday, and there's almost no point in having Wednesday-day-before-Thanksgiving class--although I do because it's required. Then we usually have one full week of classes--used to be called dead week--and finals the following week.

So my preference would be to start the quarter two weeks early and end the week before Thanksgiving. But that would probably overlap with summer sessions, so you solve one problem and create another...

It's official: https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/06/02/faculty-senate-steering-committee-votes-to-start-fall-quarter-1-week-earlier/

I agree that two weeks would make more sense, get finals out of the way before Thanksgiving rather than saving them for after. FYI, there have not been Thanksgiving week classes since 2004.

RE: fall quarter might start early - Papa John - 06-03-2020

(06-02-2020, 01:56 PM)Jamesy Wrote: I agree that two weeks would make more sense, get finals out of the way before Thanksgiving rather than saving them for after. FYI, there have not been Thanksgiving week classes since 2004.

Oh wow, thanks for letting me know, Jamesy. So in fall 2019 Stanford had 9 weeks of instruction, took a full week off for Thanksgiving, then had a 10th week of instruction followed by Finals week. That is brutal from an instructor's perspective.

Maybe Stanford and other institutions will make these changes permanent. Again I'm aware of how moving the start of fall quarter earlier will impact summer session--and some students would have a reason to return to campus after Thanksgiving because of research projects, work, sports, etc.--but from the standpoints of health (even without Covid there is flu season) and instructional integrity it makes sense.

The new plan to start Stanford in September - BobK - 06-03-2020

Not all undergrads on campus at once

https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/06/03/stanford-plans-to-house-half-of-undergrads-on-campus-per-quarter-next-school-year/

RE: The new plan to start Stanford in September - 2006alum - 06-03-2020

Here's the full letter; tl;dr: Stanford is not messing around here:

Quote:To our Stanford community,
We write to you at a moment when many challenges are pressing upon our country, and upon the lives of the members of our Stanford community. All of us continue to confront a global pandemic as well as the urgent issues of racial justice that have been laid bare once again in the last week. We want to begin by conveying our wish that you are safe and healthy, and that you reach out to the university's many resources for support whenever they may be helpful to you.

We are writing today to share more information with you about our academic planning for the fall quarter and the rest of the 2020-21 academic year. Though our planning is not complete and some important decisions are yet to be made, the overall structure for the year ahead is coming into place, and we thought it was important to share our thinking with you as soon as possible rather than waiting until every aspect is worked out. We hope this information is helpful as you begin to prepare for next year.
As we work to resume in-person activities at Stanford, we are committed to creating an academic and residential experience that provides for the safety of our community as our top priority. We're mindful that our main campus is located in Santa Clara County, which was one of the nation's early hotspots for COVID-19 but then made dramatic progress in limiting its spread due to aggressive public health efforts. Our plans for the coming year must provide for the safety of students, who will travel to Stanford from all over the world, as well as the safety of our faculty and staff who interact with students.

Our planning teams have been working thoughtfully and consultatively, informed by medical professionals and public health guidance, with the aim of providing the best possible educational experience for our students while limiting the spread of disease and ensuring the support systems that will be needed when new COVID-19 cases develop. Robust processes for testing, contact tracing and isolation will be essential to have in place. We have an expert committee led by the dean of our School of Medicine, Lloyd Minor, that is developing recommendations for a university-wide plan that will guide these activities.
Three factors have particularly influenced our thinking about the coming year.

First, we want to plan for a scenario that we have a high degree of confidence we can stick to, even if COVID-19 infections increase in a second wave. Shutting down mid-quarter and sending students home would not be a desirable outcome for anyone.

Second, we know that physical distancing is critical to limiting the spread of infection, yet we also know that our classrooms and undergraduate residences do not allow for sufficient physical distancing when they are fully occupied at their regular capacity. In normal times, Stanford is fortunate to be able to provide on-campus housing for nearly all undergraduates, and this is a much-valued component of the student experience here. But providing for sufficient physical distancing in the time of COVID-19 means that we have to consider having fewer undergraduates on campus all at once. We would like to do this while still allowing all undergraduates to have the opportunity to be on campus with their peers and faculty members to the extent safely possible.

Third, if we are to continue our on-campus operations even if there is a resurgence of infections in our community, we will need to have sufficient residential space available to allow students to quarantine or self-isolate on campus.

With these and other considerations in mind, we outline below the features of the current plan that has been developed for the 2020-21 academic year. Final implementation will depend on the public health situation, and on any requirements that may be imposed by our state and county officials. We may not know those things definitively until late summer, so we encourage you to be flexible in your personal planning to the greatest extent possible.

Early start to fall quarter: Stanford will start the fall quarter one week early, on Monday, September 14, and end classes by Friday, November 20 (though our business, education, law and medical schools may adopt their own calendars). We will ask undergraduates who are on campus to depart when classes end, and final exams for all undergraduates (and most graduate students) will be held remotely the week after Thanksgiving. This will allow students who are residing on campus to travel home for Thanksgiving and remain there, rather than traveling back and forth for Thanksgiving and increasing the potential for virus spread. For students unable to leave campus due to exceptional circumstances, we will have a housing program available through the winter break, with details available later this fall.

Student residences: For 2020-21, we expect all undergraduates who are on campus to be housed in rooms that have private sleeping spaces, such as a single or a two-room double, in order to provide for sufficient physical distancing. This will reduce the total number of undergraduate housing spaces available in any one quarter; however, it will limit the risk of disease transmission between students in a multi-occupancy room and also have the important benefit of providing quieter spaces with less distraction for students engaged in online coursework, discussed further below. We will be working on the housing assignment process and will be in touch with undergraduates as that process takes shape.
For graduate students, as we have shared before, we do not expect major residential changes because our apartment-style living spaces with single-occupancy bedrooms on and off campus already provide for greater physical distancing than do most of our undergraduate residences. Some adjustments in graduate housing may be needed to support public health needs. The graduate housing lottery is currently open through June 10.

Undergraduates on campus by quarter, in a four-quarter year: In order to provide for the physical distancing needed in our classrooms and residences, and to be able to set aside sufficient housing for quarantine or self-isolation in case of a wave of infections, our default plan is to have half of our undergraduates (that is, the equivalent of two class years) back on campus for the fall quarter and each subsequent quarter, changing each quarter. It may need to be a smaller number in a given quarter if health conditions require it, which we hope will not be the case; in fact, we hope that health conditions will allow us instead to be able to expand access later in the year.

We also intend to have a four-quarter year, including the summer of 2021. Since most students take courses over three quarters, under our default scenario the four-quarter year would allow all Stanford undergraduates to complete two quarters of instruction in residence on the Stanford campus in 2020-21, and require most to complete at least one quarter remotely.
Assuming that public health conditions allow, we intend to have undergraduate first-year and transfer students among those on campus for the fall quarter, to allow them to get to know our campus, form community and begin their Stanford careers in the most positive way. We also intend to have graduating seniors on campus in the spring. Beyond that, we have not made decisions about which undergraduates would come to campus in which quarters. Our staff are having conversations with faculty and students about different options for bringing students back, whether by class year or by another rubric that aligns with the academic programs we offer. We will have a period of consultation to gather further input on these issues, and we welcome your input at academic-continuity@stanford.edu. We will aim to provide more information by the end of June, though again, final plans will be contingent on any requirements of state and local authorities.

In addition, we know there are many students with special circumstances. As we did during spring quarter, we are planning for a limited number of spaces for students who have a need to be on campus due to a special circumstance. Details about this will be forthcoming.

Teaching: While in-person classes will be offered on campus, much of our undergraduate teaching will still need to be done online in the 2020-21 year. Indeed, we will need to view online as the default teaching option for 2020-21, to be supplemented by in-person instruction as much as is safe and feasible for students and faculty who are present on campus.

In addition to online learning being necessary for all undergraduates who are away from campus, we do not have enough on-campus classrooms to offer all classes in person while providing for sufficient physical distancing of at least 6 feet. We expect that all classes larger than 50 students will need to be taught online, although the limits could be smaller depending on local health conditions. Class times likely will need to extend from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. to make the best use of our classroom spaces. And, since some classes can only be held in person, they may need to be offered multiple times as different populations return to campus throughout the year. The provost will be in touch separately with our faculty on these issues, with deep appreciation for their work in making these adjustments for a most unusual academic year.

We will be working to make the online educational experience as engaging and enriching as possible. The rapid switch to online learning this spring left little time for instructors to redesign their courses for an online format, and the priority was ensuring that students could finish out the academic year. In preparation for next year, teaching and learning experts from across campus are making themselves available to instructors to optimize their course offerings for online delivery. We are also looking at ways to better replicate other features of in-person teaching, such as small group interactions, academic support and peer-to-peer learning.

We expect graduate and professional education to move forward at near-full capacity next year, albeit with some instruction and research conducted online. Calendars, degree requirements and academic procedures in our graduate and professional programs vary, and students should follow the guidance that will be provided by your school or department.

Campus life: It's also important to be upfront about what we expect in terms of campus life while COVID-19 continues to be a factor in our lives. It's likely that students will need to wear face coverings regularly while on campus. Physical distancing protocols will be in place for our campus buildings and common spaces. We expect limitations on gatherings. And, we'll likely ask students not to travel outside the local area while they are enrolled on campus, or otherwise to self-isolate upon their return.

For our incoming first-year undergraduates, we know this is not how you originally envisioned beginning your college career. But we will work to make the coming year as rich and rewarding an experience as possible within the constraints of this unusual time we are living through. If, upon reflection, you choose to take a gap year rather than enrolling this fall, please let the admissions office know by June 15. Also, please be aware that you will need to enroll at Stanford for your entire first year, not for individual quarters alone. (The Leave of Absence process will continue to be available for previously enrolled students who wish to use it.)

We hope this information is helpful for your planning. You will have more questions, certainly, and we will be in touch with additional information as it becomes available. Thank you, once again, for the incredible flexibility, perseverance and care for others that you have shown as members (or incoming members!) of the Stanford community. We look forward to seeing you again, back on The Farm, just as soon as possible.

Sincerely,
Marc Tessier-Lavigne
President
Persis Drell
Provost

RE: The new plan to start Stanford in September - 82lsju - 06-03-2020

here's a link to the letter

https://healthalerts.stanford.edu/covid-19/2020/06/03/a-message-from-president-marc-tessier-lavigne-and-provost-persis-drell-on-academic-planning-for-the-fall-quarter-and-2020-21-academic-year/

RE: The new plan to start Stanford in September - needle - 06-03-2020

Sort of seems like they started with the goal of private sleeping spaces for all undergraduates and then worked backwards to figure out how to get there.

Only other thing I'd say is that there are probably three equally important parts to re-opening a residential campus: surveillance/testing capability, risk minimization and then protocols/procedures for when there is an outbreak in housing.

RE: fall quarter might start early - stupac2 - 06-03-2020

I was a freshman in '05, and that fall quarter Lenny Susskind was teaching Physics 60. Naturally he showed up to lecture that week and was very confused about why there were no students. I'm sure he wasn't alone but he was the only one I knew of.

It's funny because he's very much the absent-minded professor, playing so true to type was classic.

RE: fall quarter might start early - chrisk - 06-03-2020

Today's announcement with the outline for next year
- half the undergrads on campus in each of 4 quarters, including summer 2021
- all freshman and new transfers on campus in the fall
- most classes still online
- professionial schools will have fewer issues with residency but class delivery still an issue
- fall sports would need some accommodation to get entire roster on campus in fall

https://healthalerts.stanford.edu/covid-19/2020/06/03/a-message-from-president-marc-tessier-lavigne-and-provost-persis-drell-on-academic-planning-for-the-fall-quarter-and-2020-21-academic-year/

RE: The new plan to start Stanford in September - Papa John - 06-03-2020

I wonder how many students will avoid the chaos and take a gap year. Among other things, Stanford asks for gap-year confirmation by June 15, but Stanford also indicates they won't be informing students which two quarters they would be on campus until the end of the month...

RE: The new plan to start Stanford in September - chrisk - 06-03-2020

Seems like many athletes would need special accommodations, depending on what model they choose for having students in residence. Given the high number of athletes if they are given extra quarters it could squeeze out some other students.
Also, there are some international and low-income students who may need a 3rd quarter in residence.

RE: The new plan to start Stanford in September - CardinalSagehen - 06-03-2020

Oof. I'm not judging the plan, but this sounds totally miserable.

Put yourself back in an 18 year-old mindset for a moment. Contact with your peers is practically the whole point of a residential college experience.

RE: fall quarter might start early - BobK - 06-03-2020

Plus there are sports that are 2 Qtrs and some are 3 Qtrs

RE: fall quarter might start early - 82lsju - 06-03-2020

(06-03-2020, 03:41 PM)BobK Wrote: Plus there are sports that are 2 Qtrs and some are 3 Qtrs

but not all athletes live on campus now so I would assume on a non-resident quarter they could live off campus and still participate in their sport (if their sport is actually happening)

RE: The new plan to start Stanford in September - burger - 06-03-2020

The plan seems...okay? There may not be any better way to get students on campus safely. I hope they're planning very frequent testing of all students and staff.

One issue not mentioned in the letter: tuition. Surely, they can't charge full tuition when students will be spending half of each year at home, right? I'd be pissed if I was paying the same amount for a quarter spent at my parents' house vs. a quarter in on campus (excepting room and board).

RE: The new plan to start Stanford in September - terry - 06-03-2020

I hate this plan.

But I'm not sure there are better options.

I feel really sorry for the students who are stuck with this mess.

I'm glad my kids are out of college. (One is still in a doctoral program but that's a whole different dynamic.)