Boston University President Robert A. Brown announces that the University will be back in the fall, with flexible learning, a testing lab for COVID-19, and health and safety measures to make campus as safe as possible.
Expect a very different Move-in during August, one of many changes the campus will experience. Photo by Michael D. Spencer
BU Campuses to Reopen, In-Person Classes Will Resume This Fall
President Brown says new norms to include coronavirus testing, flexible learning, masks, and social distancing
The residential experience of Boston University will resume this fall, Robert A. Brown, president of BU, announced Tuesday in letters to new and returning students. But, he wrote, it will be a “very different campus,” than what students, faculty, and staff are accustomed to—with COVID-19 testing and tracing, a blend of in-person and remote teaching and learning, redesigned experiences inside campus residences, dining halls, classrooms, and labs, and daily activities where masks and social distancing are expected.
“I very much appreciate all the effort you put into the completion of the spring semester with the unprecedented disruption caused by moving all of Boston University’s classes to remote learning mode on very short notice,” Brown wrote. “Your adaptability and the extraordinary effort, flexibility, and resourcefulness of our faculty, teaching staff, and students were the critical elements for the successful completion of the semester.”
The University has launched a website, Back2BU, that it will update throughout the summer as details about campus life in the fall are worked out.
We are well on our way to creating a campus environment where our students can study and learn with our faculty and staff in as safe an environment as possible.
In his letters, Brown said his announcement hinged on two key elements that were necessary in order to bring BU’s community back, both of which are now coming together: a testing center on campus that will allow the University to perform its own COVID-19 tests on students, faculty, and staff and get results quickly to determine if a person needs to be isolated or requires further treatment, and a strategy BU is calling Learn from Anywhere, or LfA, that will allow students flexibility in choosing whether to take classes in person or remotely.
To create an on-campus experience for students that allows for personal, yet socially safe, interactions, BU officials say they anticipate that students would build smaller communities for themselves. As the Back2BU website explains: “In residences, for example, students will need to work together to manage ‘a household’—a shared room, apartment, or suite—within a community of other ‘households’ with shared spaces such as bathrooms, elevators, and entryways.”
It’s also likely that campus experiences like dining halls and the BU Shuttle will be different, with rules about which doors to use while exiting the bus, and slimmed down menus for dining that encourage a more “grab and go” approach, rather than congregating at tables.
BU, like colleges and universities across the country, was forced by the spread of the coronavirus to shutter its campus in mid-March and pivot quickly to remote classes. The changes were all made in an effort to protect the 40,000 members of the BU community from a virus that has now claimed more than 112,000 lives in the United States.
What had been a typical spring semester saw students and faculty forced to quickly adapt to classes on Zoom and canceled sports seasons, arts events, and daily life without those personal interactions that give a campus vibrancy and a sense of a community. The semester ended on May 17 with a virtual send-off for the Class of 2020.
In his letter to members of the incoming class of 2024, Brown offered these words: “The COVID-19 pandemic has created uncertainty for all of us; the uncertainty is especially pronounced for students (and their parents) as you head off for your first year at Boston University.”
He acknowledged in his letters that he does not yet have all the answers to what the fall semester will look like. “We will communicate with you about the exact timing in August for the opening of our residential campus,” he wrote. Other questions still being explored include the official start and end dates of the fall semester, when Move-in will begin, whether BU Athletics events will take place, and how dining halls will operate.
“The unprecedented disruption caused by COVID-19 has caused us to pivot and rethink almost every aspect of our academic community and the operation of the University,” he wrote. “We are well on our way to creating a campus environment where our students can study and learn with our faculty and staff in as safe an environment as possible.”
Key to that environment is the approach the University is calling Learn from Anywhere, or LfA.
By providing students with the option to attend classes in person or remotely, depending on their circumstances, their preferences, and the course the coronavirus takes later this year, the hope is that flexibility and students’ ability to choose will go a long way toward making the campus feel safer for everyone. Under LfA, students can choose to learn in the classroom or to participate remotely from their dorm rooms or off-campus housing.
“LfA will give you the choice you need to continue your studies toward a degree,” Brown wrote. “It will also give your professors a way to manage and limit the number of students in classroom and laboratory spaces at any one time.”
Brown’s letters about BU’s return came a month after Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker unveiled a plan to gradually reopen the Massachusetts economy. Just as Baker’s plan includes four phases, tied to different segments of the economy and workforce, Brown said the University has its own four-phase approach.
- Phase 1 (which began on May 25): Gradually resume research and clinical services in strict accordance with public health guidelines. Most faculty and staff will continue to work remotely, and the only residential students on campus will be those who cannot go home.
- Phase 2 (planned to begin by July): The return to campus of very specific student cohorts, such as first-year medical and dental students, with very limited classroom instruction. Additional staff and faculty who are actively involved in these programs will begin to come back to campus, also under strict public health guidelines.
- Phase 3 (planned for throughout August): Repopulating our residential campus and preparing for classes in the fall as described in this letter.
- Phase 4 (in the fall): Begin classroom teaching, research, and other residential community activities, all substantially reshaped by COVID-19 public health and safety protocols.
“Boston University will be back in the fall,” Brown wrote, “and I look forward to welcoming you back to campus.”
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