Brown University plans to reopen its Providence campus this fall, with an extra semester of coursework and routine COVID testing.
The university will add a third semester, in the summer, to reduce the number of students on campus over the year. Upperclassmen will begin in the fall, and freshmen will begin in the spring. All students will have the option to take classes remotely.
“If we can get all of our students here safely and healthy and testing, I think the goal would be to keep them here even if we have to go fully remote,” said Brown University President Christina Paxson.
Paxson said the school will have the capacity to quarantine students who contract COVID.
“If a student became ill would that be cause for closing down the university? The answer is no,” Paxson said Tuesday. “We’re in the middle of a pandemic, so we’re prepared to deal with illness and we think it is likely that there will be some cases of illness.”
The school has already begun a pilot COVID testing program that will be expanded to all staff and students once fall semester begins. At this point it is unclear how that testing will be carried out, Paxson said.
When the COVID pandemic shut down colleges and universities nationwide in the spring, Paxson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, urging schools to reopen, in-person, in the fall. Like most colleges, Brown shut down abruptly in the spring, and quickly moved classes online.
