Last Wednesday, the Board of Trustees discussed possibly continuing in-person course delivery following the shortened Spring Break at the end of this month. This differs from the original plan to switch to online instruction when students return from three day Spring Break.
“It was a new idea from them, had not been ‘on the books’ beforehand, and took faculty completely by surprise,” Renee M. Laegreid, an American history professor, said.
Clifford Marks, an English professor, said, “As a representative of the faculty, I can tell you that I am unaware of any faculty member who favors altering the semester.”
According to Laegreid, discussion is still underway since the change would disrupt students who had made plans to leave campus after break. She said as far as she knows, nothing is concrete yet.
The Board of Trustees has not yet released an official statement about the possible change.
“Staying the course would seem to be a big pro for students and faculty. Students and faculty have been remarkably resilient, adjusting to the chaos of COVID for the past year, and this semester seems to be going ok. It seems odd to upset so many schedules without a strong rationale.
“The Board of Trustees did not give a reason why they were advocating for this, other than to say they heard there was strong support for it. But they didn’t clarify where this strong support is coming from, ” Laegreid said.
According to the information Laegreid has been given, she said the discussion is not based upon any COVID-19 statistics from Public Health.
Laegreid said, “The biggest pro for remaining with the semester as planned is to stay the course to protect the campus community from COVID-19. The virus is not gone, and while cases are going down, which is great, it is important not to become complacent or fall into a sense of false sense of security. We have a goal for the fall semester of opening as close to normal as possible. According to President Seidel and the Provost, that would be possible if 70-80% of faculty and students will have had COVID vaccines by the start of the fall semester. We are not even close to that number now, and so it seems odd to ignore safety precautions now for the last four weeks of class.”
Laegreid said that from her understanding, there is not a lot of support from faculty to continue with in-person instruction after break.
“When this idea was first brought to my attention, neither Faculty Senate nor ASUW [Associated Students of the University of Wyoming] supported the idea, and from what I can tell, most faculty do not support this idea,” Laegreid said.
As the Board of Trustees continues this discussion, information will be updated.
