Worcester Business Journal

8 Worcester Business Journal | August 17, 2020 | wbjournal.com People. Places. Product. Photographic images for advertising, public relations, graphic and corporate communications groups . See the difference. 165 Holly Lane • Holliston, MA 01746 Phone: 774.248.4050 • www.ronbouleyphoto.com R O N B O U L E Y P H O T O G R A P H Y An unprecedented semester BY GRANT WELKER Worcester Business Journal News Editor e fall semester for Central Mass. colleges will feature lower tuition, COVID testing, fewer student residents & more online classes S ome freshmen at Worcester Polytechnic Institute will spend the fall living at a hotel just off campus. Clark University and Framingham State University have plans in place to isolate students in their dorms while awaiting coronavirus test results. Dean College in Franklin said it would hold classes on campus, before reversing itself amid rising cases nationally. Col- lege of the Holy Cross then did the same, about three weeks before classes were set to begin on campus. Assumption University is breaking its fall semester into two parts, allow- ing onto campus for the first half only freshmen and seniors on campus for the first term, along with students who live outside the Northeast, including inter- national students. e first day of classes has been moved up to Aug. 17. It'll be a semester quite unlike any- thing Central Massachusetts has seen before, and one requiring colleges to balance safety during a pandemic with a hopeful return to somewhat normal operations. So much is up in the air colleges are generally still not sure exactly what the semester will look like, even as few days remain until classes are supposed to begin. "I'm not putting dates on anything," said James Vander Hooven, the presi- dent of Mount Wachusett Community College in Gardner. "If we go through a big effort to communicate a plan to just change it nine days later, the confusion and lack of clarity is going to hurt." No athletics, fewer residents Changes this fall will be clear nearly anywhere you can look on a local college campus. No Central Massachusetts college will play fall athletics, and masks will be re- quired in common areas including class- rooms. Plexiglass dividers will be found in libraries, dining halls and classrooms. Anna Maria College in Paxton has re- moved couches from common areas and closed shared kitchens. Fitchburg State University has removed physical copies of course books because of sanitation standards. Dining on campus will look different. Anna Maria will partner with OpenTable so students can make dining hall reser- vations and maintain social distancing. Fitchburg State will serve food in dining halls for take-out only. Move-in day doesn't start until Aug. 21 at Nichols College in Dudley, but the school allowed students who live close to campus to drop off their belongings in their dorm rooms starting Aug. 10 to avoid crowding, but with limitations of only one other person helping and for just an hour. At Clark, move-in is spread across a whole week. Nichols will limit classroom capacity to no more than half, switching students in and out between in-classroom partici- pation and online. Dorm living – such a major piece of college life for those staying on campus – will look very different. Framingham State University, for ex- ample, is limiting its dormitories to 65% capacity, and Worcester State University is knocking down its residential capacity from 1,600 to just over 1,000. Fitchburg State is reserving traditional rooms for single occupancy only, while suites will have no more than two residents. Assumption is eliminating three-per- son dorm rooms and reducing on-cam- pus capacity from roughly 1,600 students Signs urging caution on campus, including these at Framingham State University, will be as common as posters that used to pitch students on joining a club or campus program.

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