Colby College announces plan to bring students back to campus in August - Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel

The Miller Library on the campus of Colby College in Waterville Tuesday. Colby students are slated to return starting Aug. 21 and face a rigorous medical protocol to maintain health and keep the coronavirus at bay. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel Buy this Photo

WATERVILLE — Colby College students will return to campus two weeks earlier than usual this year and be required to follow rigorous health and safety rules developed as part of a $10 million effort that is to include administering 85,000 coronavirus tests to students, faculty and staff in the fall semester.

Colby President David A. Greene announced Tuesday in a prepared statement to the Colby community that the semester will begin Aug. 26 and end Nov. 24, just before Thanksgiving, with the student reading period and final exams to be conducted remotely.

Students will arrive on campus according to a staggered schedule, with freshmen arriving between Aug. 21 and 24.

Developing the opening plan involved an “enormous amount of work” and input from 50 faculty members, 10 different task forces and external medical professionals to ensure the health and safety of the Colby community and all of Waterville, Greene said Tuesday in a telephone interview.

“We care about the people of Waterville, we care about the Colby community and we want to make sure that we’re doing the very best by everyone,” Greene said.

Students may choose to return to campus or study remotely, according to Greene, who said he thinks many of the approximately 2,000 students who attend Colby will attend in-person, gauging by the positive feedback he has received so far from students and parents about the plan.

About 10 percent of the student population is from Maine, 10 percent are international students from 90 different countries and the rest come from around the U.S. Greene said some international students are already in the country, as they live here for the full four years, and some may not be able to attend Colby in-person this year due to travel restrictions.

Students will be spaced apart in classrooms and many classes will be held outdoors when the weather is appropriate in the fall, he said. Some faculty will teach remotely because of health and other reasons, but the plans call for most classes to be taught in-person.

To ensure more space for student housing, the 53-room Lockwood Hotel Colby is building downtown will be used as a student residence for the 2020-21 year only and 100 students and three staff will live there, Greene said Tuesday.

Construction progresses on the Lockwood Hotel, left, in downtown Waterville Tuesday. To provide more space in student accommodations a hundred students will reside in the hotel that is slated to be finished this fall. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel Buy this Photo

The building will be ready for use by students when they arrive in August, though they will use dormitory furniture and temporary carpets, but the restaurant will not be completed, Greene said. Another 200 students and staff will live in the Bill & Joan Alfond Main Street Commons downtown.

Everyone in the Colby community will be required to do a daily self-assessment on a mobile application, a practice that has proven effective in capturing early symptoms of infection in health centers around the country, Greene’s statement says.

“Students with indicators of risk to the community will be required to quarantine pending test results, and faculty and staff will be asked to remain at home until negative test results are confirmed,” he said.

“We are designing a comprehensive contact tracing operation to support our testing program and minimize the chance of outbreaks. We will require face coverings, a simple but effective means of limiting transmission of the virus, in most spaces, including classrooms and campus buildings.

“We are reassigning classrooms to allow for distancing, spreading out courses more evenly throughout the day and into the evening, and using outdoor spaces during warmer months.”

Colby’s dining program has been altered to include an expanded “Take-4” to-go program with longer hours and adjustments to dining hall procedures, reduced seating and elimination of most self-serve options. Cleaning and disinfecting protocols will be significantly enhanced throughout campus and will include frequent cleaning of high-touch surfaces and use of hospital-grade cleaners.

“We are fortunate to be partnering with exceptional teams and organizations to inform our planning for reopening, including an epidemiological team from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, medical leadership from Massachusetts General Hospital and MaineGeneral Health, and the COVID-19 testing program at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard,” Greene said in his statement.

“The plan we have developed in concert with our partners and through broad consultation of campus groups is a multi-layered, integrated approach to safety that will continue to evolve according to the latest scientific knowledge and developments.”

A critical component, he said, is robust testing to drastically reduce the possibility of community transmission. That testing program will be administered through the Broad Institute and likely will be among the most extensive offered in higher education, according to Greene. All members of the campus community, including students, faculty, and staff, must take part, he said.

“Students will be tested prior to arrival with test kits provided by Colby, and all community members will be tested three times during the opening weeks of the semester,” he said in his statement. “Thereafter, everyone will be tested twice per week, a rate that scientific models have demonstrated will greatly limit the spread of the virus by detecting infections in individuals prior to them becoming contagious.

“To put this in perspective, we expect to administer roughly 85,000 tests in the first semester alone, a number that almost equals the total number of tests administered in the entire state of Maine since the start of the pandemic.”

The “polymerase chain reaction” Colby plans to use is minimally invasive and easily self-administered in the lower nasal cavity, Greene said.

“Students, faculty and staff will bring their testing kits to a campus collection point on their designated testing days. Test results will be returned to the individual and the College within 24 hours, allowing for any required mitigation efforts to be instituted quickly.

“We have leased additional housing for quarantine and isolation of students, who will be provided with a range of support services, including facilitating their coursework, attention to medical and mental health, and food delivery.”

‘BE READY TO ADAPT’

Colby required students to leave campus in mid-March when the pandemic hit and they took classes remotely. Asked whether the college, which also has 1,000 faculty and staff, would potentially close if there was an outbreak, or at what point Colby would alter its plans, Greene said that if healthcare facilities were to become overburdened, Colby would take very strong action, including sending students home if warranted.

The majority of the students are at an age where they are at very low risk to need hospitalization, even if infected, he said. It is important for students to be isolated and have medical care, and Colby is providing a facility where they could recover, according to Greene.

Meanwhile, major changes were made to Colby’s visitation and travel policies as part of the opening plan. Professional travel for faculty and staff will largely be eliminated, and people must declare any necessary travel out of state with the understanding that a return to campus might require a quarantine period, according to the plans.

Colby College President David Greene talks about the college’s economic impact in Waterville Oct. 15, 2019. In a statement released Tuesday announcing students will return to the college in August, Greene said, “We cannot put one another at unreasonable risk, and we certainly cannot do that to our neighbors in Waterville.” Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

Students will be asked to stay on campus during October break. The college plans to offer programs designed to help students to decompress during that mid-semester time off.

“While it is impossible to entirely close off our campus, we will not have campus visitation for admissions or visiting speakers, and we will not be allowing families and friends to visit as we normally do,” Greene said. “Our major fall events, such as Family Homecoming Weekend, will not be held, and our most public-facing venues, like the Colby College Museum of Art and the athletics center, will, for the time being, be closed to the public.”

Colby’s new $200 million Harold Alfond Athletic Center is scheduled to open in the fall, and Greene said he thinks Colby will be able to find opportunities for student athletes, though it is difficult to say now exactly what the athletic program will look like.

“The presidents of the NESCAC institutions have agreed to implement flexible rules for athletics this year that should provide for exciting opportunities for our student athletes and coaches, even if the normal schedule for competitions is likely to be disrupted,” Greene’s statement says. “These programs, and the overall health of our community, will be supported by our beautiful athletics and recreation center opening in August.”

Colby’s spring semester is expected to follow the regular schedule, he said, with students taking part in Jan plan and classes starting in February, but Colby remains flexible. The college’s operational motto, according to Greene, is “Be Ready to Adapt.”

His statement to the Colby community calls on everyone to help ensure a safe environment as students and staff return to campus.

“There is no doubt in my mind that our community is strongest when we are together, but every one of us has to realize that we can only stay together if we have an unbreakable, shared commitment to following the safety protocols assiduously and always acting in the best interest of the community,” then statement says. “We cannot put one another at unreasonable risk, and we certainly cannot do that to our neighbors in Waterville.”

Greene said he asked Colby’s Student Government Association to help establish a social compact that everyone can agree to and sign.

“Like many of you, I have read the articles warning of students misbehaving and flouting safety rules, and I am not naive to the challenges of widespread conformity with rules that restrict student behavior. However, I also believe in the goodness and empathy of our community, and I know that we can draw on the very best parts of ourselves to protect one another and the chance to stay together to benefit from Colby’s rich and transformative education.”

More information will be forthcoming and available on Colby’s return-to-campus website, covid19.colby.edu. Greene encourages the Colby community to reach out to deans and other staff with specific questions about the planned changes or about individual circumstances.

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