NYU planning to bring students back to campus in the fall

New York University (NYU) will resume on-campus classes for the fall semester subject to government coronavirus mandates, provost Katherine Fleming announced Tuesday.

Resumption of classes, Fleming said, will include “rigorous measures” to ensure student safety, including making sure all campus spaces allow for social distancing as well as requiring and providing masks for everyone on campus.

The strategy also includes robust virus and antibody testing and contact tracing in addition to reduced density for student housing and the creation of “more flexible formats” for student activities, Fleming wrote.

“I can’t pretend that 2020-21 will be a typical academic year. We’ll be living with safety measures and will have to be highly flexible so we can respond to a changing landscape. I can promise you, however, that our goal is to enable you to stay on track academically in a way that works best for you in the current context and that maximizes flexibility,” she said.

“We’re committed to ensuring that all of our students receive the high-quality education that drew them to NYU, even though some students will likely be unable to make it to New York,” she added.

Other colleges have already announced they will hold classes online for the fall semester.

Fleming said the university will also offer increased flexibility for students, including allowing the option to participate in classes in person or remotely. Options for students to spread classes over two or three semesters without additional tuition costs are also in the works.

Fleming wrote that the university is also developing a “Go Local” option, under which students who live close to an operating campus or site in the university’s global network will have the option to study there for the fall.

“The Go Local option is available to individuals who hold citizenship or residency rights in the country that is home to a selected campus or site (for example: if a student with Italian citizenship were unable to come to NYC to study because of ongoing travel restrictions, we may enable that student to study at NYU’s site in Florence, or elsewhere in the EU),” she wrote.