St. Joe’s is in the process of planning course scheduling and class formats for the spring 2021 semester.
Cheryl McConnell, Ph.D., provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, and Cary Anderson, Ed.D., associate provost and vice president of Student Life, unveiled tentative plans in a University Student Senate (USS) meeting on Sept. 14. The spring semester would start a week late, right after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and would go straight through, with no spring break.
“Spring break is not going to happen,” McConnell said in the meeting. “You saw the spike in cases after Labor Day here. That’s what happens when we have long weekends. We’re going to honor Good Friday and Easter because we’re a Catholic institution, but that’s why reading days are in the middle of the week.”
The current plan will have the spring semester run from Jan. 19-May 1, with finals week running from May 3-8. Two reading days are tentatively scheduled for Feb. 16 and Mar. 24, with no classes on Good Friday, April 2, as well.
While the exact date was not specified, course registration for the spring semester is going to be pushed back a week to ensure there are no last-minute course modality changes, according to McConnell.
For the undergraduate students who requested a fully online schedule for the fall 2020 semester, McConnell said a request form will be sent out “in a week or so” for students to indicate whether they plan to return to campus in the spring or continue with a fully online schedule.
“We’ll allow [students] to register a little bit early in those online courses, that way we can judge how many online sections we need,” McConnell said. “It will look a little bit different in that there will be a lot more certainty for spring registration than there was before.”
A decision has not been made to cancel study abroad programs for the spring semester, according to Anderson. Anderson said in the meeting that the university is committed to making the decision by Oct. 16.
“If we had to make the decision today, the answer would be we could not do that. But we’ll see if things change. It’s about a month from now and we’ll see,” Anderson said. “We’re hoping we’re not giving people false hope.”
Anderson said the Center for International Programs at St. Joe’s is consulting students and working with partners on mitigation strategies. Anderson said they will continue to update their list of available programs and make the final decision in the coming weeks.
Salvatore De Rienzo ’22, USS secretary of Academic Affairs, said he hopes for flexibility in the spring schedule, citing concerns about midweek reading days.
“I really think that it’s going to be important for us to push the issues and say, ‘Okay, here’s what worked. Here’s what
didn’t work,’” De Rienzo said. “I think that our experience from this semester could really be valuable for input into plans for next semester.”
De Rienzo said that although a third reading day is being discussed, students will still be working straight through two semesters in a row, without any long breaks during the semester, and celebrating Easter will be a challenge with the condensed schedule.
“Especially as a Jesuit school, Easter is a big holiday, and even if we don’t have Easter Monday off, people are still going to go home to be with their families,” De Rienzo said. “It’s just going to make more difficulties in returning to campus, and I’m sure that we would see a very low attendance rate on that Monday afterward.”
As for the rest of the fall semester, McConnell said the university doesn’t plan on going online anytime soon.
“We’re planning on staying on ground for the entire [fall] semester, unless the Philadelphia Department of Health believes that we have an outbreak that we really need to make a pause,” McConnell said. “Even if we do need to make a pause, it will be a short pause, and then we’ll try to go back on the ground.”
