No plan yet, NSCS exploring options for in-person fall semester

Faced with an uncertain future, several scenarios are being examined in pursuit of students returning to Nebraska state college campuses

After announcing the Nebraska State College System would be “aggressively planning” for fall in-person courses at Nebraska’s state colleges, NSCS Chancellor Paul Turman has indicated the system is exploring any number of potential scenarios for the fall semester, but a concrete plan will likely not be known until further guidance is offered to the system. 

“The guidance about what August and September is going to look like is still not out yet,” Turman said. “I know (the University of Nebraska Medical Center) is working on a set of parameters that I think is probably going to inform state policy.”

Turman and the NSCS have been taking guidance from UNMC, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, Governor Pete Ricketts, and local health districts when considering what actions to take to ensure the state colleges can safely return to in-person classes this fall.

CSC President Randy Rhine said Chadron State College will continue to drive toward its usual fall start and assume it will happen as planned.

“It’s possible there may be some guidelines for that to happen that will be in play, and we need to plan for some of those and we’re in the process of doing that now,” he said. “If things change on us dramatically in the fall for some reason, and we have to pivot then we should be prepared to do that. It would be my hope that we don’t have to do that.”

While the NSCS is committed to in-person classes this fall, Turman said he will decide otherwise if the system doesn’t feel it’s safe.

“If (state officials) were to say they rolled things out too early and needed to go back to the original structure from March and April,” the system would decide to return to online delivery, he said.

According to Turman, the NSCS was hearing from faculty and administrators that uncertainty about the future was keeping people from planning for the fall semester.

In order to address some of the uncertainty, the system decided to follow suit with other colleges and universities and state their goal of returning to classrooms in the fall.

“We made this decision last Thursday that we’re going to announce that we’re going to open,” Turman said. “We’re going to start planning for the scenarios based on what may confront us and have a strategy in place.”

The system is exploring its options based on what they believe some of the future regulations and parameters could be, Turman said. Other colleges across the nation have suggested tactics like staggering times when students arrive on campus and doing the same for class times. Turman said those kinds of measures, and more, are being considered.

“Our work over the next month will begin to communicate directly with students and parents about what the experience is going to look like differently from those who have been with us in the past,” Turman said. “And if you’re a new freshman, here’s what your first semester at Chadron is going to look like.”

Turman also said the NSCS wants to ensure faculty feel comfortable they will return to a safe environment. One concern that is popular among both faculty and students is the use of masks and personal protective equipment during the coming semester. 

An original interpretation of a Nebraska state policy left some with the impression that the state colleges would be unable to purchase PPE for faculty, but that interpretation has since been corrected.

If Turman were to outline in his guidance to the colleges that PPE would be required in order, as an example, for a class of 20 students in a classroom of a certain size to be taught in person, he “strongly believes” the system and colleges can purchase that PPE for students and faculty.

“I think the big question will be, when we get to that point, will we be able to do that?,” Turman said. “Will we be able to find the resources? If we can’t find the resources and we don’t think it’s going to be safe, then we won’t approach the delivery (of classes) that way.”

As is the case with other potential specific safety measures, Turman is unable to say for certain if masks will be required for students, faculty and staff. 

One area the system has been able to plan for is the potential start to the semester. 

“If we have to do a more delayed start we have an academic calendar structure that we can adopt if we need to, and if we still have to go to completely online, we’ll set a time, and definitively, we’ll make sure faculty and staff have the time they need to transition those courses as needed.”

In order to explore the many steps that may need to be taken to achieve their goal, and to stay abreast of the pandemic, Turman’s COVID-19 leadership team, which includes key staff from the state colleges and the NSCS, meet twice a week via video conferencing.

“I think we’ve got a very eclectic process where everyone has the ability to weigh in and help make the decision about where we move forward,” Turman said. “For the most part we’ve not had much disagreement from the campuses about where we’re planning to go.”

Turman said a challenge has been using existing guidance to make decisions only to have new guidance emerge that changes the decision.

According to Rhine, virtually every association CSC belongs to is monitoring the pandemic for impacts in their areas and the college is paying close attention to any guidance being offered.

“If I had a gift of a wish, it would be for them to come up with a vaccine that is effective and that can be distributed widely and quickly and we knock this thing down,” Rhine said. “But we’re going to plan for a normal start and be prepared to move in a different direction if we have to.”

Rhine believes CSC’s geography has worked in its favor and cites the fact that there have been no reported positive cases of COVID-19 in Dawes County up to this point.

“Do I think that will hold up? Who knows,” Rhine said. “I think we have a huge advantage over more urban areas where you have higher population densities and the spread in those areas is much more rapid.”

Though Governor Ricketts recently relaxed directed health measures in order to begin reopening the Nebraska economy, the number of positive cases of COVID-19 is continuing to rise rapidly in the state. Currently, Nebraska DHHS reports 5,910 positive cases and 78 deaths. 33,819 individuals have been tested according to the department. As of Monday morning, Panhandle Public Health District reports 53 positive cases in the Panhandle and no deaths.

While Dawes County has yet to record a positive case, one positive test, which was determined to have been travel-related, occurred in neighboring Box Butte County in mid-April. It’s unknown if there have been any instances of clinically diagnosed cases in Dawes County. PPHD’s Kim Engel said during Panhandle Unified Command’s April 7 daily briefing, those cases, which involve doctors diagnosing COVID-19 based on symptoms rather than a positive test, are not being tracked. During the same meeting Engel stated she was confident “the virus is in all of our communities.”

According to reporting by Bill Schammert of Nebraska news station 10/11 NOW, the number of positive cases in the state has been doubling every seven days. Schammert also reports that long-term care facilities represent 68 percent of Nebraska’s COVID-19 deaths, according to Ricketts.

10/11 NOW has tracked testing data within the state and reports that while the daily average of testing has doubled since the middle of April, so too has the positivity rate, rising to a current rate of about 27 percent compared to a total of 5.7 percent at the beginning of April. The rise in the positivity rate might suggest that the increase in positive cases is not necessarily the result of increased testing.

According to Turman, in an email to The Eagle, Monday, testing will be a key feature of the state colleges’ return to in-person classes in the fall. Turman said the system’s strategy will need to align with the availability of testing for both symptoms and antibodies, but it is not in NSCS’s plan, at this point, to engage in college-wide testing.

“Individuals who are experiencing symptoms will need to self-quarantine until they can be tested,” Turman said. “As we do now, our colleges will work closely with the Regional Health Districts to perform testing and contact tracing.”

Turman is hopeful an increase in the number of tests available will occur in the months before students return for the fall semester so that students and staff will be able to assess if their symptoms are COVID-19 related.

Although there have been reports of CSC students not following guidelines from health officials, it’s unclear if those students represent any sort of majority among those who have remained on Chadron’s campus. Students’ ability to police their own behavior will play a role in the success of returning to in-person classes.

“I think all of the guidelines are based on individual responsibility, and it does fall to individuals,” Rhine said. “There’s no way for the campus, or the community, or law enforcement, or others to step in and make sure everybody is toeing the line and doing what’s been asked of them. I think it is important that we exercise that individual responsibility and do things we’ve been asked to do.”

Much of Ricketts’ statewide plan for protecting Nebraskans from COVID-19 has been based around his stated trust that Nebraskans will voluntarily follow directed health measures, rather than require a stay-at-home order or other enforceable measures. Some have questioned the approach, but Turman also believes trust will play a role in successfully returning to the classroom.

“If you trust your fellow citizens and your fellow students and staff, that they’ll comply with guidance that we provide to them when they return, I think we’ll still have a very safe environment down the road,” he said.

As students and faculty wait for that guidance, and for the NSCS’s exploration of theoretical parameters to change to concrete plans, little is certain about the future and the fall semester other than that the NSCS and CSC have a goal of returning to some semblance of the way things were before COVID-19.

“I’m not sure what normal is going to be on the other side of this,” Rhine said. “I think the impact is going to be significant in terms of how we look at things, and how we plan, and how we operate. I think the future is going to be different than where we’ve been because of this. We’ve learned a lot and we will be taking that into account as we move forward.”