AUSTIN, Texas — Moksh Chitkara had been living in California with his parents for the past five months, but Sunday he boarded a flight to Austin to return to the University of Texas.
Like many of UT's more than 50,000 students, Chitkara will have most of his classes online this semester because of the coronavirus, but one is in-person. His parents asked him repeatedly not to go, even calling the university to request that it move all classes online to keep him at home. He plans to stay in Austin until in-person classes are supposed to end around Thanksgiving. But that seems like a best-case scenario. Chitkara is prepared to return to California if classes move completely online — which he sees as a strong possibility.
“I feel like within three weeks of the semester starting, they’re going to make, if not all classes online, a significant number of classes online,” he said.
Classes begin Wednesday, and many will be online. But extenuating factors –such as a high number of COVID-19 cases, lack of coronavirus testing supplies, or a student or faculty death – could force the university to close all classroom doors as it did in March when the pandemic arrived in Texas.
But much has changed since the spring, said Dr. Amy Young, vice dean of professional practice for UT’s Dell Medical School and chief clinical officer for UT Health Austin. When the school moved to remote instruction in March, only three coronavirus cases had been confirmed by city officials, including the wife of then-UT President Gregory L. Fenves. Now, although the city is reporting anywhere from 150 to 300 positive cases per day, UT officials feel confident about reopening classrooms on a small scale, Young said.
“We know a lot more about the disease,” she said. “We know how quickly it spreads. We know the preventive measures that have been shown to be effective, and I think that where we are as a community ... is really understanding how to go about our work and our business and our lives while trying to maintain the safest possible environment.”
Administrators have been planning all summer for how to do just that. By limiting in-person activity, requiring face masks on campus and preparing to test up to 5,000 people a week, officials hope the university can continue to function, at least partially, in-person.
Officials have mapped out five levels of campus operations, with 1 being totally open and 5 being closed. UT had hoped to open the fall semester at Level 3, with campus buildings open and many classes online. But Arthur Markman, a psychology professor and head of the university’s fall semester planning committee, said the university is at Level 4 – with most classes temporarily online and careful operation of residence halls and dining facilities.
“The real focus was on delivering those parts of a UT education that really needed to be in person and not necessarily trying to jam as many students onto the campus as possible,” Markman said.
At Texas A&M University and other public universities across the state, administrators have similar plans to offer students a menu of classes online, in-person or in hybrid formats, while also requiring masks in public spaces, gearing up for on-site coronavirus testing and limiting classroom capacities to allow for social distancing.
Most schools have issued their plans for the fall semester with the caveat that things could change based on local health conditions. But some, like Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, hope to avoid another sudden change by offering all instruction online for the entire fall semester. In a letter to the community in June, Huston-Tillotson President and CEO Colette Pierce Burnette said the risks are too great to host an in-person semester, and all students would receive a tablet computer to allow them to continue their education online.
It’s unlikely that any school in the U.S. will come out of the fall semester without a coronavirus case, said Scott Schneider, an Austin attorney with the Husch Blackwell law firm and a consultant on higher education issues.
“There’s not a place in the country where the virus is under control,” he said. “So if the fantasy is, ‘We’re going to reopen; we’re not going to have cases,’ despite everything that’s going on in both the local community of the institution and where these young people are coming from, that’s a complete fantasy.”
Some universities will do better than others, Schneider said, adding that smaller campuses might be better equipped to handle the pandemic than large ones.
“Maybe some of it might just be dumb luck, but some of it is because they’ve been super, super thoughtful over the course of the summer and have developed really robust protocols,” he said. “For the most part, everyone I’ve been talking to has a plan. But to quote Mike Tyson, ‘Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.’”
That was the case at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which moved classes online last week after initially beginning in-person instruction Aug. 10. The school reported at least four clusters of COVID-19 cases in student living spaces. The school, which has an enrollment of about 30,000 students, reported 130 positive cases over the past week.
UT epidemiologists project between 82 and 183 students could arrive on campus infected with the coronavirus.
The projection, released Friday by UT’s COVID-19 Modeling Consortium, estimated that the prevalence of the virus, or the percentage of a population estimated to be infected, among returning students will be 0.5%, higher than the prevalence in the Austin-Round Rock area. But it would be expected to be lower if students follow university guidance to self-isolate for two weeks before arriving in Austin.
The report estimated that slightly fewer than half of the university’s 51,000 students will come to campus and surrounding neighborhoods.
Markman said a UT advisory group will constantly monitor the coronavirus situation and suggest adjustments to operations as needed. Circumstances that could trigger a discussion about a change in operations include local government action, a lack of virus testing supplies, areas to isolate, an increasing number of community cases or the death of a student, faculty member or staff member from COVID-19.
No one event will trigger a closure of UT, Markman said. Based on the circumstances, UT could increase cleaning or social distancing measures, temporarily suspend classes, reduce occupancy in buildings or close residence halls in response, though Markman said the university could keep residence halls open if classes move all online.
UT’s planning committee is watching what is happening at other universities as well, Markman said. He hopes the planning UT has done will diminish the chances of widespread disruption because of the virus.
“I think that gives us a good chance,” he said.