A Message from President Kim on the End of the Fall Semester and Looking Ahead
December 11, 2020
As we near the end of the fall semester, I am writing with my thanks and appreciation for your individual and collective fortitude in these challenging times. This year, finishing the semester feels like a particularly notable collective accomplishment. While we started the term with solid plans and protocols in place, we could not know whether external and internal circumstances might upend our best efforts. Thanks in large part to everyone’s commitment to our mutual safety, we have been able to minimize the negative impact of COVID-19 on Columbia.
This of course did not happen without many adjustments along the way. Inevitably, some members of the community did become ill; the college remains committed to supporting them to the best of our ability and to continue doing everything possible to limit COVID-19 in our midst and maximize the safety of our campus environments. Although COVID-19 remains a fact of life and some community spread a chronic hazard, I am proud that the college did not witness the needless and large-scale risk-taking that made headlines at other institutions. That is more important than any precaution that we might put in place, and it stems from the respect for one another and the thoughtfulness that are hallmarks of the individuals who work, study, and reside here.
Having said that, we realize that the current way of doing things is not what comes naturally to us, and in most instances is not the best way to deliver our academic programs or co-curricular offerings. Our goal is to gradually and safely restore as much as possible of the quintessential Columbia experience in every facet of campus life. We realize that COVID-19 will be a fact of everyday existence in our country, city, and campus for some time yet. But we are looking ahead to 2021, confident that we will soon have additional means of managing the coronavirus and that we will be able to make careful strides toward a resumption of familiar activities and routines. In particular, the apparently successful development and impending rollout of vaccines for COVID-19 gives us reason to hope that some expanded in-person activities, events, and (perhaps) performances can resume, on a modest scale, as early as the latter part of this coming spring semester - pending, of course, appropriate government approval and guidance and an improvement in the general public health situation.
In the interim, in January the college plans to implement a new rapid COVID-19 test that will help us identify and isolate cases even more quickly than we did this semester. The new test can be more easily deployed in programs and courses whose classroom activities carry more risk of exposure and cannot be contemplated without a rapid, same-day test. This will allow us to expand certain in-person course offerings and experiences beyond what was possible in the fall semester. We will have more information to share about this as the spring semester nears.
At the same time, and notwithstanding our hopes for the gradual resumption of smaller-scale activities, it seems clear at this point that the local and national health situation will still not be conducive to holding large in-person events this spring. Therefore, I must regretfully announce that we will not hold in-person Commencement exercises in May. We have the advantage this year of a longer time frame in which to design and execute a more complete virtual ceremony than we were able to offer in May 2020. A campus team is already planning such a virtual Commencement, in our usual multi-ceremony format, and with special ceremonies dedicated to the class of 2020 as well as 2021 graduates. Again, we will have more to say about this as our plans develop.
As we plan for spring and fall semester, we will continue to prioritize the health and safety of our community and to build on everything we have learned to date about how to work through COVID-19. Looking ahead to the fall, we plan to capitalize on the availability and distribution of the vaccine to offer an in-person fall 2021 class schedule on a par with pre-COVID offerings. Of course, this will be predicated on immunizations proceeding as forecast by experts, on the circulation of the vaccine having the hoped-for impact on case numbers, and on the subsequent lifting of current social distancing guidelines. We should all expect that regardless of the success of vaccines, some COVID precautions will remain in place in the fall and even beyond.
Of course, we will be ready to adjust our plans as needed to take into account the public health situation and the complications that it creates for you and your families. We will continue to coordinate with public health agencies, consult with our experts at Rush University Medical Center and the University of Chicago, and closely monitor developments at Columbia and externally.
Once again, I offer you my thanks and my hopes that you are well. Here’s to a rest-filled holiday season and to a new year full of renewed hope and possibility. Please stay safe.
Sincerely,This of course did not happen without many adjustments along the way. Inevitably, some members of the community did become ill; the college remains committed to supporting them to the best of our ability and to continue doing everything possible to limit COVID-19 in our midst and maximize the safety of our campus environments. Although COVID-19 remains a fact of life and some community spread a chronic hazard, I am proud that the college did not witness the needless and large-scale risk-taking that made headlines at other institutions. That is more important than any precaution that we might put in place, and it stems from the respect for one another and the thoughtfulness that are hallmarks of the individuals who work, study, and reside here.
Having said that, we realize that the current way of doing things is not what comes naturally to us, and in most instances is not the best way to deliver our academic programs or co-curricular offerings. Our goal is to gradually and safely restore as much as possible of the quintessential Columbia experience in every facet of campus life. We realize that COVID-19 will be a fact of everyday existence in our country, city, and campus for some time yet. But we are looking ahead to 2021, confident that we will soon have additional means of managing the coronavirus and that we will be able to make careful strides toward a resumption of familiar activities and routines. In particular, the apparently successful development and impending rollout of vaccines for COVID-19 gives us reason to hope that some expanded in-person activities, events, and (perhaps) performances can resume, on a modest scale, as early as the latter part of this coming spring semester - pending, of course, appropriate government approval and guidance and an improvement in the general public health situation.
In the interim, in January the college plans to implement a new rapid COVID-19 test that will help us identify and isolate cases even more quickly than we did this semester. The new test can be more easily deployed in programs and courses whose classroom activities carry more risk of exposure and cannot be contemplated without a rapid, same-day test. This will allow us to expand certain in-person course offerings and experiences beyond what was possible in the fall semester. We will have more information to share about this as the spring semester nears.
At the same time, and notwithstanding our hopes for the gradual resumption of smaller-scale activities, it seems clear at this point that the local and national health situation will still not be conducive to holding large in-person events this spring. Therefore, I must regretfully announce that we will not hold in-person Commencement exercises in May. We have the advantage this year of a longer time frame in which to design and execute a more complete virtual ceremony than we were able to offer in May 2020. A campus team is already planning such a virtual Commencement, in our usual multi-ceremony format, and with special ceremonies dedicated to the class of 2020 as well as 2021 graduates. Again, we will have more to say about this as our plans develop.
As we plan for spring and fall semester, we will continue to prioritize the health and safety of our community and to build on everything we have learned to date about how to work through COVID-19. Looking ahead to the fall, we plan to capitalize on the availability and distribution of the vaccine to offer an in-person fall 2021 class schedule on a par with pre-COVID offerings. Of course, this will be predicated on immunizations proceeding as forecast by experts, on the circulation of the vaccine having the hoped-for impact on case numbers, and on the subsequent lifting of current social distancing guidelines. We should all expect that regardless of the success of vaccines, some COVID precautions will remain in place in the fall and even beyond.
Of course, we will be ready to adjust our plans as needed to take into account the public health situation and the complications that it creates for you and your families. We will continue to coordinate with public health agencies, consult with our experts at Rush University Medical Center and the University of Chicago, and closely monitor developments at Columbia and externally.
Once again, I offer you my thanks and my hopes that you are well. Here’s to a rest-filled holiday season and to a new year full of renewed hope and possibility. Please stay safe.
Kwang-Wu Kim, President