[Summit] Brown University's Re-opening -- from the University & from The Brown Daily Herald [Covid News no. 369]

[David Kolsky]

   ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: Brown University Office of Government & Community Relations <community at messages.brown.edu>To: 
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2020, 11:31:38 AM EDTSubject: Brown Community Currents, Vol 3: Phased return & Brown Takes Care
   
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Volume 3, September 2020

               
Community 
Currents
                 
University News

Brown to welcome more students to residence halls, begin limited in-person instruction

As part of a phased approach to welcoming students to campus for the fall, the University will allow additional undergraduates to move in this month, with some small undergraduate classes to be held in-person beginning in October.

With an improved public health situation in Rhode Island and early success with a COVID-19 testing program on its own campus, Brown University will open its residence halls to additional students and resume in-person undergraduate instruction for some small classes in October.

Sophomores, juniors and seniors who wish to return to campus residence halls will be permitted to do so from Sept. 18 to 20, at which point they will be subject to a mandatory 14-day “quiet period” before the start of some in-person undergraduate classes of fewer than 20 students beginning on Monday, Oct. 5.

The decision comes as part of Brown’s phased approach to welcoming students back to campus for the fall semester of its 2020-21 academic year. Brown announced in early August that instruction would be remote for undergraduate students for the start of the year with a move to some in-person classes in October, provided the public health situation would allow.
     Read More         
Brown Takes Care

The University has launched Brown Takes Care, a public health campaign to educate students, faculty and staff on how to best protect community health and encourage individual responsibility and action. The campaign was developed with extensive student input, and provides tools for students themselves to join in the education effort.
     Read More             
Dr. Ashish Jha joins Brown as Dean of the School of Public Health
              
Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH, is a physician, health policy researcher, and the third Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. Before joining Brown, he was the K.T. Li Professor of Global Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute (HGHI).
     Read More           
COVID-19 Information for Neighbors

- The University's healthy.brown.edu website.

     Comprehensive information on Brown's response to COVID-19.

- Community webinar for neighbors.

     If you missed the August 20 community webinar, it is posted on Brown's YouTube channel.

- Brown's Campus Activity Status.

    This page provides members of the Brown University community with a guide for complying with current health protocols and required prevention measures while engaged in study, work and living at Brown.

- Brown's COVID-19 Dashboard.

     Brown is committed to keeping our community informed of confirmed cases of COVID-19 and prevalence on campus. 
           

Click here for more resources for our neighbors

             
Upcoming Events

Watson Institute 

Brown's Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs hosts extensive online events this fall, with topics including the upcoming U.S. elections.
     Read More           
About
BROWN
       
Brown is a leading research university distinct for its student-centered learning and deep sense of purpose. The Office of Government & Community Relations is the University’s front door for questions or comments from our local community. Visit our website to learn more about our staff.

To subscribe to this newsletter, please email community at brown.edu.
               
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  Office of Government & Community Relations
BROWN UNIVERSITY | Providence, RI 02912 
   


Friday, September 11th, 2020
      
Brown to welcome undergraduate students back 


to campus for in-person classes 
By Livia Gimenes and Jack Walker 
Senior Staff Writers 
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Brown will welcome back more undergraduates to its residence halls and hold some small, in-person classes this fall.

The decision was influenced by improvements in Rhode Island’s public health situation, low positivity rates from Brown’s COVID-19 testing program and low demand for isolation and quarantine rooms at the University, President Christina Paxson P’19 wrote in a Thursday community email announcing the reopening. 

“We and other leaders in higher education well understand that nowhere in this country will the public health conditions be anything approximating ‘normal’ for a long time, considering the trajectory of the pandemic and the projected timeline for the widespread distribution of an eventual vaccine,” Paxson wrote.

“Yet for our own campus, what Brown and Rhode Island are currently experiencing is a set of conditions that may be among the most conducive to bringing more students back to campus that we’re likely to experience for up to a year,” she added.

About 900 undergraduates who have not yet returned to Brown could move back to Providence between Sept. 18 and 20, with some in-person instruction set to start Oct. 5.

The news of reopening comes after the University had pulled back on its initial reopening plan in August and instituted a “phased approach” to reopening. The new plan delayed the start of in-person, undergraduate classes to at least October and only welcomed back a limited number of students with extenuating circumstances to Brown’s residence halls. 

Undergraduate move-in

Students returning to campus for Phase Two will be housed in separate residence halls from those who arrived in Phase One. The newly returning students will adhere to a 14-day quiet period and be enrolled in the University’s testing program like students who arrived in phase one.

Since the dates for move-in and quiet period coincide with Jewish High Holy Days, students observing the holiday will be able to request on the housing questionnaire an early move-in date prior to the holiday or late move-in date after the quiet period is done, according to a Sept. 2 email to students from Reslife.

Reslife also communicated that if “a sufficient number of members of a Greek or Program House” return in Phase Two they will try to group these students together. If there are sufficient spaces, members who returned in Phase One of move in could relocate after the second quiet period. Many of the outbreaks on campus on other college campuses have been associated with parties hosted by Fraternities or Sororities.

Students who are on campus will only be allowed to travel out of state during the semester in case of an emergency — for which they would need prior approval. Travel within Providence will be guided by the “prevailing Campus Activity Status level.”

“Improved public health situation”

When Brown’s original reopening plan was announced on July 7, the weekly average for new positive cases in Rhode Island was 49 cases. Cases rose as the summer progressed, and when the phased approach was announced on August 11 the weekly average was 95 new cases. 

That has since slightly decreased, and in the past week cases, R.I recorded 80 cases on average per week.

As of Sept 2, 5,400 Brown community members were tested and only five of them tested positive after phase one of reopening campus began and the University welcomed 500 students back to residence halls starting on August 29. 

The University’s announcement comes as many colleges have struggled to contain outbreaks on campus. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was forced to shut down in-person operations  after 135 students tested positive in the first week of classes and The University of Notre Dame moved to remote instruction for two weeks after 145 students tested positive after arriving on campus. 

In her email, Paxson acknowledged that “colleges and universities across the country have had mixed success with returning to in-person instruction,” adding that “we are heartened to see that a number of our peer institutions that have testing and public health plans similar to Brown’s are faring well, and demonstrating that it is possible to learn to live with a virus that, unfortunately, may be with us for some time.”

Brown joins Cornell, Yale and Dartmouth as the only Ivies offering some sort of in-person instruction for the upcoming year. While allowing some students on campus, Columbia, Harvard, Penn and Princeton will have fully remote instruction for the semester.

Academic year

Remote instruction will continue until the week of October 5, when undergraduate classes with fewer than 20 students will be eligible to begin in-person instruction, according to the plan outlined Aug 11. Still, all classes are required to accommodate online instruction for students who will be studying remotely for the remainder of the fall semester.

The University still plans to proceed with the initial schedule for the tri-semester calendar, Paxson wrote. Unless it poses a danger to public health, first-year students are expected to come to campus in the Spring and the Summer. Paxson added that whether sophomores return to campus in the Spring or be designated to return in the Summer will rely on case levels and the availability of a potential vaccine. 
“To a large degree, how the semester will unfold is up to us,” Paxson wrote. “We all must stand ready to make sacrifices in our social lives to protect Brown and the greater community, and to have a successful semester,” she added.
 
Brown economist co-leads development of real-time COVID-19 Economic Tracker
 
By Claire Liu September 10, 2020
 Opportunity Insights, a research and policy organization co-directed by University Professor of Economics John Friedman, has led national efforts to study the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the United States economy through its Economic Tracker, which launched in May.
   
To examine the effects of COVID-19 on communities, Brown researchers turn to data
 
By Emilija Sagaityte September 10, 2020
 
With the assistance of the University’s COVID-19 Research Seed Fund, some research groups have focused their microscopes on the viral particles behind the infection, while others have built technology to approach the pandemic’s challenges from various angles.
 
COVID-19 Updates
    
   -       
Some international students quarantine in countries away from home before returning to College Hill
   
   -   Brown files to dismiss class action lawsuit demanding refund over COVID-19 closure   
   -   Brown announces educational campaign on COVID-19 public health guidelines   
   -   For students returning to Providence: Campus resources   


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