Why, and how, PLU will have in-person classes

Lots of schools and colleges in Washington state will rely on remote learning for the upcoming year, at least for the first few months.

But this week, Pacific Lutheran University said it would have students return for in-person instruction. PLU President Allan Belton spoke with KUOW’s Angela King about the decision.

Angela King: It looks like your students won't necessarily be back in the classroom immediately. It'll be a phased in approach with the first week of classes being held remotely. So if you're going to offer in person classes, why wait one week?

Allan Belton: A lot of that had to do with the ability to isolate and quarantine students, particularly those moving back to campus from out of state or out of region. Our plans actually include some pretty specific travel requirements for students and ask them to self-quarantine before they returned to campus. But because we have implemented a very thorough testing protocol for our students, we wanted to make sure we had time for them to not be together in the classroom – to quarantine, get tested -- and we will test all of our students upon arrival and then have the time to transition, at least initially, some courses into a blended model.

How will that testing be conducted? And how quickly do you expect to get results back?

The testing conundrum was really key to our ability to return to campus. I think like most institutions, we had some testing in place. And we were really proud that we had done it early. And we were prepared. And then when we saw a resurgence of infection rates throughout not just the state of Washington and Pierce County, but across the country. What we had as rapid testing became prolonged testing, and so we had to pivot. And fortunately, when we started developing our plan, we partnered on an almost daily basis with Tacoma Pierce County Health Department. And they have been key. In fact, it is the Tacoma Pierce County Health Department that is bringing rapid testing to our campus on those first two days. We'll have a two-day period where Tacoma Pierce County Health will be testing all of our students with a 24 hour response.

The health department director has said in recent weeks with the rise in coronavirus cases, it's just not safe for schools to return to in-person learning right now. What was the ultimate thing that made you decide that yes, we can resume in-person learning?

I would say that when the director talks about returning to in-person learning, he’s really talking about K-12. The college approach is a little bit different. Governor Inslee issued a proclamation about higher education which disconnected higher education institutions from the phased approach. All 50 of Washington’s private public colleges and community and technical colleges came together to develop standards by which we could return, understanding that each campus has a very unique situation.

We have a mask requirement. We have minimized the number of students living in residence halls so that every student will have a single room. We have worked with the county to have not only 20 rooms set aside here on our campus for isolation and quarantine. But we have partnered with the county, if we run out of capacity, they have overflow capacity for us.

Another big announcement that came down this week: PLU is going to offer undergrads a plus year. What's that about?

As we were building this plan, one theme that we kept coming back to is no matter what we do, the student experience will not be what they expected this year. What we wanted to do was ensure that every student who's here, they will have the opportunity for that full four-year PLU experience. So we decided that we would give every student who remains fully enrolled who continues the momentum that their education the opportunity for a free extra year tuition, free extra year at PLU.