Vincent Boudreau and Tony Liss
Dear Members of the City College Community,
We hope this note finds you well, that you're keeping yourself safe and managing the challenges of this entirely strange and straining time that we're in.
We write to update you on a few matters regarding our posture for the coming year. Additional updates will come as we approach the fall semester.
Nothing is more important to us than the health and safety of our campus community, and our planning over the past weeks has centered on an effort to preserve that safety without entirely pausing the vital educational work of the college. With these considerations in mind, we can now say that 94% of our classes will be delivered in a fully online format in the fall semester. Of the remaining 6%, nearly all are hybrid (meaning they are mostly online, with a limited in-person component). Only a small number of laboratory and studio classes will occur in-person, and these, and any in-person component of a hybrid, will include special arrangements to allow appropriate social distancing, cleanliness, and hygiene. If you have any questions about whether specific courses you are planning to take are online, hybrid of in-person, the published course catalog now has current designations describing the mode of instruction.
We will not jeopardize the safety of the community any more than is absolutely necessary to permit the College to meet its educational goals. As we re-open, that means we will continue to follow State, City, and CUNY guidelines for safety and maintain a significantly reduced density of people on campus, keeping off-campus all College operations that can occur remotely.
A campus re-opening committee is nearing the completion of its work developing a detailed plan for the safe but sharply limited re-opening of campus this fall. This work will inform our planning around who we bring back to campus, what activities we will allow on-campus and which remain at distance, and the myriad ways that we will structure campus life to be as protective as possible. We look forward to sharing this plan with you when it is completed.
These are anxious days for all of us, and we both hope that each of you maintains vigilance in the face of the pandemic. Working together, we can figure out the safest way to continue providing a CCNY education to students who are depending on us. To achieve this, we will need the creativity, flexibility, and commitment of everyone, but we're confident that our community is equal to the task.
With our very best wishes,
Vince Boudreau
President
Tony Liss
Provost