When we wrote to you in June, we promised to keep our mission statement at the forefront of our decision making about reopening campus: providing robust academics, inspiration, engagement, and care to our student body.
With this mid-summer update, we can confidently say that the decisions we have made thus far have been made with those priorities in mind. Teams of administrators, faculty, and Board members have met extensively to create plans for safely reopening campus as well as contingency plans. Preserving the Steward experience for our community, to the greatest extent possible in these extraordinary times, is of the utmost importance.
We are currently planning to be open full-time when school starts, as long as Virginia remains in Phase III. In a “normal year,” Steward has some of the smallest class sizes in the city. This makes us extraordinarily lucky in this not-at-all normal year, because – with careful planning – it means we can safely open campus for full-time, in-person learning under Phase III.
