AROUND CAMPUS
LEADING THE WAY— TOGETHER Utica College is a national leader among colleges and universities in its response to COVID-19
WHAT BEGAN AS A MYSTERIOUS RESPIRATORY ILLNESS IN WUHAN, CHINA, QUICKLY BECAME A MASSIVE INTERNATIONAL CRISIS, WITH FAR-REACHING IMPLICATIONS THAT CHANGED THE COURSE OF UTICA COLLEGE’S SPRING 2020 SEMESTER—AND SO MUCH MORE. During the summer of 2020, when some colleges made the decision to move fall instruction entirely online, Utica College’s senior leadership team, including President Laura Casamento and Vice President for Emergency Management Shad Crowe, were creating an exhaustive reopening plan to allow UC students to return to campus in the fall—safely and on schedule. Announced in July, the UC Safe Plan included a comprehensive
screening, testing, tracing, and surveillance program in partnership with SUNY Upstate Medical University; a containment, isolation, and quarantine program that provides COVID-positive students with safe housing separate from our student body; a treatment and care protocol for COVID-positive students, providing access to Student Health Center medical providers at all times; campuswide safety upgrades including air filtration and UV light disinfectant systems, and much more (see the full plan at utica. edu/covid-forward). When students arrived on campus for the Fall 2020 semester on August 17, they began the adjustment to a new version of campus life, which included mandatory mask-wearing, social distancing, and limits to large group gatherings, among many other changes.
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Our campus is still open because we have come together as a community to meet this historic challenge.” But the efforts paid off. Within months, Utica College quickly emerged as a leader among colleges responding to the crisis. In October, NPR reported only 6 percent of colleges in the nation are testing all students regularly for COVID-19. Utica College is among the select few, helping the College’s positivity rate remain well below the 5 percent positivity threshold required for in-person instruction to continue, as instituted by Governor Andrew Cuomo. At the Fall 2020 semester’s end, Utica College’s COVID-19 positivity rate was 0.2 percent. “This did not happen by accident,” says President Casamento. “Our campus is still open because we have come together as a community to meet this historic challenge.
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