Abstract

For the Fall 2020 semester, the University of New Haven (UNewHaven) joined over a third of colleges and universities across the country in offering in-person courses and reopening its campus. Allowing the campus community to safely return was a challenging endeavor, particularly for those at the University’s School of Health Sciences, which offers both non-clinical and clinical courses. In order to create learning environments that adhered to continuously-changing guidelines, our team at the School of Health Sciences was forced to develop and implement innovative strategies. In this article, we share our experiences in fulfilling our roles as faculty, staff, and students at a School of Health Sciences offering in-person, non-clinical and clinical courses during the COVID-19 pandemic. We reflect upon our challenges and share the lessons learned, which we hope will serve as guidance for our collective community in higher education, including those working within schools of public health and health sciences. Our lessons learned are presented in following three themes: 1) preparation for in-person classes; 2) the emotional state of faculty, staff, and students; and 3) innovative practices. Should colleges and universities ever find themselves in similar, yet unprecedented times, our lessons and recommendations may serve as a starting point to assist them in navigating through such tumultuous moments.

Highlights

  • In August 2020, the University of New Haven (UNewHaven) joined over a third of colleges and universities in the United States (U.S.) in fully reopening its campus (Here’s Our List of Colleges’ Reopening Models, 2020)

  • Many colleges and universities opted to reopen in light of financial pressures, demands from students to offer inperson courses, and challenges with offering clinical and lab-based coursework in a virtual format (Higgins-Dunn, 2020; Quintana, 2020; Wrighton and Lawrence, 2020; Yamey and Walensky, 2020)

  • We aim to assist others in successfully navigating through this ongoing pandemic, as well as future public health threats, with the lessons we learned based on the following themes: 1) preparation for in-person classes; 2) the emotional state of faculty, staff, and students; and 3) innovative practices

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Summary

Introduction

In August 2020, the University of New Haven (UNewHaven) joined over a third of colleges and universities in the United States (U.S.) in fully reopening its campus (Here’s Our List of Colleges’ Reopening Models, 2020). Based in West Haven, Connecticut, UNewHaven is a four-year institution that serves nearly 7,000 undergraduate and graduate students and is comprised of five colleges, including the School of Health Sciences (University of New Haven, 2021). Opening college campuses during the pandemic was both a challenging and controversial decision that was met with scrutiny (Sorrell, 2020; Yamey and Walensky, 2020). Many colleges and universities opted to reopen in light of financial pressures, demands from students to offer inperson courses, and challenges with offering clinical and lab-based coursework in a virtual format (Higgins-Dunn, 2020; Quintana, 2020; Wrighton and Lawrence, 2020; Yamey and Walensky, 2020)

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