Clark to hold fall semester in-person but in altered schedule

Photo | Grant Welker Clark University's Robert Hutchings Goddard Library

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Clark University plans to hold classes in-person during the coming school year starting with the fall semester but with an altered schedule to include a nearly three-month long winter break.

The Worcester school said Wednesday it plans to begin fall semester classes on Aug. 24 and for students to move out by Nov. 22. The semester will end a few weeks after that, on Dec. 4, with finals taking place remotely.

The spring semester wouldn't begin until Feb. 22. The later start date will push graduation roughly a month later than normal: June 20.

No mid-semester breaks are planned in order to accommodate the shortened schedule. Move-in dates in August will be held on a staggered basis on avoid crowding.

David Angel, who is retiring after a decade as Clark's president, and David Fithian, his successor, provided planned details to the campus community but left some aspects undetermined, including whether students would need to be tested for coronavirus upon arriving back to campus for the spring semester.

"We are led to the belief that we can resume most aspects of campus life responsibly at that time by, among other factors, the currently declining daily rate of new COVID-19 cases in Worcester County," they said in a statement, "the access to high-quality healthcare available in central Massachusetts, the size of Clark’s student body, and safety measures and behavioral guidelines that we will adopt and practice together."

"Reconvening on campus amid a pandemic, of course, is not entirely free of risk," they added, "but we will do all that we can to minimize and mitigate that risk and know that everyone in our campus community will join in this obligation."