Pitt will conduct some classes in a tent
This fall, some University of Pittsburgh students will take classes in a tent.
Pitt is the latest among universities nationally to inform faculty of plans to erect one or more outdoor semipermanent structures as a way to boost available classroom and study space while reducing occupancy of existing rooms to inhibit the spread of COVID-19.
Word came during a wideranging briefing for Pitt faculty, held late Thursday via Zoom, that touched on topics from installing remote classroom technology and options for students and professors uneasy about coming to class, to rules on face masks and how Pitt will deal with students or faculty who refuse to follow safety rules.
A 5,000-square-foot tent geared to music and theater instruction will be erected on the lawn below the 42-story Cathedral of Learning, Pitt spokesman Kevin Zwick confirmed Friday. It will have a floor and stage, along with heating, ventilation and air conditioning that will utilize outdoor air exclusively.
“At a minimum, the tent will be used for choir, ensembles, theater and other classes,” he said.
Similar plans have been advanced at universities on Long Island and in Texas and California to deal with increasingly complex scenarios as the virus spikes in parts of the U.S. Nearly 145,000 Americans have died from the virus.
At Pitt, crews are inspecting classrooms, marking off required spacing for occupants, and testing heating and ventilation systems to ensure they are working properly, officials said. Technology, where needed, is being added — from video to microphones for professors — so each class can accommodate remote instruction, even in rooms where at least some students choose to be present.
In an approach dubbed flex@pitt, university officials said they created mixes of in-person and remote instruction that can shift repeatedly during the fall semester as virus threat levels rise and fall.
In any scenario short of closing the campus, Pitt said it will offer students a residential experience, some in hotel rooms around Oakland that Pitt has secured with $22 million. It did so to reduce dorm occupancies.
Pitt has 34,000 students on five campuses, most of them in Oakland. It has hundreds of classrooms and a student population that will arrive in a few weeks from nearly every state and scores of nations, each with infection rates that are shifting by the month. Classes begin Aug. 19.
Some 800 individuals signed up for Thursday’s faculty call, University Senate President Chris Bonneau said in a tweet, a measure of the interest and the concern of some faculty about flexibility to teach remotely given health or other issues.
Pitt has faced some criticism from students, instructors and its student newspaper, The Pitt News, over the degree of consultation and how safe conditions will be. Others have expressed a desire for at least a near-normal residential experience.
“I want to be clear about this,” Provost Ann Cudd told those on the call. “We are not requiring anyone to be physically present in the classroom. However, flex@pitt provides for students and faculty to be in the classroom when pandemic conditions allow.”
She said faculty will notify deans of their plans, but will not be required to disclose any medical information to justify a decision to teach remotely.
Ms. Cudd said algorithms about classroom needs are being re-run daily as more becomes known about space requirements and work crews get feedback on modifications so far. “Deans and faculty are coming to us and saying, ‘Actually, we need something slightly different.’ ”
About 20% of classes do not yet have room assignments, but the total is being reduced daily as work continues, she said. The social distancing required is reordering how many students a class can accommodate.
“The fact is we have only 16% of the normal capacity for classrooms, when you count up all the spaces in all the classes. It’s a very difficult optimization problem.”
Pitt is working to add classroom capacity, including space near the Cathedral.
“We are going to add a tent that will allow for an outside kind of classroom experience for certain kinds of classes, where that would be very useful because of the expelling of air, shall we say, in the classroom,” Ms. Cudd said.
In recent weeks,
Rice
University in Houston and Hofstra University on Long Island have articulated similar plans. This spring, the idea surfaced at Stanford University.
At Pitt, officials said there will be no mass testing for COVID-19 among arriving students, but instead systematic, randomized testing for students coming from geographic and other subgroups to determine baseline risk levels.They are being asked to quarantine seven days before and after arrival.
The system, which uses statisticians and epidemiology students, makes more sense than mass testing, which neither the collegiate health center association nor the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends, said John Williams, chief of Pitt’s COVID19 Medical Response Office and chief of the medical school’s division of infectious diseases.
Besides, he said, “Availability of testing, which I’m sorry to say six months into the pandemic nationally, is very limited, and that’s not getting better any time soon.”
Face coverings will be required in shared spaces on campus and where at least six feet of distance can not be maintained. Asked about what happens to those who refuse to wear masks, officials including Geovette Washington, senior vice chancellor and chief legal officer at Pitt, noted that the student code of conduct now addresses COVID-19 requirements.
A copy of the revised language was not immediately available from Pitt.
Ms. Washington said the school is developing protocols to address issues as they might arise on campus.
“We don’t want to be in a position where we ask police to monitor any of this,” she said.
Myriad decisions are being made, from how best to teach and learn language if masks would need to be worn in class, to whether music instruction can work adequately if student and professor are linked by a camera.
Officials plan to monitor how the classrooom technology works and will dispatch technical assistance as problems arise. A cost estimate for the classroom modifications including technology was not available Friday.
Mr. Bonneau, a political science professor, said he was impressed by the faculty’s commitment to deliver sound instruction under lessthan-ideal circumstances.
“Obviously, we all wish we had answers to everything. . . . That isn’t possible under the conditions of this pandemic,” he said. “My colleagues and I are being asked to do a lot in a short period of time, and as the beginning of the semester draws closer, the anxiety over uncertainty increases.”