ASMSA still virus-free, as majority of students, staff get vaccinations

More than 70% of the students at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts have been vaccinated against COVID-19, and nearly 80% percent of its employees are fully vaccinated, according to its director.

“In many ways, students and employees receiving the vaccine is a continuation of that sense of shared responsibility and commitment that we’ve talked about throughout the academic year,” Director Corey Alderdice said.

“We’ve encouraged the members of our campus community to follow the science to take these basic steps that ensure their safety, and do the ongoing things that help to ensure the health of all members of the campus community,” he said.

One of the things that differentiate ASMSA from the other schools and even National Park College is that the campus is largely a congregate residential setting, which means students live on campus in relatively close quarters.

Even though the state’s guidance has changed on masks as a requirement, ASMSA continues to follow the recommendations of Gov. Asa Hutchinson as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“His recommendation is that wearing a mask or appropriate face covering is the basic action that one can take to ensure both individual and collective safety,” Alderdice said. “To that end, we intend to carry forward with the mask mandate throughout the rest of this academic year.”

ASMSA still holds the distinction of having zero cases among the students on campus and only one employee case on campus.

“I think the encouraging sign that we took from even the one positive employee is that the protocols of mask, social

distancing, and routine testing helped to limit any potential community transmission or spread,” Alderdice said.

For the next academic year, the core ASMSA experience will be residential. The teaching and learning committee will evaluate how online or virtual options can potentially play a role in the future.

In their 2025 strategic plan, ASMSA officials have discussed how online learning can expand access to quality programs to even more students across the state, he said.

“But coming out of this major part of the pandemic, we really thought it was best to focus back on our core set of experiences while also taking the next year ahead to learn what worked well in terms of remote and online learning,” Alderdice said.

He said individuals continue to see a high level of vaccine hesitancy across the state, noting he thinks it is encouraging that parents are mindful of the challenges of being in a congregate living setting and that they see this as an important step toward helping them return to normal as much as possible.

“I think the vaccination component leaves us much more hopeful about where things are coming into the end of the year,” Alderdice said.

“Throughout the semester, we’ve talked with families about how important it is to us and how important we understand it is for them that especially our seniors have those capstone experiences related to their high school experience,” he said.