Rice University going outdoors to resume classes and activities
Rice University plans to take some fall courses outdoors amid the COVID-19 pandemic and will build nine structures on campus to help maintain social distancing guidelines.
“Being in Houston, we can be outdoors the entire academic year,” Kevin Kirby, Rice’s vice president for administration and chair of its Crisis Management Advisory Committee, said Tuesday. “As we’ve all learned about coronavirus, the risks decrease when you’re outside.”
So, as the college maps out the maximum number of people for every space on campus, it plans to construct nine outdoor spaces
to use for in-person instruction, lectures and activities.
“The more we can get people outdoors, the better,” Kirby said.
Rice is purchasing four semipermanent 50-by-90-foot structures that will hold 50 students and an instructor in an outdoor space. The structures on the open field next to the university’s Hanzen College, will have light, cooling, heat and ventilation, and will also have audiovisual capabilities, he said. Kirby also noted that the structures, which will be on campus for a few years, are also designed to withstand hurricane winds.
While not yet built, the units will be available before classes begin on Aug. 23. They will be used for instruction throughout the day, academic lectures in the late afternoon and for student clubs, meeting and study spaces in the evening. They are expected to be used from 8 a.m. until around midnight, Kirby said.
Additionally, Rice will have five 40-by-60-foot open-sided tents adjacent to its academic buildings, which can hold between 25 and 30 students. The administration will ask students who have portable chairs to bring them to campus to use outdoors, but will also purchase additional outdoor furniture and portable camping-style chairs for those who don’t have chairs at home.
The final contracts are not completed with Sprung Structures, so Rice officials did not disclose the cost of the tents and structures. The company, which has a location in Houston, invented the stressed membrane structure, an engineered clearspan building alternative, according to its website.
University administrators have already asked students and faculty of Rice’s art community to create an even more vibrant campus by painting murals and projecting films on the temporary blank structures, and hosting installation, musical performances and performance art in the area to enliven the campus.
“What we’re trying to do is have a really robust social and intellectual environment for our students and faculty,” Kirby said. And because graduating seniors have reported in surveys that 75 percent of what they take away from their experience at Rice are the activities that happen outside of the classroom, creating a space for those activities to happen when a third of classes will be conducted online was crucial, he added.
“It’s a tough time for everyone. We’re trying to give people a more positive and energizing environment,” Kirby said. “We all need that more than a year ago.”