Ithaca College Changes COVID-19 Fall Semester Plans

One college in the region is changing course in its reopening plans.   

The campus publication: The Ithacan reports Ithaca College sent emails to the college community August 18 announcing the Tompkins County school will hold all classes remotely for the fall instead of the initial plans for in-person instruction.

According to the report, President Shirley Collado said she and the Senior Leadership Team based the decision on the severity of the situation with the coronavirus pandemic around the nation and how much the college experience would have to be altered to deal with the crisis. 

Collado said it was also likely the college would have to close during the semester due to the pandemic and that would have caused a disruption of the academic experience. 

The college president says faculty members are prepared to teach courses online and officials are working with the deans of each of the schools where there are classes better taught in-person to work out possibly scheduling sequences of certain courses. 

The move to remote learning at Ithaca College also has a profound economic impact on the surrounding community which benefits from dollars spent on housing, food and entertainment by students of Ithaca College and Cornell University.