CHARLESTON, W.Va. — More than 3,000 higher education employees in West
Virginia have received initial coronavirus vaccine doses as the 2021 Spring
Semester begins to open at colleges, universities and technical schools across
the Mountain State.
Dr. Sarah Armstrong Tucker, chancellor for both the
Higher Education Policy Commission and the Community and Technical College
System, said workers were prioritized based on age and by teaching areas,
meaning whether they were instructing in-person with students or
not.
Going forward, she said health sciences students working in clinics
would also be vaccinated as supplies allowed.
Vaccinations, the timing of
which were being determined by availability, coincided with ongoing testing on
campuses.
“Everyone’s going to get tested — faculty, staff, students —
at the beginning of the semester and then, as the semester goes on, we’ll have
surveillance testing on ten percent of our population of students,” Dr.
Armstrong Tucker said.
Tuesday was the scheduled first day of the 2021
Spring Semester on campuses that included West Virginia University, Marshall
University, Shepherd University, Glenville State College, Concord University and
West Liberty University.
At WVU in Morgantown, Keyser and Beckley, there
will be no spring break this year. Non-instructional days have been scheduled
for Feb. 11, March 2 and March 3. The last days of classes will be Apr. 30 with
finals to begin on May 4 after a finals prep day on May 3.
A mix of
in-person, hybrid and online-only classes were planned.
A negative
COVID-19 test was required for WVU students in Morgantown attending in-person
courses or using on-campus resources like libraries and dining
facilities.
Most affected students were assigned testing dates last
week.
At Marshall in Huntington, all students were being testing when
they returned to campus using self-administered, saliva-based tests. Employees
had three days to be tested once they were back on the job.
The first
four days of Marshall’s previously-scheduled spring break were canceled. No
classes were to be held on March 19. Marshall’s spring semester was scheduled to
end on Apr. 23 with final exams from Apr. 24 to Apr. 30.
The start of the
spring semester had been pushed back by one week to Jan. 19 at Shepherd
University. The bulk of spring break was also canceled there and, like at
Marshall, no classes were planned on March 19.
West Liberty University
previously canceled its spring break.
Classes complying with COVID-19
protocols began on Jan. 11 at Wheeling University, West Virginia State
University, Bluefield State College and Fairmont State University.
The
spring semester was set to start on Jan. 25 at West Virginia Wesleyan with the
last day for classes at Wesleyan coming on May 1.
“I think we’re a lot
better off because we’ve been through this before,” Dr. Armstrong Tucker told
MetroNews at the start of the spring semester in the ongoing
pandemic.
During the fall, the cumulative positivity rate was 1.9 percent
in weekly testing at all colleges and universities in West Virginia
“There’s no question that people have COVID fatigue and that will
continue throughout the semester, but we just need folks to hang in there just a
few more months until we can get enough people vaccinated that we can start
returning to life a little bit more normally.”