Pennsylvania college campus intends on reopening this fall

INDIANA — Almost 10,000 university students in Pennsylvania learned their school’s campus could reopen this fall for in-person instruction.

The Indiana University of Pennsylvania announced Monday that the school has the intention of resuming traditional instruction for the 2021-22 academic year.”We will continue to follow the guidelines from the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control as we move forward, but we wanted to share our current thinking to help our students and their families to make their plans,” IUP President Michael Driscoll said.

“As we continue to follow the science, we are hoping that health and safety guidelines will allow us to resume in-person events and extracurricular activities that we all have greatly missed,” he said. “IUP has never been about buildings, it is about people. Our students, faculty, and staff have been incredibly resilient, positive, and innovative since the March 2020 requirement to go completely remote, but this is not our preference.”

Right now, the university’s students are learning through a hybrid model. Under the current policy, one-third of IUP’s student body is on campus.

“The IUP community has carefully followed these health and safety guidelines, and as a result, we have seen low numbers of COVID-19 positive cases, especially in the spring semester,” Driscoll said. “We hope that this trend continues.”

Classes for the fall semester are scheduled to begin Aug. 23.