CC's calendar for next year, explained. Kind of.
Plus, what working on a capstone project looks like during a pandemic
Good morning, and happy Wednesday. On this pre-pandemic date in 2018 “The Man Who...” was performed as the last play of Colorado College’s Cornerstone Arts Week (This year, the annual tradition did not take place, but for students interested in the performing arts, the Fine Arts Center is hosting a virtual play club the first Thursday of each month.)
Today, we break down CC’s email announcement about next year’s academic calendar with the help Vice Provost Pedro de Araujo. Plus, what working on senior projects is like during a pandemic.
➡️ICYMI: On Monday, our resident microbiologist Phoebe Lostroh gave her weekly forecast for El Paso County. She also explained the South African variant and Gov. Polis’ vaccine distribution plan.
✉️In Your Inbox:
On Thursday, CC announced a new travel policy for all students, faculty, and staff in the CC community. For those who need to travel, the policy stipulates they must submit a petition two weeks prior to their proposed departure date, and undergo quarantine and testing upon returning to campus. The full policy can be viewed here.
On Friday, a student living in the Western Ridge Apartments received a positive test result and is now in isolation
In an update to CC’s December announcement of plans to establish a “Campus Safety Oversight Committee,” yesterday the college proposed that the committee be “presidentially-appointed,” and be charged with overseeing the training of Campus Safety officers and the Campus Resource Officer in antiracist practices and trauma-informed care. In January, the college renewed its contract with the Colorado Springs Police Department for another two years, keeping the position of the Campus Resource Officer despite calls from the student-run Collective for Antiracism and Liberation to eliminate the position. (Be on the lookout for an article in The Catalyst about this over the next semester.)
On Tuesday, CC announced its 2021–2022 academic calendar. The college says it hopes to be fully in-person by Block 4. The full calendar can be viewed here.
🗓 The 2021-2022 Plan
If we had a nickel for every time the college sent out a major announcement on a Tuesday afternoon, we would have two nickels — which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice.
Colorado College released its official calendar for the 2021–2022 academic year yesterday via email, just as we were starting to put this newsletter together. So, we had to adjust our plans yet again.
With this calendar, the college said it is looking at the idea of a “normal, in-person residential liberal arts experience” as vaccines begin to be administered and distributed.
Pedro de Araujo, CC’s Vice Provost, who serves on the president’s cabinet, said that he and other cabinet members were motivated to design a schedule that was “as close to normal as possible,” but that also preserved the benefits of the 2020–2021 academic year.
💻Summer session and study-abroad programing
Among other things that de Araujo said would be returning to some degree of normal, next year’s Summer Session will resume its typical three-block duration. So far, specific dates have not yet been finalized.
However, for abroad programs scheduled for Blocks A and B this summer, statuses will be determined by March and April, respectively. Each program will be evaluated individually while looking into the status of each country’s travel restrictions and considerations from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
🍂Forging a Flexible Fall
The president’s cabinet started by pushing the start of the academic year back to Aug. 30, a little less than a week later than Block 1 started during Pandemic Fall. De Araujo said that this was to leave some room between the end of Block C of the Summer Session and the start of Block 1.
For the fall semester, de Araujo said there would likely still be a distribution of course formats for Blocks 1, 2, and 3. He said he still hoped the college would be able to host some in-person components, but that that would depend on future pandemic conditions.
“I do think that it’s quite possible that there will be more hybrid, in-person classes next fall, relative to completely remote,” de Araujo told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “But, as we know … the nature of the virus and the pandemic can change.”
Another change from Pandemic Fall is that Block 4 will begin after Fall Break on Nov. 18, which has been extended to 11 days. De Araujo said that was designed so students wouldn’t need to leave their belongings on campus the way they did this year, when Fall Break began less than a week into Block 4.
On the other end of Block 4, Winter Break will be shorter next year, starting on Dec. 23 and ending Jan. 2. De Araujo said that decision was to accommodate the longer Fall Break.
🌼Spring, this time with a break
From the looks of it, next year’s spring semester will look very different from this year’s.
The first change the president’s cabinet made was to move J Block from the fall semester to the spring. De Araujo said the cabinet considered the J Block to be one of the benefits students received in the 2020–2021 year, as over 950 CC students enrolled in courses. Along with the change, the college also announced that it would be extending its typical eight-block tuition to cover nine blocks, and would now include J Block and Half Block.
With Block 5 beginning on Jan. 24, a little over a week earlier than it did this year, the cabinet was able to make room for a major casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic — Spring Break, which will go from March 17-27. De Araujo said that he and the cabinet wanted to make sure students received the breaks they normally did after fears of “massive outbreaks” led college leadership to cut the 2021 Spring Break into a normal block break.
As for the rest of the semester, CC plans for the year to end on May 18, which is only a day earlier than it will end this year. So far, no plans for May Commencement ceremonies have been announced.
🌠 The best plan we can hope for
A lot still seems to be left up in the air, with many of the college’s plans relying on unpredictable conditions, such as the threats newfound variants will pose to CC’s population or whether vaccine distribution plans will reach students, faculty and staff in time for the fall semester of 2021.
But to counteract these uncertainties, de Araujo said the president’s cabinet’s plan relied on feedback from a variety of college leadership, including the Scientific Advisory Group, CC’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Team, Acting Dean of Students Rochelle Dickey, and department chairs.
Overall, de Araujo was hopeful that the coming year would feel as normal as possible, with the calendar incorporating pandemic developments with a pre-pandemic and historical CC.
“It’s going to look more similar to what 1920 looked like, with some additional benefits,” de Araujo said.
‘Capping’ off senior year during a pandemic
Senior theses, capstone projects, and seminars are a fundamental aspect of the college experience, and like everything else, they have been altered to fit the pandemic way of life.
In a typical year, Colorado College seniors working on theses, essays and capstone projects could be found writing and hoarding books in study carrels on the garden level of Tutt Library. But when the pandemic struck the U.S. last March and CC was forced to close the Tutt Library, students had to find a new place to work.
Even with the building closed, some library staff continued to offer services to students, only in a virtual format.
Mia Alvarado, CC’s Thesis Writing Specialist, said while there is some pleasure in presenting findings in a digital space, the “beautiful aspect” of doing so in person has been lost. In a normal year, Alvarado helped students across disciplines with researching and writing their theses, generally in person from the Colket Center for Academic Excellence.
Alvarado said this year is “weirder” now and has been doing more one-on-one work with students in a “tutorial model” this year. This model, she said, is very fitting to thesis creation because every student is doing individual work.
Still, Alvarado said that students seem to feel lonelier now without the ability to meet in person.
“In some ways it’s a real loss because a lot of students really benefit from a sense of community and colleagues and meeting goals together and troubleshooting together,” Alvarado told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.
Baker Casagrande ‘21 is among those seniors that thrived on studying in a community.
In an average year, physics majors like Casagrande would give 45-minute presentations in person and create posters, which would be hung up in the hallway of the physics department, as a part of his senior seminar. This year, however, presentations were held on Zoom, and the posters won’t be seen by many.
“I’m not sure that’s what it feels like normally to physics majors, but why are we doing this poster no one’s gonna see it? It’s just gonna hang up in a dark hallway,” Casagrande told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.
He also said that he feels there is less of a community surrounding the senior seminar than there was before. He said that even though it’s still relatively easy to achieve most of the seminar’s goals, all the “little things that make it special” are gone
Casagrande added that having a physical space to put himself in, like a library or around other students, can put him into a better mental space to work. Otherwise, senior project work is easy to forget about, and can get “pushed back and back and back” when there’s not a constant reminder to do it, he said.
But despite all the changes to the process of senior projects wrought by the pandemic, Alvarado emphasized that writing a thesis is a time to deeply connect with the work the student is creating.
“A thesis is actually a really beautiful assignment,” Alvarado said. “And it’s all the more true this year.”
About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project
The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Esteban Candelaria, Lorea Zabaleta, and Cameron Howell in partnership with The Catalyst, Colorado College’s student newspaper. Work by Phoebe Lostroh, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at CC and National Science Foundation Program Director in Genetic Mechanisms, Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, will appear every Monday.
The project seeks to provide frequent updates about CC and other higher education institutions during the pandemic by providing original reporting, analysis, interviews with campus leaders, and context about what state and national headlines mean for the CC community.
📬 Enter your email address to subscribe and get the newsletter in your inbox each time it comes out. You can reach us with questions, feedback, or news tips by emailing ccreportingproject@gmail.com.