Colorado College’s co-presidents describe their first months on the job and their plans for the academic year

Plus, more on CC’s latest testing strategies as students return to campus

Good morning, and happy Wednesday. On this pre-pandemic date in 2017, Manitou Springs residents were attending the Manitou Springs Heritage Brew Festival in Memorial Park. (Organizers canceled this year’s event because of the pandemic.) 

Today, we talk to Colorado College acting co-presidents Mike Edmonds and Robert Moore about dorm quarantines, new on-campus testing plans, and the college’s finances. We also speak with CC vice president for information technology Brian Young about the college’s rapid testing and wastewater testing capabilities. 

➡️ICYMI: On Monday, our resident microbiologist Phoebe Lostroh gave her weekly forecast for El Paso County. She also explained how the increasing COVID-19 cases at the University of Colorado at Boulder might be impacting Colorado’s Front Range. 

✉️In Your Inbox: Let us help de-densify your inbox.

• The deadline to register to vote by mail in Colorado is Oct. 26. After that, the state will still accept registrations, but you must vote in person. The CC Mail Room cannot forward ballots, so students living off-campus must update their address by Oct. 26. You can also register to work as a paid poll worker for your local county on election day here. 

• Colorado College’s first campus flu shot clinic will be Friday, Sept. 25 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Colorado College students, staff, and faculty can make an appointment.

🔙Remote Learning in Boulder: Beginning today, the University of Colorado at Boulder will be conducting remote learning for all undergraduate, graduate, and law students for a minimum of two weeks. Only approved lab, studio, or performance courses may take place in person. According to the university’s COVID-19 dashboard, 859 on-campus tests have been positive since Aug. 24, and the isolation spaces are at 42% capacity.

📰SUBSCRIBE: The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is partnered with The Catalyst, the independent student newspaper at Colorado College, to bring you these reports on how the pandemic is affecting the CC community. The Catalyst has a weekly newsletter of their own that comes out on Fridays. Subscribe here to never miss an update. 

Screenshot from Colorado College’s “Changes to Our Fall Plan” video. 

They took over in July. Students returned in August. Colorado College’s co-presidents explain the past few months and look to the rest of the year. 

Back in January, former Colorado College president Jill Tiefenthaler announced she was resigning from her position at CC to become the new chief executive officer of the National Geographic Society. The college named former provost Alan Townsend interim president in her absence, but a month before he was slated to begin, Townsend left to take on a new role at the University of Montana. 

Enter: acting co-presidents Mike Edmonds and Robert Moore. 

Edmonds was formerly dean of students and vice president for student life, and Moore was senior vice president for finance and administration. The Board of Trustees asked Edmonds and Moore in June to serve as co-presidents for the 2020-21 academic year, and they began their new roles July 1. 

In a word, the transition has been “tough,” Edmonds told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project in a recent Zoom interview. 

“[I’ve] been a dean of students and vice president for student life for right at 30 years, but in this role, you absolutely have to look about the entirety of the college — and not only the college in the state now, but how your decisions impact the future of the college,” Edmonds said. “So ... that’s been a transition.”

Moving forward, looking back: How the college is trying to prevent rolling quarantines as students return to campus

During move-in, a student living in Loomis Hall tested positive for COVID-19 and exposed multiple others. As a result, the entire dorm went into quarantine for two weeks. Then, 10 students living in South Hall and Mathias Hall tested positive for the coronavirus in related cases, and both dorms began two-week quarantines of their own. 

After the county health department told college administrators to “to expect rolling waves of large quarantines going forward,” which Edmonds and Moore explained in a campus-wide email, the college embraced online learning and reduced the number of students living on campus. 

The college invited about 1,000 students back to campus for Block 2, and they are taking steps to try to prevent mass quarantines from happening in the future. For example, Edmonds said the college is working to de-densify the three large dorms on campus, limit the number of students who have roommates, create a reservation system for the use of showers and sinks, and implement a form of cohort living.  

Additionally, administrators have been discussing expanding their educational campaign, using social media, and incorporating “student influencers” to inform students about COVID-19 policies and expectations. 

“I think we have to work to build a culture of commitment and responsibility,” Edmonds said. “To me, it’s an extension of our concept of honor.” If students are in fear of disciplinary action, they may not provide accurate contact-tracing information, he added.

The college is also trying to decrease testing turnaround time by setting up an onsite lab for rapid COVID-19 testing. Vice President for Information Technology Brian Young said the rapid tests will make contact tracing easier because if someone gets a positive test result 30 minutes after they’re tested, they’re much more likely to remember everyone they’ve been in contact with than if they received the result two days later. 

CC already has the rapid-testing machines from Abbott Labs, but they are waiting for the test kits. They will use the Abbott ID Now tests, which with the proper testing materials, can also test for Influenza A and B. The college will test symptomatic individuals for COVID-19 and Influenza, but random testing will just look for the coronavirus. 

“Thanks to a CC parent we have been treated well with Abbott,” Young told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “A lot of people can’t get the machines. In fact, our own El Paso County health department is quite jealous.” 

The college also has wastewater testing kits, which Young said can identify where a positive COVID-19 result may have come from, down to a specific hall or wing of a dorm building. If a wastewater test comes back positive, the college will follow-up by testing individuals in a “laser-focused way.” 

“Our El Paso County health department is actually very excited about this because they want to get more involved in wastewater testing,” Young said. “We’re the first in the county to really do this.”

El Paso County Public Health will work closely with the college as it moves to implement wastewater and rapid testing on campus. Edmonds and Young said they speak with representatives from the health department almost daily, and that the representatives have toured campus twice so far to review plans for facilities and testing.

In addition to meeting regularly with El Paso County Public Health, Edmonds and Moore frequently convene with other presidents of Colorado colleges and universities in meetings hosted by the Colorado Department of Education, and some presidents of the private schools in Colorado also meet regularly, Edmonds said.

“In Colorado, there’s a great sense of collaboration among higher education institutions about mitigating the risk,” Edmonds said. “There’s also a great desire to have more uniform public health statewide guidelines so you don’t have one county doing this and another county doing this.”

Additional academic blocks, and no furloughs or pay cuts in 2020: A look at CC’s financial decisions 

Colorado College is allowing students to take up to 10 blocks for the “standard comprehensive fee” during the 2020-21 academic year, an increase from the 8 1/2 blocks in years past. Tuition for this year is set at $60,390, roughly a 5% increase from last year. 

“We’re trying to offer greater learning opportunity for the same price,” Moore told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “So that’s been our approach.”

Edmonds estimated that the number of students requesting a gap year this year increased by nearly 30 in comparison with previous years, and Moore said there are around 2,000 students enrolled in Block 2, which is “smaller than last year but not by any huge number.” 

The college’s endowment was valued at $803,826,656 in June 2019. The Board of Trustees manages the endowment, not the co-presidents. Current policies allow the Board to spend approximately 5% of the endowment each year. Based on the 2019 value — the latest available on the college’s website — the board can spend around $40,191,332. 

“Some campuses have decided to take what they call additional draws out of the endowment,” Moore said. “We’re probably not going to do that. ... If the college needs funds short term, we’re better off to borrow those than we are to reduce our endowment, which can earn more than the cost to borrow.”

Despite slightly lower tuition revenue than expected, Edmonds said the college has not talked about cutting departments or services. The college has, however, frozen employee retirement contributions for six months. 

“In doing that, we committed to no furloughs or pay cuts through the rest of the calendar year,” Edmonds said. 

About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project

The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Miriam Brown, Arielle Gordon, and Isabel Hicks, 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 from time to time, as will infographics by Colorado College students Rana Abdu, Aleesa Chua, Sara Dixon, Jia Mei, and Lindsey Smith.

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. 

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