Tech Professors May Shift Curriculum, Test Dates After Week Off

Tennessee Tech professors are hard at work finding ways to compress activities to account for this week’s canceled classes.

Friday’s classes will be cancelled, making it five days missed including the MLK Day scheduled off day. Tech Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Lori Mann Bruce said professors usually plan the semester with a few cancellations in mind. She said many teachers will also supplement in-class activities with videos and online work to stay on track.

“They’ll kind of pick right back up into their schedules and kind of shift it accordingly,” Mann Bruce said. “They’ll look at when they’ve scheduled tests and maybe shift those a day or two to make sure they’ve covered the material, but they’ll just kind of naturally compress their lectures.”

She said historically, the school has added Saturday classes, or added days to the semester in extreme cases. She said the school’s Leadership Team plans the semester with a few buffer days to try to prevent that.

“That’s very uncommon and typically, we’ve designed the semester so that we can have a few days of closure and it not have any kind of negative impact on the progression of the semester,” Mann Bruce said.

She said the Leadership Team has members who oversee academics, housing, dining, police, and facilities that work together to ensure that the effects on every aspect of the university have been considered when deciding on a potential closure. She said the most important thing to the council is the safety of the students and faculty who travel to campus.

“Can we keep dining services open?” Mann Bruce said. “What’s going to happen to the students that live on campus? What about the students that are commuting? So, we look at all of that holistically and make a recommendation to the president as to whether we think it’s best to close campus or keep campus open.”

She said with more inclement weather forecasted for the weekend, the team is already having conversations about the fate of Monday’s classes. She said they plan to make a decision as soon as possible so that students and faculty can plan.

The Tennessee Recreation Center and Health Services will be open from 11:00am-3:00pm and campus dining will be open from 9:00am-7:00pm.