Tech Returns To Class, Oldham Feels Good About Plan

As classes resume on the Tennessee Tech campus Monday, Tech President Phil Oldham said the leadership team feels good about its plan to deal with COVID-19.

But how individuals behave and the decisions made will likely define the success of the fall semester.

“The area that we have almost no control over is off-campus decisions and social settings<" Tennessee Tech President Phil Oldham said. "And, you know, as far as not just students, but other campus personnel as well, but certainly students decide to how they want to live their lives. You know, it can affect what we do on campus ultimately. So it's just it's just the reality we live with." Oldham said many of the parties that have led to campus outbreaks nationwide have been off-campus. He said Tech has tried to clearly communicate to Tech students how they will impact what happens going forward. "I think I think we've been pretty clear throughout that if we're going to we're going to take every step possible to make it available and to make these options possible," Oldham said. "But ultimately, it's probably going to be determined on how we all behave and how we all socialize and and the individual decisions that we make. And that's, you know, examples of recent campus decisions around the country really point that out, it's almost always been not the majority of students on campus that have been the problem. It's actually a minority of students that have caused the issues that made it impossible for the campus to continue on campus operations. So that's what we're hoping to avoid here." Staff and faculty have worked all summer trying to implement safety guidelines to protect the campus community. Oldham said as you walk across campus, you will see signs of that work. "There's a lot of signage about where to walk, where not to walk, what direction to go in, you know, how to study at least six feet apart," Oldham said. "There's also temperature check stations distributed around campus where you can just walk up to a kiosk with a no touch kiosk, where you can just put your image in front of it and take your temperature. There are hand sanitizer stations at the entry point of all buildings. The classrooms look very different than the chairs that are spread out, that they're six feet apart. We have we have required face covering in all indoor spaces on campus and in outdoor spaces where social distancing isn't possible." Oldham said he is particularly proud of the hard work done by faculty to prepare for the fall semester. "They've been remarkable," Oldham said. "They've really stepped up to these challenges that we face really since March, converting courses to online. And if the course is not fully online, almost every course that we have had some online capability. So we built flexibility into all of our classes so that we know that some students at some point in time will need to miss in-person classes. And so we don't want them to fall behind. So the ability to kind of shift back and forth conveniently between in-person and online and and utilize the technology to the fullest extent possible while still trying to provide a personal in-person experience for students that we know is better educationally for them." As classes resume Monday, Oldham said he hopes students will continue to be the center of focus for the Tech campus and trying to keep them safely learning in classrooms. "They learn better that way," Oldham said. "They associate better that way. They have a better chance of building their future careers, that campus experience. So we don't want to lose that if at all possible. And we're going to we're going to fight tooth and nail to keep it."