A decision about Ohio State University's fall semester could be made in the next few weeks.
The school has moved classes online for both the spring and summer semesters. Ohio State University president Michael Drake said plans for next fall hinge on COVID-19 case projections in the state.
In an interview with student paper The Lantern, Drake said the university could make a decision by the end of June on whether to return to in-person classes come fall.
“We’d want to have a decision as soon as possible because if we are going to plan for a different fall, we want to plan for a different fall when everybody can do that,” Drake told the paper.
He suggested the semester could include wide-scale social distancing strategies like wearing face masks on campus, and offering more online and hybrid classes.
On April 17, the university created a task force to direct the return to on-campus operations. It’s led by the deans of the Colleges of Public Health and Nursing, and intends to use data on COVID-19 to formulate plans for how Ohio State should move forward.
Gov. Mike DeWine has targeted May 1 for when the state will begin reopening businesses, but said it will be a slow process. K-12 schools will continue teaching remote for the rest of the academic year, and no announcement has been made yet about the fall.
The university declined to comment further.
