Fall 2020 Reopening Plans At The Top 100 U.S. Business Schools

Babson College’s Olin Graduate School of Business is considering a range of scenarios for the fall. Babson photo

MANDATORY TRAINING, VIRAL TESTING, MASKS & MORE AT YALE SOM

On July 1, Yale University announced detailed plans for the fall semester that are in accord with Governor Ned Lamontā€™s roadmap for reopening Connecticut. Yale School of Management is following the extensive health and safety measures governing the repopulation of campus, as well as a community compact, “adherence to which is expected of all students, faculty, and staff,” says Anjani Jain, Yale SOM’s deputy dean for academic programs.Ā Among the measures: mandatory training, viral testing, health monitoring, isolation and contact tracing when infection is detected, masks, social distancing, and other preventive requirements.

Yale SOM Deputy Dean Anjani Jain. Yale photo

“The development of Yaleā€™s plan was the result of months-long deliberations involving several university-wide committees, on which Dean (Kerwin) Charles and several other faculty were represented,” Jain tells Poets&Quants by email. “The universityā€™s planning has been guided by both federal and state guidelines. Professor Ed Kaplan of SOM has been a principal member of the team that is doing epidemiological modelling and extensive real-time analysis of data. Within SOM, two active committees consisting of students (both current students and recent graduates), faculty, and staff have been discussing various plans for the upcoming academic year, with particular attention to pedagogy, academic calendar and scheduling, grading, cohort formation, student life, and various co-curricular activities.”

SOM is fortunate to have a state-of-the-art building with plenty of classroom space amid a capacious design that lends itself to social distancing, says Jain, who also is a professor in the practice of management. “We are able to dedicate a classroom for every course, with adequate capacity to have half the enrolled students attend in person while maintaining strict social distancing. Students will have an A/B schedule in which their participation in each course will alternate between the classroom and Zoom sessions. This will be true regardless of where the professor is located while teaching.”

Yale SOM got a chance to test run its new coronavirus protocol this month when itsĀ incoming cohort of EMBAs did a nine-day residency on the otherwise empty Yale campus beginning July 10, the first B-school students to return to New Haven since the shift to remote instruction in March; for the remainder of their first year, they will attend in-person and virtual classes every other weekend while continuing their professional lives. In a harbinger of the new normal that MBA students are likely to experience when their classes resume in late August, of theĀ 77 EMBA students, 16 decided to take advantage of the hybrid format SOM has adopted to do their classes remotely.

Asked for his outlook on the long term, Jain offers a hope and a fear.

“My hope is that in the immediate future our public health measures will limit the spread of the virus, and that in the not-too-distant-future we will see the development of effective therapeutic cures and preventive vaccines to fight the pandemic,” he says. “My fear is that we will fail to achieve the collective resolve that the pandemic requires of us. Ideological opposition to science-based and data-driven public health directives will cause much more death and economic disruption.”

SCHOOL CONTROL STATE STATUS FALL 2020 CLASS START/END DATES
American (Kogod) Private DC Planning for online; will use hybrid approach when possible August 15 to November 24; final exams online
Appalachian State (Walker) Public NC Planning for in-person August 17 to November 24; final exams online
Arizona State (W.P. Carey) Public AZ Proposing a hybrid model August 20 to December 4
Auburn (Harbert) Public AL Planning for in-person August 17 to November 24
Babson (Olin) Private MA Considering a range of scenarios August 24 to December 10
Baylor (Hankamer) Private TX Proposing a hybrid model August 24 to November 25
Bentley Private MA Planning for in-person August 31 to December 16
Binghamton Public NY Planning for in-person August 26 to December 7
Boise State Public ID Proposing a hybrid model August 24 to December 11
Boston (Carroll) Private MA Planning for in-person August 31 to December 10
Boston (Questrom) Private MA Proposing a hybrid model September 2 to December 10
Brigham Young (Marriott) Private UT Proposing a hybrid model August 31 to November 24
Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) Private PA Proposing a hybrid model August 17 to December 17
Case Western Reserve University (Weatherhead) Private OH Proposing a hybrid model August 24 to December 4
Chapman (Argyros) Private CA Planning for in-person August 31 to December 12
Clemson Public SC Proposing a hybrid model August 19 to December 4
College of Charleston Public SC Considering a range of scenarios August 25 to November 24
Columbia Business School Private NY Proposing a hybrid model September 7 to December 14
Cornell (Johnson) Private NY Proposing a hybrid model September 2 to November 24
Dartmouth (Tuck) Private NH Proposing a hybrid model August 24 to November 20
Duke (Fuqua) Private NC Proposing a hybrid model September 3 to November 17
Emory (Goizueta) Private GA Proposing a hybrid model August 19 to November 24
Florida State Public FL Proposing a hybrid model August 24 to December 4
Fordham (Gabelli) Private NY Proposing a hybrid model August 26 to December 4
George Washington Private DC Planning for online; will use hybrid approach when possible August 31 to December 12
Georgetown (McDonough) Private DC Planning for online; will use hybrid approach when possible September 8 to December 14

Source: Manaferra & school websites

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