EWU to move fully online after Thanksgiving
Thursday, August 13, 2020
In order to minimize potential health-related disruptions to instruction and maintain attentiveness to public health concerns, EWU fall instruction will be online only after the Thanksgiving/Native American Heritage Day holiday break.
The decision will impact only a small number of students because most courses will be offered online as part of EWU’s “Max Flex” approach, which gives students the choice of living on or off campus, while taking classes online or in-person when it’s safe to do so. Eastern was the first public institution statewide to make the online decision for the upcoming academic year.
The university’s latest announcement means that any course or lab approved for in-person instruction will not meet in person after the holiday; instead, instruction will migrate to an online format. This includes final exams.
“This follows EWU’s pattern during the pandemic of keeping the health and safety of our campus community at the forefront of everything we do,” says interim President David May. “We made this decision after consulting with our own faculty public health experts as well as local health officials. By limiting in-person interactions, we will mitigate the possible transmission of infection and allow us the best possible start-up environment for faculty and students in winter quarter and spring semester”
The traditional Thanksgiving break is scheduled to run Nov. 25-27, with classes resuming on Monday, Nov. 30, when instruction will migrate to online only. While finals will still be scheduled for courses that were held in-person, they must be done in an online format as well.
EWU believes the move will help limit travel to and from Cheney after Thanksgiving, although students can continue to live in the residence halls and come back to campus after the holiday break if they so choose. Students will continue to have access to services after the holiday break to help support online instruction and finals week.
For quarter and semester classes that can meet in person the schedule will look like this:
- In-person instruction for quarterly courses runs Sept. 23 – Nov. 24. The last day of instruction is Dec. 4 with final exams scheduled for Dec. 7–10 (online).
- In-person instruction for semester courses runs Aug. 24 – Nov. 20. The last day of instruction is Dec.11 with final exams scheduled for Dec. 14–17 (online).
EWU Athletics has postponed all fall sports, including football, volleyball and men’s and women’s cross-country, and women’s soccer, until spring.
