ISSUED: 14 January 2021
MEDIA CONTACT: Valerie Owens
SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV — Spring semester classes will begin at Shepherd University on Tuesday, January 19, with an array of classroom, hybrid, and online courses available.
Under the orders of West Virginia Governor Jim Justice, Shepherd is requiring COVID-19 tests before the semester begins for all employees and students who will be working, living, or studying on campus. Once the semester begins, surveillance testing will be conducted each week on 10 percent of the student population who are living on or coming to campus, per state regulations.
Shepherd has developed a COVID-19 Dashboard that is available online at https://www.shepherd.edu/covid-19-dashboard/. The dashboard reports cases and quarantine numbers each weekday at 5 p.m., the results of COVID-19 surveillance testing, and the number of Moderna vaccines administered to employees. Higher education and K-12 employees are among the priority groups identified by the state.
“At this time, the number of employees who want the vaccine is much higher than the number of doses allocated to Shepherd,” said Holly Morgan Frye, vice president for student affairs and chair of Shepherd’s Campus Health Task Force. “We are grateful for what is being sent to us, but our employees are quite anxious to be vaccinated.”
Mandatory face coverings and social distancing regulations remain in effect for the spring semester, and all students, employees, and visitors are required to submit an online Daily Mandatory Health Check form every day they are on campus.
“We are not slowing down on any of the policies that we developed since the onset of the pandemic,” said Frye. “We are thoroughly cleaning the campus, enforcing masks and social distancing, requiring the completion of daily health checks, and conducting surveillance testing for our students and our student athletes have an additional rigorous testing schedule.
“If you plan to visit our campus or simply walk through, please be advised, that you will be expected to have on a mask,” said Frye. “We cannot expect our students and employees to adhere to the policies if our guests don’t as well.”
Additional information about the spring semester is available at https://www.shepherd.edu/getramreadyspring.
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