University of Arizona campus, coronavirus

Before students return to dorms on the UA campus, they will have to test negative for the coronavirus.

 Josh Galemore / Arizona Daily Star

The University of Arizona has finalized how their classes will operate this fall amid the coronavirus pandemic, the school’s administration says.

β€œIt’s up to the individual professor; they’re going to decide that. It’s definitely not the administration,” President Robert Robbins said during a news conference Thursday. Faculty worked with their department's leadership in effort to have 50% of each degree program with some element of in-person instruction.Β 

β€œStudents, either today or Monday can go in and find the course that they’re signed up for and they will find out from their professor, will it be all remote or one of the three options we laid out. Because some professors will say β€˜we’re not comfortable going face-to-face, so we’ll have one of these other modalities,’ ” Robbins said.

The class styles they chose from are: in-person with enhanced health protections; a flex of in-person and online instruction; live online classes; and ICourses that students complete at their pace.

The UA will start the school year on Aug. 24.

It will do so with fewer employees. Some 250 have lost their job as of Thursday amid an anticipated revenue loss of about $280 million through the 2021 fiscal year related to the pandemic.

Robbins said the UA’s current furlough plan beginning Aug. 10 β€œis designed to try and save jobs. We do not want to have to lay people off, but people will get laid off in this process.”

Robbins added that β€œit’s a fact of reality, and we have to work with our stakeholders and shared governance partners, but at the end of the day, we have to be fiscally responsible, and we have to have the university survive financially.”

Although the administration has not mentioned any concerns with fewer instructors causing increased course caps during a pandemic, there are concerns around the day-to-day interactions of students in and around campus.

Approximately 6,600 students have sent in their deposits to live on campus during the semester, according to Robbins.

Those students will have to test negative before moving into their dormitory assignments, Robbins said.

If a student becomes infected with the coronavirus on campus, facilities management will send a sanitation team to that area and evacuate it until it’s sanitized. The infected person will then go into a quarantine process within a dorm set aside for positive cases.

Students and employees will be asked to sign up for the Wildcat Wellcheck, a text-based screening tool that will ask them questions about their health every day and may give advice on whether or not to interact on campus.

Temperature checks will also be used in the dorms, according to Dr. Richard Carmona, the UA’s reentry taskforce leader.

β€œTo go into government buildings, you have to get a temperature check. When you get your temperature checked, there’s a little circle put on your ID card that shows you were cleared today to go in and out of the building. So those are all things that we’re working on now,” Carmona said.

Carmona also said there’s no room for complacency when instituting safety measures on campus given the current status of the virus statewide.

The Arizona Department of Health Services reports that the 20- to 44-year-old age range has the most confirmed coronavirus cases. It’s a situation Carmona called the β€œsweet spot” for many in the UA community.

β€œThe incidence of the disease is higher, and how you interpret that is that’s a tough group to get to change their behaviors. When we have thousands of students coming back who are 20 to 21 years old, and they’re used to high-fiving, bear hugs, bro hugs, hanging out and sharing their drinks with their buds, that’s a problem,” Carmona said.

While getting students to cooperate with safety measures, such as wearing masks, won’t be a campus police problem, Robbins said the administration is working on enforcement measures.

β€œI think we can pull this off. We have been planning for months and months, but it requires people to follow the rules,” Robbins said. β€œThat will get us 90% of the way there.”

From May:

Two A-10 Thunderbolt IIs from the 355th Wing, assigned to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, and two F-16 Fighting Falcons from the Arizona Air National Guard's 162nd Wing, combined to honor Pima County’s first responders and medical professionals fighting COVID-19 with a flyover.

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Contact Star reporter Shaq Davis at 573-4218 or sdavis@tucson.com

On Twitter: @ShaqDavis1