For area colleges and universities, getting back to normal means one thing: bringing as many students back to dorms and classrooms as possible. Make no mistake, campus life this fall will still be different from the pre-pandemic college experience, but just opening those classroom and residence hall doors is a big step - the result of many lessons learned during the most unusual academic year in memory.

This fall, Vice President for Student Affairs Matt Scott said that the current plan is to go back to “whatever the new normal will look like,” but the goal being full residence halls and in-person instruction.

Some of the lessons learned led to positive developments, according to Kerry Cole, vice president for Admissions at AIC. For example, AIC used to deliver its certificate of advanced graduate study (CAGS) programs for teachers at 11 physical sites. Once the program was forced online by COVID, administrators began to hear from the grad students that they loved it. So, beginning in the fall AIC will move to a virtual format throughout the state, able to deliver licensing programs in a virtual format for all the programs offered in the School of Education. Full story is available at BusinessWest.