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<p class="MsoNormal">Dear CS Undergraduate Students,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> We know that many of you have been wondering about the phased re-opening.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">During the summer, the Russ College and the School of EECS had to make several multi-faceted decisions regarding which courses would be offered fully online, and which students would be returning during Phase-2. At the time, there were
many unknowns --- how many students would be allowed to return, and when. Part of the complexity involved the unknown nature of how the pandemic would progress and the fact that some faculty, with pre-existing health conditions, needed to be assigned to
courses that had no face-to-face component. The School had several faculty members who fit into that category.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For this reason, we prioritized students in courses that needed to be on campus to access specialized equipment for Phase-2 of the re-opening. Unfortunately, this limited group of students in classes (around 30% of the OU student body)
did not include computer science students who we judged, by and large, would not require physical access to equipment to complete their work. We wish that more students could be brought back to campus and that these decisions had been made earlier.
But, given the fact that social distancing requirements resulted in limited capacity in the dormitories, we are not surprised by the limited number of students that are being allowed to return to campus.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We are trying our best to accommodate everyone during this pandemic, to keep everyone safe and to deliver a quality experience for everyone at the same time. Because of the uncertainty surrounding what would happen during the semester,
our School proactively developed laboratory kits for all courses with a laboratory component so that students could perform the labs at home. For example, if you are taking EE 3954 this semester, you should have received one such lab kit.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We are committed to high quality in-person instruction. As soon as it is safe to return to that mode of instruction, we will do so. We remain hopeful that a vaccine will become available in late Fall or early Spring and that the
Spring semester will see a return to “normal” operations. We miss being on campus and working with students face-to-face either academically or socially. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">----Best Regards,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">----Costas Vassiliadis, Undergraduate Chair, School of EECS <o:p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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