Dear Students,,
I’m writing to update you on our spring return to campus planning. Our health and safety team has confidence in our enhanced mandatory weekly testing plan and our ability to handle cases on campus and in our community even though we are seeing a current new wave of cases across the country.
From the beginning of the pandemic last March, we have focused on several core values: health and safety, the quality of our academic program and student experience, commitment to equity, support for our faculty and staff, and the long-term strength of Rhodes College. This has been a semester like no other, but I am proud of our community and the many ways we are supporting and caring for each other.
This week, housing assignments will go out to students living on campus, registration for spring classes is underway, and we will continue with our on-campus reopening pilot program that is presently ongoing.
At the end of the month, you will also receive your bill for the spring semester. We know that the pandemic has been financially challenging for many of you and responding to those additional needs is a priority for the college. To that end, I am pleased to tell you that we have decided to charge the same tuition rate for the coming spring semester as we did this past spring. This will be an increase over the tuition charged for the current remote semester but remains less than the originally published tuition rate for 2020-21. I am grateful to the many generous donors who have stepped forward to provide additional support for your education in the midst of this crisis. They have made it possible for us to do this. The college does not plan to add any COVID fees as a number of other institutions have done.
We also owe a collective thank you to our Memphis neighbors who continue to follow masking and distancing guidelines. We have launched a new COVID dashboard that allows you to track the trends we’re monitoring as we make decisions for the college. This should help ease your mind as we move toward the spring.
We can’t wait to welcome you back to campus. Maintaining good safety practices—including masking, testing, and social distancing–– will be the bedrock of our ability to open and remain open. I am confident that your compassion for each other and love for Memphis will drive your commitment to these practices. The public health expertise of our partners at Baptist Memorial Health Care continue to guide our policies and protocols. You will receive more information as the spring semester gets closer.
Warmly,
Marjorie