The Mid Semester College Report: how's it going in this brave new world?

[MarzNC]

BTW i commend you for your outstanding statistical analysis on these Covid related metrics , well done .

Thanks!

My parents both got Ph.D.'s from the Univ. of Chicago during WWII. They returned to China to be professors in 1946. He was a chemist and she was in Social Work. By the time I came along the family was in NYC. He spent the last 25 years teaching at Brooklyn College. Eventually there were two more Ph.D.'s in the family. My older brother is a physicist who worked for NASA his entire career. I liked math but wanted to do something more tangible so ended up a statistical programmer and database specialist in public health or pharmaceutical clinical trials.

My parents liked to travel. (Didn't ski though.) My brother and I got the chance to travel a lot growing up, both in N. America and other continents. I lost count of how many university campuses we visited in the U.S., Canada, and Europe before I finished college. Either my father already knew someone or he would just wander into the chemistry building to see who he could chat with. I suppose that's one reason I'm always curious about other regions or countries.

 

[MarzNC]

My daughter is at one of the smallest colleges in the Univ. of NC system. UNC Asheville has about 4000 undergrads and only a few grad students. No football team and no Greek houses. Since early August there have been 20 reported cases of COVID-19. Testing is happening on campus but people who get tested elsewhere are asked to self-report. The UNC Asheville Dashboard is pretty simple. No need to do demographic breakdowns for so few cases. Haven't had more than 4 people at once in the 100 rooms set up for students who need isolation or quarantine.

Classes are mostly online, but there are also in-person and hybrid classes. Online classes are synchronous so students have to attend at the class time. Unlike summer classes which were mostly essentially independent study. When the weather is nice, I've seen professors holding class outdoors on stairs when I've driven through campus. My daughter's friend who is an dorm room said campus is really boring because there aren't people walking around much.

UNCA handled the schedule very differently from many of the other campuses. Students moved their stuff into dorms rooms over two long weekends in July. They didn't move into their rooms until the weekend before classes started. So there wasn't a week with nothing to do but party, as was the case for some students for large campuses who had an extended move-in period just before classes started. The fall semester ends Nov. 20. There will be a 4-week winter session in January. Spring semester starts early Feb and ends May 18, which is about a week later than usual. There won't be a spring break, just as there wasn't really a traditional fall break. Although Sept. 30 was a day off from classes right in the middle of the semester. There haven't been any long weekends.

 

[MarzNC]

The Davidson C2i Map is interesting to look around. There so much variation and the methodology for classes doesn't seem to have much relationship to the COVID-19 stats for a given state. Not every college is included, but more than enough to be useful in some way. The map is interactive so can see what college a dot represents.

C2i Dashboard

collegecrisis.shinyapps.io

 

[Warp daddy]

Thanks!

My parents both got Ph.D.'s from the Univ. of Chicago during WWII. They returned to China to be professors in 1946. He was a chemist and she was in Social Work. By the time I came along the family was in NYC. He spent the last 25 years teaching at Brooklyn College. Eventually there were two more Ph.D.'s in the family. My older brother is a physicist who worked for NASA his entire career. I liked math but wanted to do something more tangible so ended up a statistical programmer and database specialist in public health or pharmaceutical clinical trials.

My parents liked to travel. (Didn't ski though.) My brother and I got the chance to travel a lot growing up, both in N. America and other continents. I lost count of how many university campuses we visited in the U.S., Canada, and Europe before I finished college. Either my father already knew someone or he would just wander into the chemistry building to see who he could chat with. I suppose that's one reason I'm always curious about other regions or countries.

Lots of intellectual firepower There !!??

 

[MarzNC]

@Warp daddy : did you see the NY Times article about a few colleges that have managed to keep students on campus with little fanfare, but plenty of testing? I think they are all private colleges.

Colleges Learn How to Suppress Coronavirus: Extensive Testing (Published 2020)

While many campuses are struggling with major outbreaks, some schools have successfully contained the virus.

www.nytimes.com

A friend in Boston has two daughters at very small colleges in New England. One is sticking with only online classes even though students are living on campus, and the other is doing all in-person classes. Both are testing students at least once a week working with a Boston-based company.

 

[Warp daddy]

Sorry Marz was playing hooky ?this am on the golf course so didn't reply.

Hadn't seen the Times article but very interesting that some of the "Poison Ivy's" ie Colby and Cornell in Ia.seem to have a decent strategy , hopefully it persists . Behavior is always a challenge to predict with some ?

 

[JTG]

I think they are all private colleges.

Not just privates. SUNY Plattsburgh has a rigorous testing program in place (I think my son has had three tests since the end of August) and they are maintaining hybrid and in person classes with no new cases since two the last week of August.

 

[Brownski]

Junior got one random test so far

 

[MarzNC]

Not just privates. SUNY Plattsburgh has a rigorous testing program in place (I think my son has had three tests since the end of August) and they are maintaining hybrid and in person classes with no new cases since two the last week of August.

What I meant was that the article I posted in Post #15 had examples of approaches that were working were private colleges. Although reading more carefully I see that Delaware State is mentioned as a success. Univ. of Illinois Champagne-Urbana had a thorough mass testing approach all tested out during the summer. But even so that was not enough to avoid major outbreaks. So testing is not a panacea, no matter how often it happens.

Too hard to figure out, but my guess is that colleges that started up programs where student "ambassadors" are roaming the campus reminding people of mask usage and other safety precautions should be among the schools that are open with relatively few positive cases and no major outbreaks. Just the existence of such a program reflects on an understanding by administrators that you can't just tell a bunch of young adults what to do and expect them to follow the rules if they have little understanding of the reasoning behind them.

 

[MarzNC]

From a statistical design standpoint, what makes sense to me would be a stratified sampling approach. As opposed to a random sample for the entire student body. Factors that come to mind are type of residence (on campus, off campus), level of involvement in organized athletics, perhaps gender, perhaps GPA for sophomores and above, age (18 and under, 19-20, 21-24, 25+). Make a good project for some Survey Sampling course.