WESTERVILLE, Ohio — If and when college students return to campuses this fall, there will be noticeable differences as a result of COVID-19 guidelines. Schools preparing now are finding that they have to reconstruct entire spaces, which is placing limitations on what they can and cannot do.


What You Need To Know


  • Class sizes and dining spaces have been cut in half

  • Sneeze guards, which separate professors and students, are being installed in classrooms

  • The university is determining if they have enough professors to manage staggered classes

Preparing for the start of the school year has already been a huge undertaking at Otterbein University from rearranging classrooms to dining spaces. School officials said there’s still much more to do with two months left before students return.

One thing students will notice is the reconfiguration of the mail room. They'll no longer be able to pick up mail from their own slot. Instead, they’ll be picking it up from someone behind a window.

When they head to class, the facilities team has already made sure hand sanitizer is in multiple places and visible before they enter a classroom. Facilities team members said just getting that done was a chore as hand sanitizer was not easy to get.

“We had to come up with an idea for how we could get something out real quickly. So, Eric and I kind of designed these little things," said Kenny Goble, a carpenter at Otterbein. "This is made with polycarbonate.”

Goble and other carpenters created sneeze guards. The guards, which are still a work in progress, will be attached to lecterns and in some cases stretch across the front of the room depending on the class to protect the professors and the students.

While classrooms will be cleaned after each use, Communications Director Jenny Hill said, “Each member of the campus community’s responsibility to wear masks and to clean their workspace when they leave.”

With protections in place, perhaps one of the biggest changes students will see is the class sizes cut in half, but it's a challenge, said Troy Bonte, the Executive Director of Facilities Management.

“Do we have enough professors, you know, for the classes? What’s the student loading like? And again, you ask about are you stacking classes or are you staggering classes, and in some cases, the answer is yes because you would have filled this classroom and now you know you can’t," Bonte said. "So, we’re trying really hard to include like 12 students in those spaces or maybe even teaching labs where you have one instructor and maybe you have some video equipment in the next lab, and they go back and forth between the two labs.”

Across campus, students needing textbooks won’t be able to pop in, look, and purchase. Bookstore Manager Kathleen Darnell said they rearranged the store. While students can still shop for school supplies, they will need to order their textbooks online and pick them up at the store if they choose while keeping their distance.

While it is a lot of work to prepare for COVID-19, the university said it's grateful for how it’s become a team effort. Otterbein University officials said they’ve also cut dining space in half and eliminated all self-serve items except for drinks. They’ll be encouraging students to get their food to-go even more when school starts versus sitting down to eat inside.