Students at Texas State University to Fully Return at Campus This Fall

The Texas State University is bringing students back to campus in the fall, with its full class occupation capacity, similarly to the pre-pandemic days.

The President of Texas State University, Denise Trauth shared the news through an email directed to students on April 7, Erudera.com informs.

“This fall, in-person classes, and activities will be back in full force on our Texas State University Campuses, giving our students the college life experience for which we are known,” President Trauth said.

Following the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, Provost Gene Bourgeois announced that the classes would return to their 100 percent capacity, similar to the 2019 capacity. The university also intends to continue offering vaccination service at the San Marcos campus, with nearly 1,500 doses inoculated regularly.

Similar to Texas State University, the University of Texas (UT) in Austin expects a full return in the fall semester. In a message directed to the students, the president of UT, Jay Hartzell, said that the university is planning to look more like fall 2019 rather than the 2020 semester.

According to Hartzell, students and staff are to expect regular attendance at the campus, although the exact plans on the reopening of the campus have not been made known yet.

Other Texan universities, such as the University of Houston, last month inoculated against COVID-19 nearly 1,100 vaccines for students and staff members at their Health Center, prioritizing the frontline workers.

UH received around 1,000 Moderna COVID-19 vaccines from the Texas Department of State Health Services in February and started administering them in collaboration with Walgreens a month later.

Meanwhile, across the country, many universities and colleges are continuously working to finalize their mass vaccination plans. Iowa State University  (ISU) intends to vaccinate as many students as possible by the end of this semester, with mass vaccination starting on April 19. In recent weeks, the university’s infection rate has increased significantly compared to the start of the spring semester.

ISU plans to return students to campus by the fall semester, but it has not decided yet on protection measures, which are set to be determined in August.

The University of Tennessee Knoxville (UT) has also started the inoculation of its students, staff, and citizens aged 16 and above. At the beginning of April, UT was administering about 200 vaccines daily while aiming to have a couple of thousand vaccines inoculated in the following weeks.

Other universities such as Rutgers University in New Jersey as well as Brown University will not allow students back on campus without being vaccinated. The University of Rochester also encourages students to get their second shot of vaccines in order for the return to campus to occur as soon as possible.