June 5, 2020 | College Communications

Dear North Central College Community,

On May 18, the College’s COVID-19 Institutional Response Team (IRT) published a planning document, which reflected the ongoing work of the College’s IRT in the various facets of planning necessary to reopen the College for in-person operations this fall.

Although it’s been only a few weeks, we have updated the Institutional Planning Document in two main ways:

1. The previous document contained numerous passages pertaining to the State of Illinois moving from Phase 2 to Phase 3. That has occurred and so those passages have been removed.
2. Over the past few weeks we have filled the empty positions on teams that were listed in the previous document, and charged additional teams, such as the Return to Campus-Based Work Team; the Residence Hall Considerations Team; the Studio, Performance, and Lab Team;and the Student Accommodations Team.

The document continues to outline the challenges presented by COVID-19 and provides the team structure we have developed for our planning process. These teams are exploring options and developing recommendations for fall semester 2020, so that North Central College will continue to fulfill its mission throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This remains a working document that can be updated as the underlying public health, government, community, and institutional factors change.

At the time of the first draft, a survey was launched to allow all to submit comments, ideas, and questions to the IRT. That survey remains open and all submissions to date have been funneled to the appropriate team for consideration. Previous ideas submitted have uncovered gaps in our areas of planning. As the College continues through the planning stages, additional input from faculty, staff, and students remains critical.

Decisions regarding academic calendar, intended mode of instruction delivery, and housing should ideally be made and communicated by Monday, July 1, 2020.

On behalf of the IRT, thank you for your continuing support of this important work, and we look forward to sharing additional updates with you as the summer progresses.

Kimberly Sluis & Peter Barger

Co-Chairs, COVID-19 IRT