ODESSA, Texas — With the COVID-19 pandemic still playing a prominent role in our lives today, colleges are trying to determine a course of action for the upcoming academic year.
This includes deciding between moving classes fully online or having them in-person.
Online classes pose a problem for international students.
This group of students, of which there are about 120, are required to enroll in in-person classes or else they face the threat of deportation.
The University of Texas Permian Basin is working with the University of Texas system to make sure that this doesn't happen.
"We’re committed to working with our international students to find a way for them to continue their course of study and make progress towards their degree. So in our current re-opening plan, it indicates that we will have in-person classes as well as hybrid classes," Dr. Becky Spurlock, VP for Student Affairs and Leadership at UTPB said.
It's those types of classes that will allow international students to remain and study here, but that's only one piece of the plan for reopening.
UTPB is also trying to change the density of their campus by physically spreading courses out, along with measuring classrooms to figure out their COVID-19 capacity in classrooms as it relates to social distancing.
Once UTPB made this announcement, they began to immediately receive feedback from international students and their families.
"We started hearing from students and their families pretty immediately because they want to stay, they want to complete their degree, they want to make progress on what they started and so they’re looking for assurances that they can still continue on the path," Dr. Spurlock said.
UTPB hopes to have even more details on their plan to re-open in the coming days.