The Tribune

By PAVEL BAILEY

AS the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect the nation, University of the Bahamas President Dr Rodney Smith has shed light on how the virus has affected campus life and operations nearly two years later.

At a press conference for the recent launch of the “UB Says No! Against Gender Based Violence” campaign, Dr Smith commented on UB’s current operations status at the start of a new semester in an ongoing COVID environment.

“Operations are going very well for the university,” he said yesterday. “We actually became completely digitised in the fall of 2019, so when we had the lockdown on March 16, 2020, we were prepared and our faculty members were actually preparing weeks before that actually happened. In the summer of 2020, all of our faculty members became online certified teachers and so we have been able to gradually go back to a hybrid model.”

He said as COVID-19 restrictions are relaxed more classes have been able to partially return to face-to-face learning.

“Some of our courses are actually in hybrid mode. For instance, some of the sciences, particularly culinary arts. We have in the past week or so we have been able to mobilise the nursing and allied health division here on the main campus so that the Ministry of Health can have access to the buildings on Grosvenor’s Close, so we are doing extremely well.”

Dr Smith noted that while students are approximately taking 1,300 courses a semester between the main and Grand Bahama campuses, they are logging into these classes digitally not only across all the islands of the Bahamas, but throughout the world as well. He said the digital environment has greatly allowed the university to expand its reach.

“As a matter of fact, we have students from Canada as well as France and we have faculty members that are teaching from every island in The Bahamas. So, digitisation has introduced many opportunities for us for a wider reach and to provide greater access to student and adult learners.”

While UB experienced a slight drop in enrolment in the Spring 2021 semester following the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, the school has now doubled the number of registered students this spring semester.

With the successful rollout of the vaccination programme and the start of the government’s pilot free testing programme, Dr Smith said policies are already in place for students that wish to return to campus to do so if they are fully vaccinated or are willing to test weekly.

“Since October of last year, we have introduced a policy whereby anyone who is fully vaccinated would have access to campus, but if you’re not fully vaccinated you have to have a negative COVID test every three to five days. And we do have testing sites set up on our campus so that faculty, staff and students are able to get tested right here on campus.”