ABAC outlines re-opening for Fall 2020 semester

(TIFTON, GA) – After colleges across Georgia and the United States closed down their campuses due to COVID-19 concerns, the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College is gearing up to welcome students back in August.

“Our classrooms will be lower density, dining hall will be lowered, the dorms will be lower density. Everything will be done to continue to allow for social distancing in the operation,” says ABAC President, Dr David Bridges.

In addition to lower population density across the campus, ABAC is doing more to protect students and faculty.

Including announcing Wednesday what the plan for the Fall Semester schedule was going to look like come the start of the new year.

Dr. Bridges says, “We decided that a good approach would be to condense the calendar. We’re gonna start on the 12th, we’re normally off for Labor Day, we’re not taking Labor Day, we’re gonna go to class. We normally a have a two day Fall Break in October, and we’re gonna attend classes…”

While the college won’t observe holidays or breaks, it helps to minimize possible contact for students before they head home to their families.

Dr. Bridges tells us, “What it allows us to do, which we think is significant, it allows us to complete the last day of class and final exams before students go home for Thanksgiving.

Even while the Fall Semester will look different for the 2020 academic year, some of the measures taken now may stay for the Spring, for ABAC, it’s a matter of waiting and seeing with the virus.

“Is this concept transferable to another area of the college, and if the answer is yes, then you keep it. If it’s not, you at least get rid of it. You may not return to the old way, but you revisit, so we may keep some of these for the spring,” says Dr Bridges.