Students at USU Eastern just finished up their finals for the Fall Semester. They are now on break till mid-January, they will return to school on January 19. Castle Country Radio was able to speak with Director of Students, Kevin Hurst about what Spring Semester will bring for students on the campus of USU Eastern.

Because of the COVID pandemic, the university made some adjustments to their academic calendar and part of that will be starting school later in January. “We’ve adjusted our academic schedule a little bit so we’re going to start classes after Martin Luther King so the 19th of January, we’re going to remove spring break to eliminate a time of travel, and we’ll end at the same time and so the spring break, in essence, will roll into January and it will be a later start versus having a spring break,” stated Hurst. Students have not been on campus since the Thanksgiving holiday all courses were moved online at that time.

Due to COVID pandemic courses have been offered in a variety of ways for students to obtain their education. “We do have some face-to-face courses with social distancing in the classroom. We have some hybrid courses which are some face to face, some online. We have some virtual courses; we have some interactive video conference courses – we call it IVC and so a wide variety of options for students to take courses and get their education,” said Hurst. This gives students more flexibility and a variety of academic opportunities.

The university has had to re-think and re-vamp some of the student activities on campus. “A lot of adaptions and changes as far as offerings to students but I’ve been very impressed with our Director of Student Life is just doing wonderful things with our student leadership team to transition to activities that are virtual and engagement that’s a little bit more of a virtual format. They did a high stakes bingo that I thought was a lot of fun, they did that virtually, and students really enjoy participating in those types of activities,” said Hurst. Another event was a build a bear project where students picked up the items for the project and completed it on their own. They in turn could keep that bear or return it as a donation to a charity.

To stay informed on what is taking place on the campus of USU Eastern visit their website at https://eastern.usu.edu/