UC Davis plans to allow students to return to campus in the fall

The University of California, Davis will allow students back on campus in the fall if county and state guidelines allow them to do so. The university plans to offer both in-person and online classes in an effort to prevent any spread of COVID-19.

Classes are scheduled to begin Sept. 30 and most classes have already been moved online.

The announcement, made by the university Tuesday, comes weeks after several universities announced their fall classes will all be online.

“The benefits of a residential education go beyond classes and instruction,” Chancellor Gary May said in a statement. “We look forward to providing that experience for our students — all in keeping with the guidance of our health authorities.”

UC Davis plans to address how it will handle student housing, dining, programs and other campus operations.

Individual instructors may choose to administer their classes in-person, particularly if the class is small in number or cannot be delivered remotely.

Students returning to campus will be in larger classrooms, residence halls will have less students, and physical distancing will be implemented in dining areas, computer labs and libraries.

Yolo County’s stay-at-home directive ended May 31, but masks are still mandatory for nearly everyone in public.

University of the Pacific also announced plans to reopen all three of its campuses and bring back students in the fall.

Its campuses in Stockton, Sacramento and San Francisco will all implement plans to have fewer students on campus. Classrooms and residence halls have been reconfigured to allow for physical distancing.

“Our priority is to create an environment that protects the health, safety and welfare of our students, faculty and staff,” said Maria Pallavicini, Pacific’s interim president. “We will be able to reopen in large part because of the many advantages already in place at Pacific, like our small class sizes and the fact that our largest student population is on our Stockton Campus, which spans 175 acres and does not have the population density of major urban cores.”