North Park University: A Successful Start to the Fall 2020 Semester
Students, Faculty and Staff Gratefully Follow COVID-19 Wellness Protocols
CHICAGO, Sept. 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- After months of COVID-19 risk-mitigation planning, North Park University (North Park) has welcomed its Fall 2020 class of first-year, returning, and transfer students to its Chicago campus this month. With the students' health, safety, and best interests leading every decision, a sense of reassurance permeates the North Park community – and yielded a larger enrollment than in 2019.
From the moment students arrived on campus, every conversation with students and family members echoed gratitude and excitement.
"The students appreciate and have confidence in the complex and detailed planning that went into offering them the opportunity to attend North Park in-person this fall – and our plan is now working well," said North Park President Mary K. Surridge.
Every day Surridge engages in individual and group conversations with students, faculty and staff who are helping to sustain campus community life and support wellness protocols. "We are all in this together – and I could not be prouder of our Reopening Task Force and our campus community overall," said Surridge.
The nearly 3,000 student campus community – with a 12:1 student-to-faculty ratio, large classrooms and ample outdoor green space on Chicago's near northside – is a Christian university with commuters and residential students and no fraternities or sororities.
"We have highly qualified professionals giving daily attention to every detail of our plan and they will continue to do so," added Surridge. A daily temperature and COVID symptom check-in, monitored through a free smart-phone app, clears students, faculty, and staff to appear on campus.
North Park's in-this-together culture promotes guideline compliance such as universal mask wearing, hand hygiene, and social distancing. Student athletes are demonstrating their leadership skills by sharing social media posts encouraging their peers to observe the guidelines faithfully.
Contributing to the fall 2020 enrollment increase and campus reopening success is a campus-wide sense of gratitude for having an authentic college experience.
"Our students are grateful for the gift of being together with their friends, faculty and mentors," Surridge said, "and they are sharing responsibility for making the plan work."
ABOUT NORTH PARK UNIVERSITY
North Park University is city-centered, intercultural, and emerging as the model for Christian higher education in 21st Century America.
SOURCE North Park University
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