By Teresa Schuster / Assistant News Director
Spring break is officially canceled for FIU students.
FIU’s Faculty Senate changed the 2020-2021 academic calendar yesterday, removing the 2021 spring break week.
Previously scheduled for the week of March 1-7, there will now be no spring break this academic year. Instead, FIU will end classes a week earlier, on April 17. Finals week will be from April 19-24.
The summer semester will begin May 11, as scheduled.
This comes after Provost Kenneth Furton announced FIU’s intent to cancel spring break at the last faculty senate meeting.
Faculty Senate Chair Joerg Reinhold explained the decision.
“This is being proposed as a COVID-19 protection,” Reinhold told senators. “All [Florida] schools are doing this.”
The full changes to the academic calendar can be accessed here.
Senators also discussed the format of courses for spring.
Furton said FIU is encouraging professors to teach hy-flex courses in the spring semester, which would allow them to adjust in-person instruction in response to COVID-19 case numbers.
Hy-flex courses use a mixture of remote and in-person instruction. Furton said at least 21% of the course would be in-person.
“You could essentially combine your synchronous remote with an in-person component,” Furton told senators, “which is what we’re encouraging for spring.”
Furton said FIU will send a memo explaining more about this to faculty teaching courses in the spring.
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