Dear Ashesi Community,

Following final deliberations with the University Board, we want to share our determined roadmap for Semester One of the 2020/2021 academic year at Ashesi, starting August 31st. Based on all our discussions and current understanding of information around COVID-19, Ashesi will continue to operate entirely online and conduct all university activities remotely next semester.

Our campus reopening team – made up of students, faculty, and staff – put a lot of work into ensuring effective teaching, learning, and community activity while mitigating risks to our community’s health and safety. We have also engaged with representatives on Ghana’s COVID-19 response team, to ensure our framework relied on relevant science and understanding of the pandemic. Additionally, the balance of these decisions allows us to maintain Ashesi’s financial health, including meeting our obligations to creditors.

Although we are moving forward based on our best knowledge of all factors, we recognise that the information that guided these decisions may change. We will continue to make adjustments where necessary and maintain transparency in communicating with the Ashesi community.

The information below highlights the start options evaluated for the first semester of the 2020/2021 academic year. We hope to provide clarity around the decision to continue operating online and the steps we intend to take to ensure effective participation by everyone at Ashesi.

Considerations for Campus Reopening
Our initial discussions about the start of the 2020/2021 academic year centered on the following main options for moving forward:

• Reopen campus and allow for in-person classes and activity, with strict enforcement of COVID-19 safety protocols. In this scenario, Ashesi would welcome all students back to campus with strong adherence to safety protocols.
• Conduct teaching and learning online for continuing students but open up for in-person classes for the first-year class, with strict enforcement of COVID-19 safety protocols. In this scenario, Ashesi would welcome the Class of 2024 to campus with strong adherence to safety protocols.
• Conduct teaching and learning online but open up residential facilities for students who would benefit from on-campus resources and internet infrastructure.
• Continue to operate entirely online and maintain current protocols across all functions of the University.

In choosing between these options, we evaluated the following key factors:

• Risk of exposure in commuting to and from campus:
  Despite our enduring optimism, there is still a measurable risk of infection and exposure to the Ashesi community on campus. Unlike residential high schools that essentially quarantined all residential students on campus for the duration of their term, we do not consider it tenable to restrict students to campus for a whole semester once they return to Berekuso. Furthermore, faculty, staff, and commuting students traveling in and out of campus would be exposed to various potential touchpoints of infection. In such a situation, each day of campus activity increases our community’s risk of exposure.

  We were also concerned about the disruption that would be caused to course schedules if faculty members contracted COVID-19 and had to suspend in-person instruction. Just one faculty member compelled by circumstances to go into isolation would disrupt studies for scores of students.

• Complexities of thorough and continuous testing for students
  To have any form of return to campus residences with students in shared rooms, we agreed that all those living on campus would need to get tested before the start of the semester. To do this, we would have to initiate a return to campus in testing batches. An initial subset of students (living on campus) would return, be isolated, and tested for the virus. All students who tested negative would then be allowed to move into shared rooms, creating isolation spaces for the next subset of students. Before the semester could start, we would go through this process until all students living on campus had tested negative and settled.

  We concluded that this process would not only be strenuous and expensive but would still not be foolproof. Once on campus, students would need to be tested frequently. And as mentioned prior, travel in and out of campus by both students and university staff would mean exposure to multiple infection touchpoints.

• Uncertainty of traveling for international students
  Though countries continue to reopen their borders slowly, there are still restrictions on travel that would affect many international students. Considering the uncertainty of international students being able to travel to Ghana, we recognised that we would need to plan for any affected students to continue learning remotely.
• Opening up for students who would most effectively learn on campus
  We considered opening up campus for a smaller number of students who would greatly benefit from campus access even if we maintained classes online. However, any reopening of campus for students would require the availability of services such as dining and cleaning. Members of these service teams face and present the same risks as anyone else in commuting to campus. Furthermore, it would also not be operationally prudent to run our entire campus infrastructure for a smaller number of students. We considered the possibility of supporting such students, off-campus, by providing logistical and financial support from the University.

Operating Online Next Semester
As we move forward with remote operations for the rest of 2020, the continued success of university activity will depend on our collective wisdom and effort.

a. For Our Incoming Class of 2024, We See Opportunities to Reshape Our First-Year Welcome Experience 
Choosing to have all our first-year students begin their semester remotely was difficult, but necessary. We recognise that the associated risk of COVID-19 infection would completely nullify the benefits of an in-person on-campus start. Nonetheless, our incoming first-year students will have a lot to learn to transition into Ashesi effectively. Teams are being formed to design new online orientation programmes and activities to welcome all members of this class to Ashesi.

And though some members of the class have already been enrolled, there are still many applicants who had their high school examinations postponed. With this in mind, semester one for the Class of 2024 will be restructured to allow enrolled students to begin their learning while creating flexible room for students who enroll later to transition in and quickly draw level.

For September and October, currently enrolled students would take classes focused on skills and strategies critical to thriving at Ashesi. We anticipate that the rest of their peers, taking high school exams in August, would have been enrolled in Ashesi by the end of October. These students will also take classes in foundational Ashesi skills from November to December. Come January 2021, all members of the class would be able to continue their learning in our regular four-month semester structure.

The Class of 2024 will be the first to be welcomed to Ashesi in this way. And we are excited about the opportunities this brings for making Ashesi’s incoming class orientation programmes stronger for generations to come. We still believe that the pandemic is a short-term disruption, and campus will be able to fully reopen in the near future. When this happens, we also look forward to allowing the Class of 2024 to experience our face-to-face first-year welcome traditions.

b. Steps for Mitigating Barriers to Learning for All Students

Housing:
Over the weeks since campus closure, we have been working with students to ensure that all can participate in learning effectively. We are aware that there are students whose current locations are not conducive for remote learning – especially with regards to power and internet service reliability. We also expect that there will be members of our incoming Class of 2024 who face similar circumstances.

Led by our Student Affairs team, we intend to provide financial and material assistance for qualifying students during the first semester of the 2020/2021 academic year. This option will also be available to qualifying members of our incoming Class of 2024 as well if requested.

Internet Connectivity & Laptops:
The University will also continue providing internet connectivity support and resources to all students and will be doubling the data provisions from 10GB a month to 20GB a month. We will also be working with telecom organisations, where possible, to allow free access to Ashesi’s online learning platforms.

We also hope that savings made on housing fees can enable families to support their wards with additional tools, such as laptops, to maximise the effectiveness of remote learning.

Scholarships & Financial Aid:
Students whose economic situation has been affected by the pandemic, and who may not have been on financial aid at Ashesi prior, may apply for emergency funding for the coming semester. The Admissions and Financial Aid Office will evaluate all requests with a focus on proven need, and award funding support as required. Though we have taken steps to make emergency scholarships available to all qualifying students, funding is still limited and will depend on availability.

We will continue to communicate with students as we identify barriers and work hand-in-hand with the Ashesi Student Council to ensure that we have made the best resources available to every student. Students can click here to submit an application for short-term relief funding.

c. Planning for Academic Work & Equipment for Practical Work and Lab Experiments 
Our faculty have also spent significant time working on improvements to online teaching in the upcoming semester. The Provost, working with faculty leadership, has identified additional tools and resources for augmenting the effectiveness of remote learning, especially for Engineering students. Faculty will also be adapting coursework and other assignments to online teaching, to ensure that students can effectively deepen their understanding of skills even as they work from home. Students will be receiving additional information about such resources and other measures from faculty ahead of the semester start.

d. For University Teams, Our Way of Operating Also Remains Unchanged
University teams will continue operating with the same protocols put in place for our transition online in March, which has been refined since. Team-specific support resources will be communicated by department leaders, as and when the need arises.

e. Our commitment to livelihoods of all University teams
The University remains committed to doing all we can to preserve the livelihoods of all staff members, including campus-related third-party service teams such as gardeners, security, dining, and janitors.

Next Steps
We will be convening a virtual townhall with parents and guardians to provide answers to any remaining questions and get recommendations and suggestions on collectively executing this plan. Parents and guardians should expect details for this meeting in a separate notice.

We understand that the connections and experiences we share in the spaces at Ashesi will not be easily replicated online. However, we are excited about this chance to strengthen the spirit of innovative action that defines us, and the extraordinary opportunity within this period to pursue ideas that may have seemed far away in the past. We have new momentum to possibly redefine experiences across many parts of Ashesi, and the decisions we each make moving forward will influence many generations of Ashesi to come. We look forward to working with you to chart this new path and deepen Ashesi’s work and impact.

We are incredibly grateful to the members of the campus reopening team – Dzifa Nuer and Bridgette Asiedu, who co-chaired the Committee, Casper Annie, David Sampah, Esther Laryea, Dr. Francis Gatsi, Lena Korsah, Zeina Kowalski, Joe Mensah, Joseph Oduro-Frimpong, Millicent Adjei, Ebenezer Buckman, Nathalie N’Nguessan, Nina Chachu, Nina Pels, Salim Wangabi, Antoinette Quintin-Cofie, Edem Yegbe ’21, Tamisha Segbefia ’21, and Samuel Owusu-Acheaw ’21 – for their committed work throughout this discussion and planning period.

In the spirit of Ashesi,
The Executive Team.