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THURSDAY, APRIL 5
VOLUME 114, ISSUE 42
VOLUME 117, ISSUE 39
INSTRUCTIONAL BREAKS AT IOWA
PRESENTATION
MEN’S BBALL
NEWS PAGE 2
CAMPUS LIFE PAGE 4
SPORTS PAGE 6
Active Minds and the Psychology Club hosted the nonprofit Retrieving Freedom.
The University of Iowa plans to have two instructional break days this semester.
The UNI men’s basketball season got cut short due to COVID-19.
Fall classes return to in-person SHAWN BURRAGE
Staff Writer
ELIZABETH KELSEY News Editor
With the end of the spring semester fast approaching, along with registration for the fall 2021 semester, many returning and incoming UNI students may question how classes will look in the upcoming school year. UNI President Mark Nook released a statement on Thursday, March 11 indicating that the fall semester would include a “return to the high-quality, in-person education we are known for.” “While we will maintain some of our classroom safety measures, the shift back to in-person classes and operations this fall will include increased capacity in our classrooms, dining centers, and common spaces; the reopening of our retail dining operations; and a return of on-campus events,” Nook wrote. According to Patrick Pease, Associate Provost of Academic Affairs, one of the classroom
safety measures that will be maintained is reduced capacity. During the fall 2021 semester, in-person classes will be capped at a 50% capacity. “Essentially, we are skipping every other chair,” Pease wrote in an email to the Northern Iowan. “We had to make this decision back in late December, so we chose to take a conservative approach, and chose not to return immediately to side-byside seating; the 50% capacity allows us to return to our preCOVID-19 levels of in-person classes, but still provides a measure of safety and peace of mind for our community.” For the spring 2021 semester, classrooms were reduced to 35% capacity, a slight reduction from the 40% used as a guide for in-person classes in fall 2020. Pease indicated that decisions about which fall 2021 classes will be offered in-person, hybrid or online will be largely made by individual departments. Faculty and department heads will decide based “primarily on program
design and student needs.” “For example, we have several fully or partially online programs which require online delivery of content,” he wrote. “We also try to have a select offering of common classes, both in the Liberal Arts Core and in majors, available for students who need to supplement face-to-face instruction with online to manage other time commitments.” The university’s 50% capacity guidelines will continue to restrict in-person offerings for larger courses; Pease wrote that any course with enrollment of over 150 students will not be able to be held fully face-to-face. “Fortunately, UNI offers very few classes that large anyway, so the impact will be minimal,” he wrote. The balance of online and in-person classes may be returning to a more pre-pandemic level, but some changes, such as the hybrid class format, may persist even beyond the pandemic.
NICHOLAS SCHINDLER
State the week before. Illinois State had only played one game so far this season and went into the game 0-1. The game was a matchup of two FCS top-25 teams as UNI was ranked third in the country and Illinois State was ranked 15th. The Panthers started off the game with the football and drove right down the field, scoring in a little over
TONI FORTMANN/Northern Iowan
Panthers down Redbirds 20-10 Sports Writer
The UNI football team was back in action for its third game of the season this past Saturday as they hosted the Illinois State Redbirds in the UNI-Dome. UNI came into the game 1-1 on the year and were coming off of an impressive 21-0 victory on the road against Youngstown
See FALL CLASSES, page 4
TONI FORTMANN/Northern Iowan
The Panthers host Redbirds and come out on top in Saturday’s game.
UNI plans to shift back to in-person classes starting fall 2021.
three minutes on a six-play drive to take the lead 7-0. Quarterback Will MacElvain ran it in from 11 yards out, and kicker Matthew Cook hit the extra point to seal the 7-0 lead. The Panthers then stopped the Redbirds on defense to retake possession of the ball, which again led to points on the board. The eight-play, 50 yard drive ended in a Cook 43-yard field goal to put UNI up 10-0 early on. The Redbirds came marching back on the next possession, however. They went on a 14 play, 49 yards drive that took over seven minutes of time up off the clock, but in the end the Panther defense held, forcing Illinois State to settle for a 43-yard field goal by kicker Aidan Bresnahan, cutting into the UNI lead at 10-3. Both teams traded punts for a few possessions before Illinois State’s
Kenton Wilhoit intercepted McElvain’s pass and ran it back to the end zone with a little over two minutes left to play. The Illinois State University pick-six knotted up the score at 10, which would be the score as both teams headed into the locker room for halftime. The third quarter saw no points put up by either team as the score remained tied at 10 going into the final quarter of play. UNI’s first possession of the fourth got the ball moving. Following a seven-play, 60 yard drive that took about three minutes, the Panthers took the lead with a long 44-yard field goal from Cook to go up by a score of 13-10. UNI would not look back after taking that lead. The Redbirds had no answer for UNI’s elite defense and they didn’t score the rest of the game.
See FOOTBALL, page 6