NJIT In Newark Will Be Mostly In-Person For Fall 2021: Official

NEWARK, NJ — The New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in Newark will be returning to “primarily in-person learning” for the fall 2021 semester, administrators announced Monday.

The decision was partly spurred by national and regional COVID-19 vaccination efforts, NJIT officials said.

President Joel Bloom shared information about the plan in a message to the campus community. He wrote:

“We now are in the seventh week of our spring 2021 semester and have been conducting converged, in-person learning for more than five of those weeks. Since mid-January, NJIT has housed students in residence halls, had offices open for operations, and welcomed close to 4,000 people to campus regularly. Students are learning in labs and classrooms; faculty are actively engaged in research; intercollegiate athletic competitions and training are taking place; and critical work is being done. During this time, we have seen strong adherence to our pandemic safety protocols and have conducted roughly 6,000 surveillance tests since early January with less than 70 positive results. In addition to this positive news, we are working with University Hospital to provide vaccine access to all of our eligible faculty members and plan to expand this partnership based on revised state criteria and capacity. We must remain vigilant, but I am encouraged by the way our university community has responded to the pandemic as well as recent developments related to national and regional vaccination efforts. The announcement by the federal government last week regarding amassing a vaccine supply sufficient for every adult American by May 2021 gives us further reason for optimism.”

Bloom continued:

“In light of the trajectory we are on as a university, as a state, and as a nation with regard to vaccine rollout, I am pleased to announce that NJIT is planning for a fall 2021 semester that returns us to primarily in-person instruction with full residence halls, in-person activities, active research labs, and our buildings and other facilities operating at full or nearly full capacity. We are looking forward to having our students and professors back in classrooms and our campus community returning to its pre-pandemic vibrance.”

There are some caveats, he added:

“For us to achieve this goal, we must continue to follow all protocols in place at present, including wearing face coverings and practicing social distancing as well as good hand hygiene, and we must encourage our university community members to register for and get one of the available COVID vaccines once they are eligible under the established criteria.”

Bloom concluded:

“In preparing for the fall 2021 semester, we will continue to follow the three pillars of our pandemic recovery plan — adherence to mandates, reliance upon the guidance of experts and agencies, and informed judgement — which have served us well throughout this challenging time. We also will continue to be guided by the dual priorities we established at the outset of this pandemic — providing, to the best degree possible, for the safety and wellness of the NJIT community and delivering upon the university’s educational mission.”

According to the university’s website, as of Monday, there have been 46 total positive cases of the virus among students since Jan. 4, 2021. There have been 22 cases among employees. There have been 3,912 tests given on campus to students in that time frame, and 1,928 given to staff members.

During Feb. 22 to Feb. 26, out of 355 surveillance tests, there were eight positives, a positivity rate of 2.25 percent, NJIT reported.

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