As University of Michigan stu-

dents wait to hear whether their 
fall term will be online, in-person 
or some combination of the two 
University President Mark Schlis-
sel predicts that whatever deci-
sion is made regarding classes will 
likely last through the academic 
year, not just for fall semester. In 
an interview with the Wall Street 
Journal, Schlissel discussed mak-
ing the call on whether classes are 
online or in person for the follow-
ing school year. 

“Any decision we make for this 

coming fall is likely going to be the 
case for the whole academic year,” 
Schlissel said. “What’s going to be 
different in January?” 

Schlissel, an immunologist by 

training, pointed out that the win-
ter semester comes with public 
health concerns as well and with 
COVID-19, those months could 
be worse due to the flu season. 
Roughly half of University stu-
dents are from out of state, which 
means both semesters will be 
marked with an influx of travel 
from COVID-19 hotspots.

Schlissel said his leadership 

team is working to lower the risk 
of COVID-19 for students and staff 
so it is indistinguishable from the 
risk at home. According to him, the 
school may consider quarantining 
some people upon their arrival to 
campus, along with widespread 
symptom screening, testing, social 
distancing and using personal pro-
tective equipment. 

Schools nationwide are taking a 

variety of approaches. For exam-
ple, the California State Univer-
sity system announced that their 
fall term will be mainly online and 
University of Notre Dame is plan-
ning to start the fall term early to 
end before Thanksgiving. Howev-
er, Schlissel warned that the more 
promising announcements from 
other institutions are still subject 

to approval by local officials.

“I don’t want to set false expec-

tations,” 
Schlissel 
said. 
“(The 

announcements are) really not as 
declarative as they appear.” 

The interview came days after 

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer 
relaxed the stay-at-home order, 
which was extended to June 12, to 
allow groups of less than ten peo-
ple to congregate in one location. 

The NCAA voted a few days 

prior to allow voluntary foot-
ball and basketball workouts to 
resume starting on June 1, and 
while other schools have plans to 
bring back football players for vol-
untary training, Michigan has not 
announced any sort of plan yet. 
According to Schlissel, the Univer-
sity won’t have a football season in 
the fall unless all students are able 
to be back on campus for classes. 

“If there is no on-campus 

instruction then there won’t be 
intercollegiate athletics, at least 
for Michigan,” Schlissel said. “(I 
have) some degree of doubt as to 
whether there will be college ath-
letics (anywhere), at least in the 
fall.”

Schlissel added that Michigan 

is in a better position than other 
universities to take the revenue 
loss from not having a football 
season. The athletic department’s 
budget last season was $185 mil-
lion, and about $83 million –– 43% 
of the athletic department’s rev-
enue –– came from football last 
year, according to the Wall Street 
Journal. 

“Although trouble in a $185 mil-

lion unit is a big deal, it isn’t of the 
scale that it threatens the univer-
sity,” Schlissel said.

Schlissel said he expects to 

make the decision for how the 
upcoming academic year functions 
in the coming weeks. 

Daily 
Staff 
Reporter 
Iulia 

Dobrin can be reached at idobrin@
umich.edu 

3

Thursday, May 28, 2020

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com NEWS

Thesis defense has tradition-

ally been one of the final and most 
important steps for master’s and 
doctoral students to obtain their 
degrees. However, due to the 
restrictions on in-person events 
as part of the effort to combat 
the spread of COVID-19, thesis 
defenses are now being held virtu-
ally, forcing students and faculty 
to adjust to the new format. 

John Godfrey, Rackham Gradu-

ate School assistant dean, com-
mented on the difficult challenge 
of making swift and effective 
adjustments in reaction to the 
pandemic. 

“Moving our operations online 

was a major challenge,” God-
frey said. “Rackham staff were 
working remotely and the pace of 
work has not stopped because of 
COVID. There have been students 
continuing their defense and get-
ting their degrees. We had to do 
many things from adjusting pol-
icy, to accommodating students, 
to assessing financial needs of the 
students.”

Godfrey explained how a lot 

of effort has gone into ensuring a 
smooth transition to the virtual 
format since one of the school’s 
primary functions is to facilitate 
dissertation and thesis defenses.

“Rackham’s 
major 
role 
is 

in 
administering 
dissertation 

defenses,” Godfrey said. “We have 
had 185, maybe close to 200 dis-
sertation defenses that have taken 
place online since instructions 
ended on campus. It appears that 
it’s going fairly seamlessly.”

Rackham student Amy-Char-

lotte Devitz stated one of the big-
gest challenges she faced was the 
lack of audience feedback. 

“I think the biggest challenge 

is that you lose the ability to kind 
of get that audience feedback 
when you are presenting,” Devitz 
said. “Because the program I was 
using, on your screen you can 
only see your slides, and obvi-
ously you need that to be able to 
present properly, but you can’t see 
the audience and you can’t really 
gauge their reactions. It’s hard to 
read the room.”

Engineering Ph.D. candidate 

Kevin Hughes said the process 
of defending his thesis remained 
largely unchanged for him, with 
the biggest challenge being equip-
ment and hardware preparations 
beforehand. 

“In general, BlueJeans was fair-

ly good,” Hughes said. “One chal-
lenge was actually I moved during 
this process. My wife and I moved 

to where we are going to be work-
ing in Minnesota, which brought 
up a few challenges, which include 
getting a reliable internet connec-
tion setup, the purchase of cable, 
better quality microphone. I did a 
few practice sessions beforehand 
just to troubleshoot the connec-
tion and audio quality issues.” 

Godfrey believed the new vir-

tual format has many benefits, 
including more flexibility and 
ease to implement accommoda-
tions, but also said it takes away 
the celebratory and ceremonial 
aspect of it. 

“In shifting to virtual, I think 

it may be easier to schedule the 
defense,” Godfrey said. “Normal-
ly, you had to have people all show 
up to the same building at the 
same time and sometimes it can 
be a little tricky. It may have, at 
the end, proven to be more accom-
modating. But it certainly takes 
away the celebratory aspect, like 
the reception afterwards where 
people congratulate the person 
who just finished their defense.”

Hughes said a virtual thesis 

defense raised concerns over pri-
vacy since more people can join.

“I had a larger audience than 

I would have had in Michigan,” 
Hughes said. “For instance, my 
sister, she just had a baby so she 
wouldn’t have been able to come 

Students, faculty adjust 
to virtual thesis defense

JIALIN ZHANG 
Daily Staff Reporter

Design by Maggie Wiebe

Schlissel: plans 
for fall will last 
the academic year

IULIA DOBRIN
Daily Staff Reporter

Read more at michigandaily.com

University President expresses optimism for 

public-health informed, hybrid format of learning

Ph.D. candidates talk 
pros, cons of transition 

to online platform

