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NMU preparing for a ‘2019’ life

Fritz Erickson

MARQUETTE — June 15 has been set as the tentative date for a return to more of a normal campus life at Northern Michigan University.

President Fritz Erickson spoke at a virtual community forum on Tuesday about COVID-19’s impact at NMU and other topics.

“We’ve set June 15 as the day that we’ll be able to lift all or most of the visitor restrictions,” Erickson said.

NMU currently has a “no visitor” order in place that dictates non-university individuals are not permitted in campus facilities, althrough there are exceptions that are addressed on an individual basis.

Major exceptions are the bookstore at the Northern Center as well as the center being used as a community vaccination site.

However, some work has to be done to ready for June.

“It’s not like we’ll just flip the switch on June 15,” Erickson said, noting many groups on campus are developing safety protocols to open up sooner.

“You will see the campus truly come back to life over the next several weeks as we’ll go through those processes,” he said.

Erickson pointed out that typically students take online courses in the summer, so not a lot of change is expected at that time, although there will be some face-to-face courses in labs and the like.

Regarding summer camps, Erickson expected an announcement will be made soon.

“As we look towards the fall, our goal is really simple, and that is to be back, fully operational, as we were in 2019,” he said. “That’s our expectation. That’s our plan.”

However, Erickson said NMU is making contingency plans if they are needed, saying its commitment has been to following directives from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

He expected that NMU would be “ready to go” for the fall semester.

Erickson stressed that NMU has a set of protocols in place to vaccinate anybody on the campus who wants it.

“My hope for the fall is that instead of running testing, that we’ll be able to run a vaccine site,” he said. “So, everything’s ready to go. The critical element is, of course, getting the vaccines. Given more recent developments, I’m feeling pretty optimistic that we’re going to get an allocation, and once we do, we’ll follow the same procedures and order that the (Marquette County) Health Department does.”

Erickson addressed a challenge facing NMU: a drop in student enrollment.

In the fall of 2020, NMU experienced a 4.2% decline in enrollment, he said, followed by a drop in winter enrollment of between 2.8% and 3%.

Erickson said students with whom he spoke explained that their parents decided to keep them home this past semester.

“We’re working very hard to bring them all back,” Erickson said.

One action being taken, he said, is developing a “conference approach” for potential students and their families to experience NMU and the community by the summer.

Erickson, though, acknowledged that “everything isn’t COVID,” and discussed other NMU topics at the forum.

He said NMU tuition rates should be set by early summer as soon as more information about the state of Michigan budget is determined, noting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in her State of the State address in January suggested a 2% increase for Michigan’s 15 public universities.

Erickson said NMU also found out in December that its capital outlay project supporting the university’s career tech and engineering programs was included in the state’s lame-duck session, which means Northern will receive approximately $20 million for those curricula.

“It’s not just enough for us to fix a roof, put in new windows, make it look pretty,” he said. “This is about transforming how you educate people for the next generation of career technical fields.”

Erickson said that in “a perfect world,” he would rather have a new Jacobetti Complex than renovate the existing facility to make a statement that career and technical programs are central to the NMU mission.

“That kind of facility needs to be in the heart of our campus,” he said.

The launching of the Green Fund is another important component of the university, Erickson said.

“Our students came to us and they asked if they could have a fee that they would be able to opt into to create a fund to support sustainability efforts on campus,” he said.

Erickson said the campus group EcoReps has been looking at various strategies.

“We will be exploring: How do we move an institution closer to carbon neutrality than we are now?” Erickson said.

Other projects include building a College of Business near the McClintock Building.

“I see great promise for the future of our College of Business, particularly if we focus that college around rural economies,” Erickson said.

He said he often has been asked about the former UP Health System-Marquette building adjacent to the NMU campus and whether the university could make use of it.

Erickson said NMU is open to partnerships with the hospital.

“The problem for us in actually taking it is there’s way too much space for what it is that we could do and reasonably use,” Erickson said.

However, he believes the facility eventually will be developed and become a “vibrant” part of the community.

Christie Mastric can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net

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