RALEIGH – The on-campus college experience is very important to Randy Woodson.

The university will start early, forego fall break and end the semester by Thanksgiving in an effort to keep students from traveling widely and then return to campus, NC State University’s Chancellor says in the accompanying video from a Zoom interview.

Students and employees will be expected to practice social distancing in classrooms, dining and residence halls. And to make faculty and staff feel comfortable about returning, face coverings will be mandatory for students and employees in all university facilities.

“We’re trying to reduce the number of very large classes with a goal to provide more room in all of our buildings so our students can be adequately socially distant from one another,” Woodson says.

Can college students behave responsibly? Social distancing, face masks and frequent hand-washing have already become community standards, Woodson says, comparing the expectations to the enforcement of smoking restrictions on campus.

But he is also realistic that students will gather.

“They are social creatures, and frankly that’s part of what college is about,” he says. “A whole lot of your success at a university like ours is interaction with others – and that’s in the classroom, that’s out of the classroom and that’s in social settings.”

That could result in coronavirus outbreaks, so Woodson says NC State must be prepared to test, monitor and isolate affected students. The university has set aside more than 200 dorm rooms for students to be quarantined. NC State is trying to be sure students can be successful academically, protect their health and keep those around them healthy.

“Why are we working so hard to reopen these universities to residential instruction?” he asks.

“We just know how much of learning occurs in the environment in the classroom and beyond the classroom, and how critical this experience is to forming the whole person, so that when they leave our university they’re in a position to be successful for life.”

Woodson discusses the award-winning efforts of one NC State professor to use technology to break 300-student lecture classes into small groups. But he thinks a blend of online and in-person learning will prevail.

“In the long run, I think it’s really a combination of all these things. We can definitely do better online. We can definitely be more interactive online,” he says.

“I guess maybe it’s just the ‘old school’ in me, but I believe that human interaction, face-to-face instruction and students interacting with one another to solve problems and to grow academically is kind of a big deal.”

Woodson recognizes that some NC State faculty and staff are apprehensive about returning in the midst of a pandemic – it would be strange if they weren’t.

“Frankly, all of us are uncomfortable. All of us are worried. It would be almost unnatural to be an educated, mature adult and not be nervous about COVID-19,” he says. “Certainly I understand our faculty and our employees are nervous, and they have every right to be.”

The university will try to accommodate employees with underlying health conditions or age-related concerns, he says, but it also must maintain balance.

“We can’t deliver all of our course content online. Because, at the end of the day, it’s against the whole notion of what we’re trying to deliver as a residential university, is to give students a hands-on educational experience and an interactive educational experience. But I understand that a lot of folks are nervous about this,” Woodson says.

“That’s one of the reasons why we made face coverings mandatory. That’s one of the reasons why we’re focused on social distancing. We’re installing plexiglass separators for faculty in classrooms.

“In spite of all that, we’re still going to have faculty and staff that are concerned about coming back. And we understand that, and hopefully we’ll be able to work through deans and department heads to address immediate issues.”

Woodson also discusses the many ways NC State is responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Coronaviruses have been a threat in animal agriculture for years, and NC State has more than 60 research projects on virology underway.

Food safety expert Ben Chapman has also worked through NC State’s Cooperative Extension Service to certify restaurant employees as restaurants try to reopen safely, protecting both their customers and themselves, Woodson says.

And NC State’s Colleges of Textiles and Engineering have also contributed, manufacturing more than 500,000 face masks a day and face shields for frontline health providers.