On the first days of July, IE University released through its social media platforms a three-minute video about how both the Segovia and Madrid Campuses are going to welcome their members again, ensuring safety and implementing preventive measures in order to tackle the spread of the novel coronavirus. While most universities in Spain and abroad might switch to a fully online environment for at least a semester, IE invested time and effort to offer its students and professors the best learning environment possible in those circumstances.
With no surprise, masks are mandatory for both students and professors. To ensure safety, an empty seat must be kept between students in order to respect social distancing rules. Hand sanitizers will be distributed from day-one and dispensers will be available around both campuses. Regarding shared spaces, it is important to maintain a 1.50 meter distance within each students. IE also adopted “Entrance-Exit protocols” to avoid crowd or crossing paths. If those measures are now widespread in institutions and/or closed spaces around the country, IE University decided to take some steps forward by implementing thermal cameras to control the temperature of everyone accessing both campuses. Most incredibly, after each sessions classes will be sanitized and at night, a “UV Ray Robot” will be implemented in order to guarantee maximum cleanliness.
Classes will be organized in order for students to enter first followed by the professor. However, the professor will be the first to leave the room. This measure is essential in order to avoid contacts between students and professors. For those who cannot attend face-to-face classes, the innovative “liquid learning methodology” will allow students to follow the class almost as if they were in the classroom. Bridging the gap between online and face-to-face teaching methodology is an important milestone that IE is about to achieve.
IE announced the release of a mobile application in order to check-up on the health of everyone and make sure potential COVID-19 cases receive adequate assistance. The measures taken on campus should also be applied outside campus. It is important for every members of our institution to take those measures seriously. The only way to win the fight against this virus is by cooperating.
While most students will start classes (either online or in person) on Tuesday September 1, some members of our community will follow a “summer-booster program” in Madrid’s campus divided in two tracks: “How to Succeed in a Post-COVID WORLD” and an “Entrepreneurship Camp”. This program will take place from Monday, July 27 to Friday, August 28 on a face-to face and hybrid form. Besides giving our student body an additional preparation, the “Summer Booster Program” is an advantageous way to put into practice the new safety measures mentioned above.
It is also important to take into account that after the quarantine lift in Spain, some regions such as Galicia and the city of Lleida (Catalonia) imposed to its population another lockdown since both territories had a significant increase in the number of positive cases. Reopening both campuses is certainly a challenging initiative but our institution seems fully prepared and have already proved that they are able to adapt themselves to unforeseen events.
