Welcome back!
The coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to pose challenges to Lake Forest College, the nation, and the world, and the College continues to carefully monitor conditions in and beyond our region. The health and safety of students, faculty, and staff will always be the College’s greatest responsibility. In recent weeks and months, College staff and faculty prepared careful plans to welcome a portion of our students and employees back to campus for the Spring 2021 semester. A little over half of the ordinary residential student population have chosen to live on campus in the spring. Other students will learn remotely or will commute from home or off-campus rental units. Additionally, a number of faculty will continue to teach remotely, and many staff will be working from home.
We have enacted numerous public health precautions to reduce the transmission of COVID-19. The College has gained ample access to COVID-19 tests, reserved 71 residential beds for potential quarantine and isolation, enhanced building ventilation, and learned valuable lessons from the scientific community. Furthermore, the Forester Commitment spells out the duties of care we owe to each other and to the campus community during this pandemic. For the College to successfully hold an on-campus spring semester, these duties are essential, and they require our firm commitment.
We value transparency and are firmly committed to keeping lines of communication open. We have published a dashboard that will summarize the results of our COVID-19 testing, isolation, and quarantine. It will be updated weekly, on Wednesdays, with the previous week’s data. You can find the link to the dashboard below, along with an archive of our correspondence and a link to the Health & Wellness web page.
The College is grateful to members of the Crisis Management Team, Transition Support Team, COVID-19 Academic Task Force, Campus Spaces Team, and Campus Community Team, and the various campus departments and faculty that are adjusting to a new normal. As always, our work relies on guidance from the State of Illinois, the Illinois Department of Public Health and Board of Higher Education, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Latest Correspondence
Update on January 30 Incident
2/10/21
Dear Students, Faculty and Staff,
The College has concluded its review of Saturday evening, January 30, when students visited each other’s rooms in Moore Hall. I write now to update you on the resolution of that situation.
A number of students were involved in the room visits, including several members of the men’s hockey team and several members of the women’s hockey team. The room visits violated the safety rules in the Forester Commitment for the first two weeks of this semester, and may well have increased the number of students who entered isolation or quarantine over the past week.
As provided in the College’s Spring Semester Plan, students involved in the room visits are now facing disciplinary consequences through our Student Conduct System. Their individual consequences will be confidential, as in all cases of conduct violations by individual students.
In addition, because members of our men’s and women’s hockey teams were involved, there are team consequences. Student athletes have a special responsibility to each other, their teams, and the College, and are expected to set a high standard of conduct. The students who violated the Forester Commitment fell short of that standard.
As a result, the Athletic Department and I have determined that our men’s and women’s hockey teams will lose the opportunity to play two games from their short eight-game schedules this winter. Each team was scheduled to play two games against Trine University this coming weekend. Those games have now been cancelled, and the College will not permit them to be rescheduled.
In closing, I want to emphasize that the College went to great lengths to prepare and implement our Spring Semester Plan – including the Forester Commitment – in order to protect the safety of everyone on campus. I strongly believe that the vast majority of our students, faculty, and staff are fully complying with the Forester Commitment, and will continue to do so for the duration of this semester. I expect nothing less, and am grateful for your cooperation.
Stephen D. Schutt
President
Lake Forest College
Download the Spring 2021 Plan
Q&A Sessions with College Leadership
- Watch the December 2 recording
- Watch the August 6 recording
- Answers to Questions from August 6 Town Meeting
- Watch the August 13 recording
- Answers to Questions from August 13 Town Meeting
Resources
- COVID Testing Clinic FAQ's
- BinaxNOW and NAVICA app FAQs
- FAQ's regarding the Fall Semester plan
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Forms
Resources for Students
- Forester Commitment for Students
- Learning Remotely at Lake Forest College
- Student Accounts COVID-19 Financial Update
- Student Account FAQs
- Student Payroll FAQs
- Title IX Office COVID-19 Support and Response
- Internship Update
- Athletics Update
- Library Updates
Resources for Faculty and Staff
- Forester Commitment for Faculty and Staff
- Lake Forest Health and Wellness
- Teaching Remotely at Lake Forest College
- Remote Teaching in Response to COVID-19
- Human Resources FAQ
- Guidelines for Employees Working on Campus
- Guidelines for Supervisors of Employees Working on Campus
- Self-Observation Questionnaire
- Expectation for Travel Policy
Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund Reporting
Student Portion
Insititutional Portion