All winter quarter international programs are ending in-person instruction effective end of day Monday, according to emails sent to students by the Stanford in Paris and Stanford in Oxford programs. Though the programs themselves have not been suspended, the University is instructing students to leave their study abroad locations as soon as possible.
Off-campus programs within the United States are currently expected to continue through the end of winter quarter, according to a person familiar with the situation.
U.S. citizens and permanent residents in international study abroad programs are instructed to return home and not to come to campus “since there are no on-campus accommodations currently available for them,” Stanford in Paris director Estelle Halevi wrote in an email to program students.
“International students and foreign nationals can be accommodated on campus and in some cases depending upon where they are from will be encouraged to return to the U.S. and not home (i.e. students from China, South Korea, Italy, Iran),” she added.
U.S. citizens and permanent residents will be allowed to return to campus over break, too, under special circumstances such as an unsafe home situation, according to a person familiar with the situation. The person also told The Daily that students returning to campus will not be asked to self-isolate, as long as they are not returning from an area designated as high-risk from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The University is asking students to register their travel with Stanford.
The Bing Overseas Studies Program will cover the cost of students’ airline change fees and can provide additional support for students with financial need, according to Halevi.
The University is also cancelling all in-person class meetings on the main campus, and finals will be administered as take-home examinations.
The announcement of the end of in-person instruction at all international programs comes over a week after Italy emerged as the center of the outbreak in Europe and Stanford suspended its program in Florence, and just five days after the University announced it was suspending all spring-quarter international programs. At that time, Vice Provost for University Education Harry Elam wrote that there were “no plans to end other winter quarter programs early.”
“BOSP continues to monitor guidance daily from the CDC, the U.S. Department of State, the World Health Organization, Stanford’s Public Health Policy Committee, as well as communicating regularly with on-site staff and consulting with peer institutions,” he wrote in his March 4 announcement.
Contact Erin Woo at erinkwoo ‘at’ stanford.edu.