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7 UpFront: MSU President Samuel Stanley on COVID-19, virtual learning and Big 10 football

MSU
Posted at 6:36 PM, Sep 22, 2020
and last updated 2020-09-22 19:34:07-04

(WXYZ) — With the COVID-19 pandemic still smoldering across the country, colleges and universities are facing a new normal as they are back in class.

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For our 7 UpFront segment tonight, we're being joined by one of the people dealing with the pandemic on campus.

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Michigan State University President Samuel Stanley is talking about the coronavirus, virtual learning, and the return of Big 10 football.

You can see the full interview in the video player above.

MSU is teaching virtually this fall semester, and Stanley says he thinks it's going well.

"I think it's going pretty well overall and I think our students have been very patient and I think our faculty are doing it much better than they did before," he says. "As you know last spring semester we have to pivot very suddenly to remote teaching and this year we've had more time to with the fall semester to really prepare."

Stanley did address the cases that have caused some large house linked to the campus to quarantine.

"We've actually seen very few cases on our campus, we've seen very few cases in our research enterprise that continues," he says. "Most of the cases have been off campus and they do involve these kinds of gatherings and congregant living, people living in a fraternity, sororitiy or other large houses."

He also says he believes they've seen cases go down this week, thanks to precautions that have been put into place.

Stanley also talked about the return of Big 10 football, which he says was put into place after protocols were developed to keep the filed clean and athletes safe.