The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts will continue remote instruction throughout the remainder of the Spring 2020 semester.
The decision in response to the COVID-19 pandemic was made with input from the University of Arkansas System leadership, campus administrators, department chairs, and the ASMSA Governing Council of faculty and staff. The student residential experience will resume in August 2020.
“This is an incredibly difficult decision for us as a campus because the residential experience is so ingrained in both our mission and identity,” Director Corey Alderdice said in an email to the campus community announcing the decision on March 27. “We exist as a school in order to bring exceptional young people together for the purpose of learning. While this shift is temporary, it is no less painful to make.”
Coursework will include a continuation of asynchronous instruction with opportunities to conduct video sessions for each class at least once a week. The live sessions will be recorded and uploaded to a location for viewing by students who were unable to attend the initial meeting.
Students enrolled in concurrent credit courses provided by ASMSA in cooperation with the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith are still eligible to complete the classes for college credit. Based on guidance from the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, students — including seniors — must still complete assessments that demonstrate their knowledge of the subject matter to earn concurrent credit.
All non-concurrent elective coursework will adopt a “credit/no credit” grading system. Faculty will develop asynchronous content for students to engage with the subject matter while also providing opportunities for live discussions that provide engagement and socialization. The change to credit/no credit will allow students to stay connected to topics of personal interest while staying engaged in the ASMSA experience.
Seniors will still be expected to satisfy both the Arkansas Department of Education SMART Core as well as ASMSA graduation requirements—which include a minimum of 30 concurrent credit hours, two years of language study, and exploration of the various STEM disciplines—in order to earn an ASMSA diploma. To help students meet these expectations, seniors are encouraged to focus on those classes while having the option to drop elective courses that are not required for the ASMSA diploma.
“As part of ASMSA’s graduation requirements—and in alignment with the state’s investment in ASMSA and our students—we believe that full effort should be made to ensure seniors satisfy the additional institutional requirements,” Alderdice said in the March 27 email.
For more information on this topic as well as others announcements regarding ASMSA’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, visit https://www.asmsa.org/asmsa-covid-19-updates/.