By all accounts, Roger Williams University did an excellent job managing COVID within its community over the course of the fall term. They are looking forward to a repeat of that success beginning this week, as students are returning to campus.

By testing all members of the community twice a week, along with excellent contact tracing, the university community only reported a total of 184 cases all fall — a .2 percent rate of positivity — dramatically lower than that of the general population. It meant that at no time throughout the term were they required to close or shift to fully remote learning.

Roger Williams Chief of Staff Brian Williams is the man at the center of efforts to keep the university community safe.

“We are ready to repeat the fall’s success, with a slow reopening spread across four to six days,” he said. The process includes a clean check-in, along a route that first asks the students to show proof of a flu shot, then to the first of several COVID tests, before students are given their room keys and asked to isolate in their dorm until they get their initial results. Each student will have two or three additional tests before classes resume the first week of February.

“We know some of our students work and live off campus and we are mindful of those interactions,” said Mr. Williams. “We are monitoring students and reminding them to minimize their movement in the community as much as possible. All members of the community, regardless of where they live, are required to test twice a week.

“We are incredibly mindful of our presence in Bristol,” said Jill Rodrigues of the communications office. “We were very much thinking of the impact on the community and reminding students that COVID standards on campus apply off campus as well.”

Testing is as important this semester as it was during the last, when the university performed 95,241 total tests, the eighth top-tester in Broad Institute’s testing program, out of 120 colleges and universities across New England. The university also stayed in constant contact with the state.

“How we dealt with positive results depended on where they were,” said Mr. Williams. “There’s a difference between 10 positive results in a day, all in one class or hall, versus 10 positive and two are on the Providence campus, one is a faculty member, one is a staff member … The question is, can we manage it?”

“We learned a lot this fall,” he said. “Each case had a different story and got it from different circumstances. We did not see community spread, and one thing that we are very proud of is we did not trace any cases to classroom spread. Our classrooms were not a place where COVID spread.”

In addition, most classes — about 75 percent — are either in person or hybrid. “Our faculty did an amazing job designing classes that work both ways,” said Mr. Williams. He also noted that students are still getting the full college experience. “We are looking for ways to keep them engaged,” he said. “Clubs are still meeting, the newspaper, student government are still functioning.”

The University has also flooded an area on campus to create a large, outdoor skating rink to get students outside.

Students are excited to be back on campus, including Rees Harold, 21, a senior from Westerly. “It’s my third day back on campus and I’m pleasantly surprised,” he said. “I came in not knowing what to expect, but I saw the systems they have in place and I feel very safe in this bubble.”

“My friends and I are very excited to last the full 16 weeks.”

Mr. Harold is also very involved in the campus entertainment network, the group that is normally responsible for holding large scale, in-person events on campus. “We’ve been able to adapt that to full online and hybrid, and provide non-academic entertainment,” he said.

Sabrina Sousa, 21, of Fall River, is also a senior, as well as a Resident Assistant in a hall of freshmen and sophomores. Other than the occasional reminder of room capacity limits, she reports that student have been “pretty good” about following guidelines. There are other challenges though, as she admits some students have adapted more readily to the social changes brought about by some aspects of the online/hybrid college experience.

“As a senior I am just happy to be on campus,” she said.