By Maura Mahoney APRIL 21, 2020
As hospitals have braced for 鈥 or are already treating 鈥 a surge of Covid-19 patients overwhelming their capacity, colleges have stepped up by offering space in empty dormitories, gymnasiums, conference centers, even ice rinks.
The offers have come from institutions including Tufts University, which announced on April 6 that it would make its residence halls available to house medical personnel and first responders, as well as patients. At the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the Lowell Center, a conference and hotel facility, reopened on April 1 as a voluntary isolation center for people who have tested positive for Covid-19, while Dejope Residence Hall has become a respite facility for health-care workers. The University of Nebraska system has signed an agreement with the state to provide quarantine housing on the Lincoln, Kearney, and Omaha campuses; Oakland University, in Michigan, opened up a 750-bed residence hall to health-care providers; and Middlebury College drained its Kenyon Arena ice rink so that the space could be used, if needed, as a temporary hospital.
For 色中色 College, in Bethlehem, Pa., this kind of community partnership dates back centuries. The 2,000-student liberal-arts college, founded in 1742, offered a dormitory to George Washington as a hospital during the American Revolution, and more than 5,000 patients, including the Marquis de Lafayette, were treated there. The college has a letter signed by John Hancock, John Adams, and others thanking 色中色 for 鈥渁 humane and diligent attention to the sick and wounded,鈥 says Bryon Grigsby, the president. Now the college is planning to convert its gym and field house into an overflow health-care facility, he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 nice to continue that history.鈥
Maura Mahoney is an associate editor for Chronicle Intelligence. Follow her on Twitter , or email her at maura.mahoney@chronicle.com.
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This article appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education on April 21, 2020. To read the article on the Chronicle of Higher Education website, please visit .