BATON ROUGE - LSU interim President Thomas Galligan Jr. updated students, faculty, and staff with an optimistic outlook in regards to the upcoming Fall 2021 semester. 

In a Wednesday (Feb. 24) morning release on the university's website, Galligan indicated that by Fall 2021 the vast majority of university operations are expected to return to normal.

In the release, Galligan said: "It will soon be time to schedule courses for the fall 2021 semester, so we want to give you an update on what we expect the fall semester to look like. 

Assuming that vaccinations proceed as expected, we anticipate that by fall, we will be able to operate the way we did before the onset of the pandemic. In other words, we expect the vast majority of courses to be delivered face-to-face once again, and for the majority of campus operations to be back to normal. We expect that overall, fall 2021 will operate similarly to fall 2019.

We will closely monitor the distribution of the vaccine and will make any adjustments to our plans that are necessary. Of course, we will follow all state and CDC guidelines, with the safety of our campus community as our guidepost. We intend to do all we can to return our campus safely to pre-COVID-19 operations."

He went on to encourage the LSU community to continue to monitor www.lsu.edu/roadmap for updates as they become available. 

Students, faculty and staff were also urged to take LSU's vaccine survey.

Galligan added that LSU has yet to provide an official update regarding summer session and intersession, saying, "We are closely monitoring the state’s COVID-19 progress and will provide an update as soon as possible regarding those sessions. We are also currently working on plans for spring 2021 commencement and will send out a separate communication with those details as soon as they are confirmed."

Click here for more information on LSU's classes and protocol amid the COVID-19 health crisis.