Changing COVID-19 Guidelines at Iowa Lakes

By Isaiah Banwart on 2/25/2021

From cardboard audience cutouts at basketball games to live audience, March will mark a year since Iowa Lakes started adhering to COVID-19 guidelines listed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Vaccinations in Iowa, which started on the 14th of December, have been slow to progress in spite of local success. Iowa Lakes’ enforcement of CDC recommendations has only improved with frequent and informative updates and more robust safeguards on campus.

Face shielding has been provided on both Estherville and Emmetsburg campus cafeterias, the former providing mats along the ground marking appropriate social distance. Since the onset, students have been met with extreme leniency towards attendance. Anyone who suspects themselves of illness is automatically permitted to stay home. Traditionally in-person courses were swiftly changed over to online, making it both easier and safer for students to make it to class.

Executive Director of Facilities Management at Iowa Lakes Delaine Hiney has kept a record of COVID-19 updates since March 11, 2020. Her email updates have successfully given students access to credible updates from the CDC and Iowa Department of Public Health. The resources within include testing options, a variety of acceptable face coverings, appropriate quarantine measures, and up-to-date information on vaccine distribution.

Part of Hiney’s updates include control over the Iowa Lakes alert system. It has not been activated in response to COVID-19 outbreaks at all in the past year. This is good news for some, but chemistry and biology professor Mark Zabawa has continued to prepare for an unforeseen surge. His biology and chemistry courses experienced significant change in response to the pandemic. Since March of 2020, his classes have frontloaded all lab assignments so that the remaining lecture periods can be conducted safely and digitally.