Campus tours have been on hold, leaving the typically-busy Welcome Center nearly empty. Photo by Ethan Pellegrino.
After careful consideration, the Welcome Center at the University of Rhode Island put student-led, on-campus tours and admissions events on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Director of the Campus Visit Experience Erin Earle and tour guide coordinators worked over the spring and summer to expand the few established virtual touring options available through YouVisit and to create new safe options for visitors to explore campus. Earle and her team also spent approximately six weeks considering possible small, in-person tours in accordance with COVID-19 restrictions for student and visitor safety.
This week, Earle and her team decided to halt in-person tours for now. The decision will be reassessed weekly throughout the semester.
Discussions with the Rhode Island COVID-19 Enforcement Task Force, Health Services, URI admissions and senior leadership on campus will help determine when it will be safe to implement in-person tours again. The University has also been looking at what other universities are doing and hope to model these visit experiences accordingly.
Once in-person tours return, safety precautions and new changes including staying outside for the entire duration of the tour and no paper handouts will be implemented.
For these resumed tours, there will be a limited number of people on a single tour, according to Jessica Longarello. This would include a tour guide and a maximum of eight people so that the prospective student could bring a family member or friend along with them. Longarello also said that a new microphone system is planned to be implemented for visitors to hear the tour guides while remaining socially distant.
Self-guided tour offerings at the University have been enhanced, according to Earle, so that visitors can grab a self-guided tour brochure and walk around independently.
Earle also partnered with the URI radio station, WRIU, for a podcast to give visitors a sense of a URI tour. Christi Brennan, a tour guide at URI, recorded a podcast that visitors can listen to by scanning a QR code as they explore the campus, according to Earle.
Despite the lack of student-led, in-person tours, tour guides are still being trained to help with virtual events. Co-coordinators Longarello and Brindley Rospars trained new guides in March.
The online training for new tour guides has helped them answer questions about every section of the University, which they got to implement during the University’s virtual open house on Sept. 26. This was the first time some of the new tour guides were able to interact with visitors.
“That was definitely a really special experience for them,” Rospars said. “While it wasn’t exactly what they had imagined it would be like, they still gave this great energy to the visitors and we got great feedback about them.”
Starting next month, the admissions team will implement further information sessions to give students more specific looks at each college within the University.
According to Earle, the safety of URI tour guides is very important. New tour guides can decide their preference of participating in virtual or in-person tours after being accepted into the position.
“We don’t want anyone giving tours that feel uncomfortable with meeting with visitors so some of our team will only be visiting with folks virtually,” Earle said.