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Date: 9/6/2022
AMHERST – The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recently announced Amherst College would receive nearly $5.7 million to offset COVID-19 expenses incurred during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
The reimbursement comes as part of Public Assistance Program through which FEMA offers support for resultant financial losses from a disaster. The funding specifically reimburses COVID-19 testing costs assumed by the college from July 2020 to February 2022.
The agency has provided more than $1.2 billion in these Public Assistance Program grants to Massachusetts to reimburse the commonwealth for pandemic-related expenses. FEMA stated in its announcement that the college had administered 285,870 tests between July 2020 and February 2022.
“FEMA is pleased to be able to assist Amherst College with these costs,” said FEMA Region 1 Regional Administrator Lori Ehrlich. “Providing resources for our institutions of higher education to combat the COVID-19 pandemic is critical to their success, and to our success as a nation.”
Amherst College, a private nonprofit institution, reported total student enrollment of 1,745 and 1,941 for 2020-2021 and 2020-2021, respectively. In 2020-2021, the college started the academic year with 251 full-time and 35 part-time faculty and in 2021-2022, it had 245 full-time and 62 part-time members. No information on the number of other staff populations was available.
Amherst College Director of Media Communications Caroline Hanna said the college was being reimbursed for the period of July 9, 2020 to Feb. 22, 2022.
“For the past couple of years the rules for testing were based on how often employees needed to be on campus, and that varied wildly because of remote work and shifting job requirements,” said Hanna. “Our policies and procedures [changed] quite a bit over time, depending on the state of COVID [-19] nationally or in the area.”
For specific details on the college’s testing response and volume, she referred to information on its COVID-19 dashboard.
The college’s COVID-19 dashboard archives indicate that from July 13, 2020 to Jan. 29, 2022, 242,488 tests were given. During the year-plus from July 13, 2020, to July 31, 2021, 141,396 tests were administered – 86,753 to students and 54,643 to faculty and staff. In the six months that followed, Aug. 1, 2021, to Jan. 29, 2022, the college gave 101,092 tests – 58,904 to students and 42,188 to faculty and staff.
When queried by Reminder Publishing on verification of data and eligibility, FEMA said in a statement that the college as an applicant was required to provide documentation as evidence of its losses and that evidence was reviewed for eligibility.
“For COVID-19, diagnostic testing to support the opening and operating of an eligible facility is an eligible expense. This work is often performed by an applicant contracting with another organization to perform this service,” the statement read. “Applicants will need to demonstrate they followed the contracting and procurement requirements as well as supporting documentation validating the number of tests being claimed. For a large project, such as the one for Amherst College, FEMA reimburses an applicant based on their actual eligible costs.”
By the beginning of July 2020, the coronavirus pandemic was in full swing with more than 3 million COVID-19 cases reported in the U.S. The highly contagious delta variant became the dominant form of COVID-19 on June 1, 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sparking a third wave of infection during the summer. The omicron variant, estimated to be 1.6 times more contagious than delta, accounted for 99 percent all U.S. COVID-19 cases as of Jan. 24, 2022.
Amherst College partnered with the Broad Institute, a research collaborative between Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to offer testing to the campus community at the college’s expense.
The college committed an additional $12 million supplemental distribution for pandemic-related expenses from its endowment in fiscal year 2021 (FY21). Endowment spending for the college equaled $122.3 million for the college – 61 percent of the total budget – including the $12 million. The library received $14.7 million from its endowment – 76 percent of its total budget. Both were historic highs.
The endowments for the college and the Folger Shakespeare Memorial Library had a combined long-term investment pool growing to $4.63 billion at the end of FY21, a $1.48 billion year-over-year increase after it “posted its best year of performance ever,” Chief Investment Officer Letitia Johnson wrote in the annual report. The college endowment finished at $3.78 billion while the Folger Shakespeare Memorial Library’s endowment was $525 million, both all-time highs at the close of the fiscal year on June 30, 2021.
The college estimates its cost of attendance between $86,579 and $89,029; slightly less than a quarter of the college’s endowment distribution went toward scholarships and financial aid in FY21.
After closing the campus for approximately 18 months, the college initially started of the 2021-2022 academic year with a phased in-person reopening that required testing upon return and regular surveillance testing as well as restrictions for dining, travel and building capacity and access that prompted more than 400 students to sign a letter of opposition. By Oct. 20, 2021, the college had relaxed many of the restrictions, citing low infection rates, only to reinstitute many in December 2021 as case numbers increased.
Most of the college’s classes during the January intersession took place online and the start of the spring 2022 semester was delayed a week and the first week of classes took place remotely before returning to an in-person format on Feb. 14. The college sent rapid antigen tests to all U.S. students prior to move-in and initially required testing three days a week for students while faculty and staff tested twice a week.
Most recently, the college announced in an Aug. 5 letter from Provost and Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein, Chief Student Affairs Officer and Dean of Students Liz Agosto and Chief Human Resources Officer Kate Harrington that the college was shifting to a symptomatic testing policy for faculty staff and students and surveillance testing would no longer be required.