The University of Florida is asking professors to keep students out of the classroom and start teaching online to help limit the possible spread of COVID-19 in the community.
UF Provost Joe Glover sent a memo to the university’s deans asking instructors to move all of their face-to-face classes online “effectively immediately, wherever possible,” according to a statement from the school.
“While this is not a requirement at this time, there is a strong probability that it will become a requirement before the end of the spring semester, and so instructors are encouraged to transition now,” the school said in a statement.
As of Tuesday, there are no known cases of the novel coronavirus in Alachua County or the city of Gainesville.
The school says it plans to hold summer classes as scheduled but that the plans may change as the situation develops.
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Michelle Marchante covers the pulse of healthcare in South Florida and also the City of Coral Gables. Before that, she covered the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes, crime, education, entertainment and other topics in South Florida for the Herald as a breaking news reporter. She recently won first place in the health reporting category in the 2025 Sunshine State Awards for her coverage of Steward Health’s bankruptcy. An investigative series about the abrupt closure of a Miami heart transplant program led Michelle and her colleagues to be recognized as finalists in two 2024 Florida Sunshine State Award categories. She also won second place in the 73rd annual Green Eyeshade Awards for her consumer-focused healthcare stories and was part of the team of reporters who won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for the Miami Herald’s breaking news coverage of the Surfside building collapse. Michelle graduated with honors from Florida International University and was a 2025 National Press Foundation Covering Workplace Mental Health fellow and a 2020-2021 Poynter-Koch Media & Journalism fellow. Support my work with a digital subscription
