Josh Vitale | Montgomery Advertiser

AUBURN — It may be a while before students and professors again populate Auburn University's campus, but there is a finish line in sight.

Provost Bill Hardgrave said during a Board of Trustees teleconference Thursday afternoon that "it does appear at this point" that the university is "very likely" to continue remote instruction (teaching classes solely online) through the summer in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and that an announcement to that effect should be coming shortly.

At last update, that extended through only the remainder of the spring semester, which ends May 1. Auburn's summer semesters begins May 20 and run through Aug. 5.

UPDATE (11:45 a.m. Friday): Auburn University formally announced that classes for summer session 1 (May 20-July 31) and summer session 2 (May 20-June 23) will be conducted online. A decision about summer session 3 (June 29-July 31) will be made by June 1.

Consistent with current guidance provided by public health officials, Auburn University will suspend on-campus instruction for Summer 2020 Sessions 1 and 2. pic.twitter.com/4AcUuYGTQR — Auburn University (@AuburnU) March 27, 2020

Hardgrave did provide hope that things could return to normal before the fall semester begins — Auburn plans to announce Friday that the spring commencement (which has been postponed) will be combined with the summer ceremony and held as scheduled on Aug. 8.

"Hopefully this will all be behind us and we can have both those commencements at that time," Hardgrave said.

Auburn University is currently teaching 5,000 classes online. According to Hargrave, more than 70% of about 2,000 faculty members had never taught a course remotely before.

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"The way that the faculty and staff has stepped up is absolutely nothing short of a miracle," Hardgrave said.

More grade flexibility has also been offered to students "considering the extraordinary circumstances." The drop date has been moved to the last day of the semester, and an option has been added for students to take "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory" in a course, rather than a typical letter grade.

"We started with three basic principles. No. 1, we're going to focus on the safety of our students and employees," Auburn University president Jay Gogue said. "We want to want to continue our mission as long as we possibly can."

Other updates provided by the Board of Trustees on Thursday:

All employees, regardless of type (faculty, hourly worker or work-study student), have been assured that they will be paid through the end of the semester.

Most students have been vacated from residence halls, but around 80 remain. Most are international students or students with unrelated medical issues.

Auburn's food pantry is feeding 38 individuals/families per week, all by appointment.

With assistance from the bookstore, Auburn has distributed WiFi hotspots, laptops and webcams to students who do not have access to those things off campus.

The university is working to share ventilators, gloves, masks, sanitizer and whatever other equipment it can to areas of the community and healthcare apparatus that need it.

All construction on campus is progressing as scheduled. At this time, there has been any impact to the work or materials necessary.