The president of Brown University said the reopening of college campuses in the fall should be a national priority.

Brown University President Christina Paxson said campuses must reopen because of the barriers placed on students attempting remote learning. She stressed higher education is crucial to the U.S. economy.

“The reopening of college and university campuses in the fall should be a national priority. Institutions should develop public health plans now that build on three basic elements of controlling the spread of infection: test, trace and separate,” Paxson wrote in an op-ed published in The New York Times Sunday.

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Paxson said plans must be developed on “the reality” that there will be resurgences of COVID-19 infections until a vaccine is developed.

“We can’t simply send students home and shift to remote learning every time this happens. Colleges and universities must be able to safely handle the possibility of infection on campus while maintaining the continuity of their core academic functions,” she wrote.

Paxson said she is “cautiously optimistic” campuses can reopen in the fall, but “only if careful planning is done now.”

Paxson said in order for campuses to safely reopen, all campuses must be able to conduct rapid testing for the coronavirus for all students when they first arrive on campus and at regular intervals throughout the year.

She also said that traditional contact tracing is “not sufficient on a college campus,” where students may not know who they sat next to at a lecture or attended a party with. She said colleges and universities can play a role by collaborating with their state health departments regarding tracing technology on their campuses.

Traditional dormitories, with shared bedrooms and bathrooms, are also not adequate for separating students who may have been exposed to the virus from others, she said.

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She also said setting aside “appropriate spaces of isolation and quarantine,” such as hotel rooms, may be a costly but necessary measure.

She also said that other measures may be in place making “campus life different,” including potentially requiring masks on campus and keeping large lecture classes online even after campuses open.

“Our duty now is to marshal the resources and expertise to make it possible to reopen our campuses, safely, as soon as possible. Our students, and our local economies, depend on it,” she wrote.

Nearly every college campus has been shut in response to the coronavirus pandemic which has infected more than 943,865 people and killed 54,573, in the U.S., according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.