Summer courses and activities will be conducted online-only, Provost Cheryl Stevens said in an email Friday.

May 18 marks the start of the summer term, and all courses, practicums, dissertation and thesis hours will be continuing on a no face-to-face basis.

“It is difficult to predict when it will be safe to lift social distancing precautions, and we believe that making this decision now will give you — our students, faculty and staff — adequate time to make this transition,” Stevens said in the email.

Medical professionals cannot appropriately predict how long the “social distancing” norm will last, but experts say a vaccine is anywhere between 12-18 months away from being completed, according to Business Insider senior science reporter Aria Bendix.

“We start letting people go back to work, go back to school and then once that happens, the virus would have an opportunity to spread again and there would be a second wave of infection,” Bendix said.

Due to this transition from face-to-face classes to online classes, the 2020 Summer Scholarship has been increased by $540 for qualifying students, according to the email.

This increase in the scholarship makes up the difference from resident rates to online rates.

The Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (CITL) is offering faculty online teaching courses (OTC) to help with the fundamentals of teaching online.

“We are all in this together, and we will get through this together,” Stevens said in the email. “We appreciate your patience as we continue to navigate through this unprecedented time and work diligently to make decisions in the best interest of our students and WKU.”

News reporter Cassady Lamb can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @lambp0p.