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3-17-20 Message to Community

Colleagues,

A brief update for Tuesday morning: We appear to be at least partially successful in emptying campus of students. We anticipate around 1,800 students in the residence halls by the end of the day today, down from over 7,000 on campus. Of course, we can not control off-campus housing and hope that students have taken this opportunity to go home where possible.

You may be aware that Green Beer Day has been cancelled. Because of this, our prior request to hold a synchronous class Thursday is probably unnecessary, and could put students who are trying to travel home in a bind. Please accommodate any students who cannot attend synchronously and please allow flexibility with any graded activity. We do not want students staying on campus and risking their health or ours because of a class.

Essential Staff-Only Follow-Up

Yesterday, our memo regarding essential staff and remote work inadvertently caused some confusion. Remote work status primarily impacts staff, but it may also be important information for faculty. Faculty should be aware that there will not be many, if any, departmental staff on campus to assist them (e.g., no administrative assistants). Other changes are also in place. For example, academic and administrative buildings are accessible by card swipe only.

The University is still open for faculty to teach their remote classes from campus but if faculty can/will teach from home they can further reduce the chance of either contracting or sharing the virus through community spread. It is also possible the University could, at some point, be ordered to close the campus. If that were to occur, faculty would need to be able to teach their courses from home for the remainder of the spring semester.

We apologize for the confusion. We are grateful for all you are doing to deliver high quality instruction to our students under extraordinarily challenging circumstances.

COVID-19 Updates and Resources

Have a great Tuesday, we are proud of what we have accomplished in the past week! Remember that all resources related to COVID-19 are available on this website.

Love and Honor,
Jason Osborne