COVID-19 Campus Mitigation Plan

March 11, 2020
Liesl Folks, SVP for Academic Affairs & Provost

Dear Arizona Faculty,

I am writing to follow up on President Robbins’ email with more details on how we plan to address the transition to online instruction for most classes.

Today we have reached out to students to let them know when they should return to campus after Spring Break and to expect some changes. Our objective is to balance limiting the potential spread of COVID-19 with the need to support our students’ academic goals, and, to the best extent possible, continue to deliver life-changing educational experiences.

As you will have seen in President Robbins’ email, the start of classes has been delayed until Wednesday, March 18, to allow us some time to move away from in-person instruction. Effectively immediately, we ask all faculty and instructors to devise and implement strategies for transforming their in-person classes into distance/remote/online modes of delivery. All available campus resources will be directed to support you in this effort.

Instructional delivery:

  1. The Office of Instruction and Assessment will lead campus efforts for the migration. Look for a message from OIA shortly.
  1. Faculty / Instructors who are at risk of becoming seriously ill from COVID-19 are the highest priority for support in moving to remote instruction.
  1. Faculty / Instructors who are able to readily move classes to remote learning (on-line or other forms of non face-to-face teaching) are encouraged to do so as soon as possible.
  1. The deadline for migrating classes to remote learning modes is Monday, March 23.
  1. Special accommodations will be made for labs and studio classes, working collaboratively with the faculty / instructors involved – approval by College Associate Deans for Academic Affairs required.
  1. Changes in the delivery of your classes and syllabi should be communicated by you directly to your students.

Also, next week, please be prepared to offer alternative instruction methods and make accommodations for students who are concerned about their own health and safety, or who have self-quarantined.

Travel

Please limit the number of individuals from any given unit attending any one event, to reduce the risk of wide-spread disruption to campus operations. 

International travel and out-of-state travel will be strongly restricted. We encourage you to use alternatives for virtual meetings, such as ZOOM, Skype, Go To Meeting, etc.

Essential travel must be approved by the Dean/Director and the SVP for the reporting line. As appropriate, a risk review will be completed by the International Travel & Safety Oversight Committee.

Climate

We ask for your cooperation in managing calm communications across campus.  Please encourage people to refer to the CDC website and the Campus Coronavirus website.

The University’s Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT) is closely monitoring the changing circumstances of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) and the impact to our community, and together we are making decisions to ensure the health and safety of all students, faculty, and staff. 

We appreciate your dedication and support at this challenging time. Our hope is that at the end of this we all will be proud that we kept teaching and our students kept learning.

 

Regards,

Liesl Folks, PhD, MBA
Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost