Environment update: Expanding on updates

This message was originally sent to employees in the Faculty of Environment by Jean Andrey, dean.

The year 2020 is shaping up to be a bit more challenging than we had anticipated. By now, you will have seen the most recent memo (1:38 pm this afternoon) from the President’s Office regarding steps being taken to ensure both safety and business continuity because of the coronavirus. 

The President’s memo outlines the following decisions:

• We are suspending all activity for on-campus courses for one week, from March 14 to March 23. 
• At the end of this suspension, all in-person course activity is cancelled until the end of term, including in-person final exams. Instructors are working on alternate ways to deliver remaining course work and exams/assessments. 
• Fully online courses will continue, but in-person exams for these courses are cancelled and may be replaced with alternative assessments.
• Campus operations will continue.

You will see from the last point that campus operations will continue.Indeed, this coming week is a time for us all to pull together to ensure that new models of program delivery can be developed in a timely way.In order that all of you also remain safe, it is important that:

1. Anyone with symptoms self-isolate and report your absence to your supervisor. For diagnosis, you should seek medical attention from your health care provider. 
2. When working on campus, please practice social distancing.For those of you with private offices, this should be relatively straightforward. If you have a shared office, and require an alternate work space, please advise your supervisor, who will work with the Dean’s Office to remedy.
3. And of course, please follow best practices for hygiene. 

For those involved as instructors, your Associate Dean team will be providing more granular advice on next steps shortly.