Starting our measured approach to in-person activity

This message was originally sent to employees by Feridun Hamdullahpur, president and vice-chancellor.

I was so energized to hear from so many of you this week during our virtual town hall meeting. Thank you to those of you who participated and asked questions. Next week the team will post answers to the questions we didn’t manage to fit in during the event.

More than 1,600 of our community attended the town hall. That means many of you will have heard me describe the planning that we are doing to prepare for a measured return to campus. As I said last week, the following principles are guiding our thinking for the gradual return to in-person activities:

• We will continue to prioritize health and well-being of everyone in our community.
• We will deliver quality learning experiences worthy of our students in any format.
• We will phase in in-person activities when public health authorities say it is safe.

We will begin to open labs in line with government advice next week

The Government of Ontario announced on Tuesday that we have begun the first stage of their framework for reopening the province. For us, this means we can start on our plan for a gradual opening of research facilities.

This is important, because Waterloo researchers can help Canada address the challenges we face with COVID-19. We can also play a significant role in helping to kick start the economy.

We are making a change to the criteria we use to decide who we permit to do their research on campus. This will include considerations for:

• COVID-19 related research
• research that if not continued would result in a significant loss of data or equipment
• grants and contracts with time-sensitive milestones
• graduate students nearing research degree completion
• research with needs for intermittent lab access
• early career researchers

This gradual process for restarting our in-person research operations will likely happen over the next six to eight weeks. We hope we can open all research labs over the course of the Summer. It will depend on the conditions in Ontario and we will keep a close eye on developments.

We will share guidance on physical distancing measures with you if your application for in-person research activity is successful. Charmaine Dean, vice-president, research and international, will share more details with faculty and graduate students very soon.

We are preparing protocols and plans for the return to campus

We are developing return to campus protocols for the staged and safe return of other functions over the next several weeks and months. These stages will be based on provincial guidelines for re-opening workplaces and University priorities.

The protocols and plans will include several conditions that departments and units must meet and will include physical distancing, hygiene advice and other requirements for roles that need to work on campus. To help us all adjust the way we work, we have a team developing guidelines for training, signage and other components that we will need to meet to transition back to campus. You can expect to hear more about this over the coming weeks.

During this period, unless you are identified as a designated research activity or a function with an early return, you will continue to work from home.

Expect further details on fall term plans next week

We know from the questions our students posed to me during the town hall that they need to know more details about our plans for the fall term. Working together with people across the University, we have developed faculty-level plans for the fall.

As I said during the town hall, you can expect that we will continue to deliver all large courses online. I am encouraged that early plans from our Faculties show that some course elements such as labs or tutorials will be available in person and we will have alternatives for those who can't get to Waterloo.

I will share these plans - looking at details around how many people we may be able to fit into classrooms and more - with the community next week.

I continue to be grateful for your patience as we all continue to adapt to the changing environment for our work and study. Please continue to review the COVID-19 Information website for updates and news as we take steps to reopen our campus in phases.