A message from President Andrea Luxton

A return to in-person instruction means that we will be intentional about how we each live and share spaces safely this fall semester:

• We will have an education process for all students and employees to encourage and reinforce safe personal habits and share expectations of how we want to live safely in shared spaces.
• In residence halls, plans will be in place to create smaller family units and limit the numbers of students in shared spaces. Students may apply for a variety of accommodations here. 
• We will develop classroom and shared study space etiquette to maintain clean and safe spaces.
• We will provide maximum group sizes for shared social and recreational spaces and we’ll arrange furniture in those spaces to manage physical distancing.
• We will create a community approach to ensuring surfaces and spaces remain clean.
• Dining Services will follow best practice procedures on safely preparing the food we eat and ensure a safe distance environment for the dining rooms where we’ll share our meals.

We’ll change how we work together as a campus employee community, to assure safety and protection for that community:

• We will work with employees, allowing for remote work as needed and shift work where practical. Employees may apply for specific accommodations here. 
• We will evaluate all of our office spaces to ensure that physical distancing is possible when people come to work, and we will discourage visitors in personal office spaces.
• We will add additional precautions in the public spaces on our campus, such as increased cleaning and plexiglass.
• We will expect employees to wear face coverings in all public internal spaces as is practical and to also use face masks elsewhere where physical distancing is not possible.
• As we do all of this, we will continue to make ourselves available to students, colleagues and the public in creative and flexible ways.

With the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world, our approach to travel and movement has changed. As a community, we will also take steps to ensure that our approach to travel and movement helps assure safety:

• We are asking our employees and students not to travel internationally during the fall semester of 2020.
• We are asking our employees and students not to travel within the United States to large events during fall semester and to minimize travel in the U.S. to smaller venues/events.
• We are asking that the campus community as a whole be cautious as they travel locally and ask that they follow the expected guidelines in the State of Michigan or in nearby states.
• To help minimize travel, the schedule for the semester will be adjusted to remove the Labor Day holiday and fall semester break and instead end face-to-face classes on November 24.