Dear Colleagues,

Today, President Ojakian announced that the CSU campuses will be open in August with a mix of online and on-campus offerings. Following his announcement, we issued a letter to our students and their families. The text of that letter is on the COVID-19 page (https://www.wcsu.edu/coronavirus/). It is meant to help our students make decisions about enrolling in classes this fall. More detailed messages will be sent to them as we finalize details about course schedules, residence halls, and our co-curricular programs.

For all of you, the most important details are as follows:

• We plan to open the fall semester on August 24 as scheduled.
• We will follow the System Office guidance and move to fully online course delivery from Thanksgiving through the end of the semester. Students will not return until the start of the spring semester.
• We do plan to open our Residence Halls, following state guidelines on density, hygiene, and quarantine plans.
• Our facilities team is busy developing a plan for all campus spaces with social distancing measures in place. This will include a reduction of classroom capacity, which will be reflected on our schedules.
• Face masks are required while on campus.
• There will be a wide distribution of hand sanitizer and paper towels so that we can clean our spaces after each use.
• Disposable gloves will also be available in every classroom for those who choose to use them.
• Where appropriate, clear plastic barriers will be installed as an extra layer of protection.
• We may limit access to some buildings to control the flow of people.

In all cases, we must be prepared to return to an online campus if conditions require it.

More detailed planning is taking place by area and in consultation with union leadership. You can expect more specific information as decisions are made. We are working hard to implement all appropriate health and safety measures, with a careful re-population of our campuses over the summer. This will allow us to adjust practices as needed before our students return.

For now, we are very happy to have reached this milestone and look forward to working out the necessary details that follow. We ask that you continue to watch your email, so you are fully informed as our plans progress.

Be well and stay healthy everyone,

Dr. John Clark, President

Dr. Missy Alexander, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dr. Keith Betts, Vice President for Student Affairs