December 30. 2021

Dear Faculty and Staff,

We write to provide an update on the presence of COVID in our campus community. As students and employees began to return to campus for various approved or work-related reasons, our testing protocol identified 12 new positive tests.  At this time, there are 14 students and 3 employees in isolation. All but one person is isolating at home.

The alert level status remains at yellow to remind our community of the need to remain vigilant, wear face coverings, and maintain social distancing. We have updated the dashboard to reflect the latest data and we will keep you informed as we have information to share.

The steering committee continues to meet and we will provide more details about your return to campus next week. As you prepare to return to work, we wanted to inform/remind you of a few important items:

  1. Staff and faculty can work remotely the week of January 3. Please make plans for this with your supervisor.
  2. Beginning January 18, the on-campus testing center will be open for all employees to begin testing on a weekly basis. We will have more details next week on this plan.
  3. As you are aware, the Omicron variant is highly contagious and is considerably more transmissible than the Delta variant. If you have symptoms, we encourage you to get tested. If you have a positive COVID test, please inform Human Resources by sending an email to [email protected].

We know these are not the ideal circumstances for any of us to begin 2022. We will continue to manage all aspects of the pandemic in order to keep our community as safe as possible. We are thankful for all you do to help us in this work. Here’s to a healthy and Happy New Year for our community.

Sincerely,

Jason Rojas, Chief of Staff and Associate Vice President for External Relations
Joe DiChristina, Vice President for Student Success and Enrollment Management