August 7, 2020
Dear Faculty and Staff,
I hope this email finds you well, staying healthy and enjoying summer safely. We look forward to beginning to re-open campus on Monday. We are making great progress with our enrollment and students will be increasingly coming to campus with questions, forms to turn in, and other matters to address as they finalize their registration and get ready for classes. We need to be ready for them, safely, so they can continue to learn and we can continue to serve our community.
Those returning next week will be welcomed by new additions such as new hand sanitizer stations, cleaning supplies, and safety signage with helpful reminders about distancing, mask wearing, and hygiene practices. Over the next few weeks, we will continue to add signage and implement additional features as we prepare for the start of classes. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) are being delivered to campus regularly, and those items that are back ordered will be distributed as soon as the orders are fulfilled. In the interim, we will work with each area that needs special arrangements or adjustments to enable a safe and hygienic work environment. Cloth face masks have been mailed to all faculty, staff, and students.
I continue to be confident in our plans to prioritize the health and safety of our IU South Bend community. We have put in place a range of precautionary measures and harm-reduction strategies that evidence shows are effective. Please check out the webpage, which summarizes these activities. We are taking a comprehensive approach to making our campus as safe or safer than places you might visit in our community. Thanks again to the amazing work of our IU South Bend Restart Steering Committee and Working Groups for their recommendations and to our facilities and UITS staff for making it all happen. Please continue providing feedback to your supervisors, so that we can assure that concerns are adequately and continually addressed.
There have been some questions regarding recent guidance for K-12 institutions and triggers for closing campus. IU South Bend is unlike K-12 institutions and less impacted by certain circumstances for closing. Two critical factors are that our students move through different buildings for different classes throughout the day and they are adults who can understand the requirements we have put into place and have committed to abiding by them. Reasons for deciding when to close campus must also be contextualized, in relation to other relevant factors such as the particular circumstances of our students and campus, and in relation to the regional and national picture. We are relying on IU’s team of medical and public health experts whose primary job is to monitor and respond to incidents of COVID-19.
One of those experts is Dr. Aaron Carroll, Professor of Pediatrics and Director of Surveillance and Mitigation for the COVID-19 Pandemic, who you might also be familiar with from his frequent opinion pieces in the New York Times or Twitter presence. He and other medical and epidemiological experts host regular IU webinars that you can join live or watch later by accessing them at . I would specifically encourage you to check out , where Dr. Carroll answered a number of questions, discussed IU's preparations for students to return to class, and shared what faculty and staff can do to help keep themselves and IU healthy.
COVID-19 Self-Reporting Form
An important aspect of controlling the spread of the virus is knowing who is infected and potentially spreading the virus. One of the challenges of this particular virus is that people may be infected but asymptomatic, so can spread the disease without knowing it. We are encouraging all students to get a COVID-19 test before classes start and performing on-site testing of students in our residence halls on move-in day. We are also asking all IU employees to cooperate fully with testing and contact tracing requirements, as well as to report positive test results that you may obtain outside of the IU Health system. IU has created a new form for self-reporting a positive COVID-19 test result or for reporting that you have been identified as a close contact of someone with COVID-19. You can access the COVID-19 Self-Reporting Form . By reporting this information, you are helping us react quickly to minimize further viral spread and to ensure we can maintain a safe campus environment. This new reporting form replaces the process of sending an email to IU’s Public Safety and Institutional Assurance.
Sanctions for Noncompliance with COVID-19 Health and Safety Directives
As you may have seen in a recent message from IU Human Resources, IU has established sanctions for noncompliance with COVID-19 health and safety directives. underscores that COVID precautions simply cannot be optional. Clear determinations of repeated failure to follow them will result in progressive disciplinary steps. Outright refusal to follow them is grounds for immediate dismissal. The policy fully maintains the due process protections of IU faculty and staff that are outlined in existing discipline and corrective action policies. Finally, the policy underscores that these obligations fall on everyone in the community—faculty, staff, and students.
Employee Resources
There are many resources to support faculty and staff through the pandemic. I encourage you to check out Healthy IU’s resources on as well as from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Additionally, SupportLinc, IU’s offers 24/7 access to professionally licensed mental health clinicians who provide confidential, short-term assistance and referrals if needed. This service is available at no cost to benefit-eligible employees and their spouse and dependent children living in the same household.
Additionally, if employees need to be away from work due to qualifying COVID-19 reasons and cannot work remotely, the makes several options available. For absences not related to COVID-19, or for staff who do not qualify for FFCRA, with supervisor approval, staff may use accrued vacation/PTO without it counting toward annual limits or be absent without pay. Staff may also use income protection/PTO Sick leave consistent with the applicable policy. Please discuss plans with your supervisor and see the for more details.
Operations and Visitors
We are finalizing building hours and other operations and will link them to in the coming days. I also wanted to share new that was released by IU last week.
Please be sure to make time on Friday, August 21 at 9 am to watch my Welcome Back Address for Faculty and Staff. This address will provide additional campus updates, remarks from governance leaders, a musical performance, and a snapshot look at the priorities I see for the campus this coming year. Details forthcoming in the Daily Titan!