Update for Faculty and Staff, Jan. 21 2022
Mavericks,
I want to thank everyone who joined the faculty and staff town hall yesterday. We had over 180 participants yesterday, which shows me that these forums are an effective way of engaging in conversation about topics you are most interested in. If you weren’t able to join us live, the recording will be posted on our university website under News and Events next week.
A few themes emerged during our town hall:
Mask-Wearing
- Consistent with updated MDH and CDC recommendations, Minnesota State Mankato no longer supports the use of cloth or gaiter-style face coverings within our buildings by students, staff, visitors or vendors.
- The use of well-fitting medical grade multi-layered masks by all students, staff, visitors or vendors is recommended. These masks can be ordered here.
- While not required for University use, a limited quantity of KN95 masks for voluntary personal use are available via the University Storeroom. KN-95 masks can be ordered here.
- Numerous employees have been observed or expressed interest in wearing N95 respirators while on campus. Employees’ voluntary use of N95 respirators in response to COVID-19, requires the University to provide all employees with the attached OSHA notification regarding the risks associated with using this respirator. Please review it carefully.
Remote Work or Classes
At this point, the University does not have plans to switch to fully remote course delivery or work. Our current mitigation strategies are at or above the level recommended by the Minnesota Department of Health’s recommendations for higher education institutions. Our goal is to preserve our critical in-person instructional experience to the best of our ability. Therefore, if there are non-critical in-person meetings or classroom activities that can be switched temporarily to Zoom or other hybrid delivery options you are encouraged to do so. Our current mitigation efforts appear to be working and rates on campus are decreasing.
Telework Policy and Practice
There is a great interest in long-term and short-term telework / flexible work practices for our campus community. The task force is revising their recommendations based on feedback given to the draft proposal; an updated draft document should be ready to share at our February meet and confer for broad feedback. In the meantime, it was requested that a more equitable immediate short-term solution should be developed. Our senior leadership team will review this at our next meeting.
To stay up to date and for more information, please regularly visit our COVID-19 website.
As always, thank you for everything you do for our students and our university.
Sincerely,
Edward S. Inch, Ph.D.
President
