Message for Faculty and Staff, Aug. 3, 2020

Good morning,

With three weeks until classes begin, I wanted to share a significant change to our fall semester schedule.

All on-campus, in-person instruction at Minnesota State University, Mankato, will transition to remote delivery via Zoom after the Thanksgiving holiday break. This includes all FlexSync courses and any required in-person experiences like science labs, etc. The final week of classes, November 30 to December 4 and then final exams, December 7 to December 12, will be held using remote and online technology rather than in-person meetings. A few important notes:

Transitioning away from in-person meetings is not an early end to the fall semester.Faculty should plan to hold classes virtually the final week of classes and then deliver final exams online during finals week.
Students who wish to remain in dorms after the Thanksgiving break may do so, and residential rates will remain the same.
Students who do not want to remain in student housing following the Thanksgiving break may request a prorated refund.
The campus will remain open during the two weeks after Thanksgiving to accommodate students who choose to stay in their private Mankato residences or in the dorms.
More details, including campus staffing plans during those final two weeks, will be coming soon.

I understand this will require faculty to reconfigure their plans for the fall. The change is an effort to minimize the potential spread of COVID-19 following the Thanksgiving break. Public health officials tell us that mass travel during a pandemic, and particularly in late November at the traditional beginning of the typical flu season, raises significant concerns about the transmission of viruses. A majority of our students and many faculty and staff travel over the long Thanksgiving break. When people arrive at their destinations during those longer breaks, they gather with others who have also traveled, compounding the potential to spread viruses. With this change, we join the University of Minnesota and several other institutions across the country in transitioning away from in-person interactions after the Thanksgiving break.

I hope everyone finds some time to recharge over the coming days. I appreciate everyone's patience as we await further guidance from state agencies to understand how our fall semester will look. Like you, we are watching the indicators. We will continue to provide updates as we have new information to share. This remains a fluid situation, and we should all be ready to adapt quickly as new guidance from state public health officials emerges.

Thank you for all you do for our students and our university.

Kind regards,
Matt