The University of Minnesota’s five campuses, including Crookston, will move to online-only instruction as of March 18 because of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) until at least April 1, 2020. As a result, the University is suspending in-person instruction, including field experiences and clinicals.
All non-essential, University-funded travel, both domestic and international, for faculty, staff, and students has been canceled from March 16 – April 30, 2020.
All employees of the University should report for work as normal. Supervisors and human resource leads will work with employees to determine if telecommuting is necessary.
The campuses, including Crookston, will have their spring break during this time.
UMC Chancellor Mary Holz-Clause said the impact for staff will be minimal as most professors at UMC already teach some online courses. “We are following the Minnesota Department of Health rules and suggestions,” said Holz-Clause. “Our students are going to be leaving for spring break next week. On the 23rd they are welcome to come back on campus, but they won’t be having instruction in the classroom, they will be online. We’ll be doing that until April 1. For some of the people in other universities maybe it would be a big deal but our instructors, many of them teach online. In anticipation of this about a day and a half ago we started to provide workshops for those professors to become familiar with it. At that point, it was just in case we have to do this. But now we’re going to be providing online instruction at all University of Minnesota campuses until April 1 and evaluating I want to say as this evolves but almost as it devolves into what COVID-19 means for all of us. Certainly, everybody’s foremost concern is to make sure we can prevent that spike from getting too high.”
The residence halls at UMC will remain open to international students, student workers and any students who decide to come back to campus after spring break said Holz-Clause. “We are maintaining all of the dorms, food service might not have has high numbers but everybody is going to be fed and taken care of,” said Holz-Clause. “Our dorm system is unique in that each unit has its own heat unit, so we’re not into a centralized system as most dormitories tend to be which also then should help prevent if anything should spike we need to be concerned about. We hope that students will find the best path that works for them and all of our international students, and students that work here are staying here during the break to take care of animals, feed each other and so forth.”
We will have more on the story as we get more information.
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