To our UTC staff members,
To say the novel Coronavirus has impacted UTC and our community is the understatement of the century. We are all anxious, cautious and wondering what will happen next. We all know the new term of the day – “social distancing.”
I want to thank each of you for all you are doing to help our university continue to serve our students as we also protect the health and safety of our campus community. You are UTC. We appreciate you.
As you know, UTC is not closed, but we have changed how we are doing business. I want to review where we have been and where we are going. My goal with this e-mail is to provide information that will help you make sense of some of the other communications that will follow this message.
- Instruction has moved online for the rest of the semester, limiting the number of people on campus – decreasing our interactions with both faculty and students. Helping us practice social distancing.
- As many staff as possible will be allowed to work from home. A work from home policy and guidelines for staff and supervisors will be distributed by HR shortly. If you can work from home, we will try to make this possible. This will also enable greater social distancing for those left on campus.
- Staff who are eligible to work from home but do not have the required technology will work with their supervisor and IT to see what we can do to make this a possibility. Information will be forthcoming from HR and IT.
- Some jobs simply require a campus presence and we hope the decreased number of people on campus will make this a safer environment in which to work. Supervisors will be talking with staff to discuss each person’s role and job duties.
- Most meetings will be ZOOM or telephone conference calls rather than face-to-face. IT is working to ensure we all have the software and access to these tools to efficiently do business.
- We anticipate restricted operations as noted above will be in place through April. We would be delighted if we are able to return to normal operations earlier. As decisions are made to shorten or extend this period we will let you know.
- With what we know today, we are hopeful we will be able to open our Fall Semester in August as currently scheduled.
The goal of the above actions is to allow us to help our students progress toward graduation. Many industries have virtually shut down. We are fortunate to be open for business but I want to assure you we will continue to put the health and safety of our staff at the forefront of our plans.
We are part of a great university. One with a long and distinguished past. We will survive this crisis by relying on each other and putting people first. That is who we are. That is what we do.
Please continue to check utc.edu/coronavirus for updates and notices about this developing health crisis.
Go MOCS!
Steve Angle
Chancellor