Latest Updates - Page 20 of 31 - Coronavirus Response

Update on Plans for a Return to the Workplace

On June 25, 2020

In Duke University, For Faculty, For Staff

June 25, 2020

Duke Faculty and Staff,

We are writing to provide an update on our phased return to the workplace and the gradual reopening of offices and buildings on campus.

Consistent with our earlier guidance, university staff members should continue to work remotely unless they are specifically designated to return to the workplace. In addition, no university-sponsored or hosted events will be permitted on campus through at least the end of July.

We are closely monitoring the COVID-19 situation in Durham and North Carolina as we continue to implement Duke’s plan to safely return students, faculty and staff to campus. Right now, we are currently in Phase 2 of the reopening process and hope to begin Phase 3 in July:

Phase 1 (March – May): Critical Operations Only: essential healthcare, police/security, utilities, continued student support for remaining residential students, dining services, limited housekeeping, payroll, etc.
Phase 2 (May – June): Expanded Clinics & Research Labs: additional healthcare personnel, principal investigators, research staff, etc.
Phase 3 (July – August): Business Continuity Operations: business support operations, faculty offices, student/academic support services, etc.
Phase 4 (August – December): Fall Semester Operations: necessary personnel to support student services & academic programming for fall semester, etc.

While the state of North Carolina has recorded a high level of positive COVID-19 cases, we are in regular contact with public health officials and experts from the Duke School of Medicine and Duke Health System and remain confident that our plan continues to protect health and safety while facilitating the resumption of teaching, residential life, research and health care services, among other things.

As a reminder, all members of our community must wear a face covering while on Duke leased or owned property, unless you are eating/drinking or alone in a confined room such as an office. (Please note that confined spaces do notinclude meeting rooms, break rooms or shared environments, including buses.) By all accounts, wearing a face covering and maintaining physical distancing are the most effective ways to limit the spread of the virus.

Duke will provide three reusable cloth face coverings to every student, faculty and staff member to use. Distribution of these reusable face coverings for faculty and staff will be managed through the Return to the Workplace Coordinators for each school or department; Student Affairs will coordinate distribution to students.

We encourage you to read the detailed Guide for the Return to the Workplace. The guide covers important details regarding staffing, health and safety protocols, using Duke facilities, and resources for support.

Thank you for your ongoing support of your teams in helping Duke respond to the unique challenges from the pandemic.

Sincerely,

Kyle Cavanaugh,
Vice President, Administration

Jennifer Francis,
Executive Vice Provost

This message has been sent to all Duke University faculty and staff.

Keeping Campus Transit Rolling, Safely

By Paul Grantham

On June 18, 2020

In Community Messages, Duke University, For Faculty, For Staff, For Students

Duke is instituting health and safety measures on all campus buses to protect operators and passengers from COVID-19 infection.

In preparing buses for the return of students, staff and faculty for the fall semester, crews in Parking & Transporation Services have followed a protocol since May ranging from a three-step disinfectant process to requiring physical distancing aboard all 25 buses and the rest of Duke’s transit vehicles.

Invitation to Faculty to Submit Comments for Fall Planning

By Kristen Brown

On June 11, 2020

In Duke University, For Faculty, Uncategorized

This message was sent by email to all Duke Faculty on June 11, 2020

Dear Faculty Colleagues,

Summer is usually a time of relaxation and restoration after the intensity of the academic year, and an opportunity to advance your research and scholarship. This particular summer, of course, is anything but relaxing. I know that you have devoted considerable time and energy to transitioning your classes and research to the new work-from-home and remote teaching realities and that preparing for the fall will require continued hard work. I want to offer my sincere thanks to every member of the faculty for your extraordinary dedication to your students, your scholarship and to Duke.

In planning to meet our goal of welcoming students back to campus, President Price and I, along with many members of the university and academic administration, have engaged with our faculty colleagues in the schools, on various committees, and the Academic Council to talk about the various options for the fall semester.

Since there are many aspects of the upcoming semester that are still being refined, from classroom configuration to campus dining, I invite you to the share your questions and concerns on this open-ended survey form (open until Wednesday, June 17 at 11:59pm EDT). Your submissions will be anonymous unless you choose to identify yourself and will be shared with the appropriate university leaders for consideration and, as needed, action. If you have questions or concerns about specific situations or issues, I encourage you to contact your dean or department chair.

I want to reiterate here that our foremost priority is the health and safety of every member of the Duke community, including faculty, staff, and students as well as our families and neighbors. And as we noted last month, you will not be required to teach on campus if you have concerns about your health and safety, nor will you have to disclose your personal health information or seek special accommodations if you choose to teach through an online or remote delivery.

Thank you again for being part of this inspiring academic community. I look forward to hearing from you, and to seeing you either virtually or, hopefully soon, in person.

Sincerely,

Sally Kornbluth, Ph.D.
Provost and Jo Rae Wright University Professor

Update for Staff from President Price on Fall 2020

By Kristen Brown

On May 29, 2020

In Uncategorized

Dear Colleagues,

As we continue to prepare for the 2020-21 academic year—a year that will be unlike any other in Duke’s history—I want to provide you with an update and further direction on our planning. As it has from the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the safety of our campus and Durham community is our paramount priority and will always drive decisions.

Across the university, many are working around the clock to continue our core missions of education, research, patient care, and service with the excellence that characterizes Duke. Already we have reopened—deliberately, thoughtfully and safely—numerous research laboratories and clinical practices, bringing several thousand faculty, staff and graduate students back to campus with new safety practices, and we are learning every day from their experience. We have also been in contact with many university colleagues over the last several months to understand their interests and concerns during this challenging time.

We are still on track to decide many details about the upcoming academic year by the end of June. Let me tell you where we are now:

Our goal is to enable as many of our students who are able and who choose to participate in an on-campus experience for the fall semester to do so, but only if it can be done safely. We are fortunate to have, in Duke Health, the resources of a world-leading academic medical center to help guide and support our university community. As our faculty and academic leaders collaborate to prepare a dynamic and flexible educational experience, we are working with medical and public health experts, as well as with specialists in residential and classroom facilities, food service and environmental health and safety to reinvent our living, working, and learning spaces and adapt to the new realities that we will confront in all aspects of our lives. I will describe some of those details below.

Our academic calendar will change to maximize our time on campus, and to minimize the disruptions and potential health hazards of travel during the semester. Fall semester classes for undergraduates will begin a week earlier than originally planned, on Monday, August 17, and final exams will conclude before Thanksgiving. We expect the arrival of residential students to be staggered over several days before the start of classes. There will not be a Fall Break in 2020. The spring semester will begin a week later than normal, on Tuesday, January 19, and final exams will be held the week of April 26. Commencement for the Class of 2021 will take place on Sunday, May 9. There will be no Spring Break in 2021. More information on course registration and re-registration, and housing assignments, will be available by the end of June.

Our first-year students will receive additional information on move-in and orientation programs, which are being developed now. Orientation will include online programming prior to first-year students’ arrival on campus, which we now expect will take place over several days during the week of August 10. Final details will be provided by the end of June.

Graduate and professional schools will operate on calendars specific to their needs, and students will be notified about the schedules directly by their schools.

Assuming students will be on campus, all Duke courses will be offered in one of three formats: in-person instruction conducted in classrooms on the Duke campus, fully online courses that take advantage of the best pedagogy and technology available for remote education, and hybrid courses that involve some combination of in-person and online instruction. Students who are on campus can expect their courses to be taught in both in-person and online modes. Students who cannot or who do not wish to be on campus, or who have to be quarantined or return home, will still be able to engage in a full curriculum of courses and make progress toward their degrees. To this end, all in-person classes will also have the necessary online components.

Our faculty and staff, too, are making the transition to this new environment, and we have engaged experts in digital learning to ensure that we have the best guidance in developing and presenting our courses, whether in a newly-configured classroom or online. In addition, courses that include labs, performances, travel, and other unique requirements will be revised to accommodate protocols for physical distancing and online access, though we recognize that might not be possible in all situations. We are also looking to create special “immersion” periods when students might come to campus to complete lab, or lab-type, components of courses.

To do all this safely and successfully, we all must make significant changes to the way we live, study and work, and we are reconfiguring residential, classroom and office facilities to make it possible. Success will only be achieved if all members of the Duke community do their part—which will call upon extraordinary mutual support, clearly articulated behavioral norms, and an unshakable personal commitment. To this end, we expect that all members of our university community will enter into a compact, the Duke Compact, that recognizes our shared responsibility for our collective health and well-being. Committing to the Duke Compact means we care enough about each other to comply with new policies and protocols. These are under careful development, and final policies and protocols will align with the latest and most reliable scientific information, experience, and local, state, and federal guidelines. At this point, we expect practices along the following lines.

All members of the Duke community—faculty, students, staff, visitors—will be required to wear masks in classroom and public settings and practice physical distancing as mandated by local law and university policy.
Robust and wide-ranging testing systems will be in place. All students living on campus will be tested for COVID-19 before they are permitted to begin classes.
All students will complete daily health checks through a monitoring app and report concerning symptoms to the Student Health and Wellness.
All students living in on-campus or off-campus housing will be expected to remain in the Durham area during the semester.
All students who report symptoms will have to follow the testing, contact tracing and quarantine protocols established by Duke, Durham County and the State of North Carolina should they become ill or exposed to COVID-19.
While many co-curricular and extra-curricular activities (lectures, performances, club activities, events) will be held virtually, there will be opportunities for in-person gatherings that meet university and public health guidelines.
On-campus dining centers will provide expanded take-out options and limited in-person service using reservation systems.
Access to campus facilities by students, faculty, staff and visitors will be restricted and new guidelines on space configuration, capacity, traffic flow, cleaning and sanitation protocols will be in place.

Perhaps more than ever before in our lifetimes, the actions of one member of our community can have catastrophic implications for all. Thus, we will take these commitments seriously at all levels. For students, failure to adhere to these guidelines could be grounds for disciplinary and other actions necessary to protect the health and safety of the Duke community.

We remain steadfastly committed to inclusivity, and for its sake, to flexibility. We will continue to encourage, where practical, work from home. Students who choose not to participate in the on-campus experience in 2020-2021 – or who are unable to be physically in Durham due to travel restrictions, personal circumstances, or family obligations – are assured that we will make every effort to support their continued learning and engagement in campus life while remote. Our experience this spring has been instructive in many ways, and we will build on this unplanned shift to develop the safest possible working and learning conditions to advance our core missions.

Finally, and it bears repeating, all of this is subject to change based on public health guidance, medical advice, local conditions and laws, and variables that may not even be known to us today. Such is the nature of life in and after a pandemic.

Regardless of the circumstances, I know we will get through this. It won’t look easy, and it won’t look anything like we’re used to experiencing. But we’ll get through it because our people—faculty, students, staff, families and friends — are thoughtful, collaborative, creative, adaptable, and committed to excellence. We will get through it because we are Duke.

I so look forward to seeing many of you on campus, in all the familiar places. In the meantime, stay tuned to your email and Duke websites for more information and updates. And please accept my very best wishes for your health and safety and the start of what will be an unforgettable summer.

Sincerely,

Vincent E. Price
President

Update for Faculty from President Price and Provost Kornbluth on Fall 2020

By Kristen Brown

On May 29, 2020

In Duke University, For Faculty

Dear Faculty Colleagues,

We are writing to update you on the university’s plans for the upcoming academic year – a year that will be unlike any other in Duke’s history.

First, though, we want to again thank you all for your incredibly valuable work over these past few months. You have met the many challenges that we have all confronted with creativity and determination, and we deeply appreciate—as we know our students also appreciate—your commitment to Duke and our educational, research, and service missions.

As it has from the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the safety of our faculty, staff, students, and the Durham community has been our paramount priority and will always drive our decisions and actions. Countless members of the Duke faculty and staff have been working around the clock for the past several months to get our university ready to deliver on our missions safely. Already we have reopened – deliberately, thoughtfully and safely – numerous research laboratories and clinical practices, bringing several thousand faculty, staff, and graduate students back to campus with new safety practices; and we are being informed every day by these experiences and will make continuous modifications and improvements.

We are still on track to make final decisions by the end of June about many details regarding the upcoming academic year. But we can provide the following information now and ask for your assistance and engagement to prepare for the coming year. This information was developed in consultation with a variety of ad-hoc faculty working groups, through the Team 2021 coordinating group that has been meeting regularly since April, and was shared and discussed with academic leaders across our schools, with the Academic Council on Thursday, and with the Academic Programs Committee on Friday.

Our goal is to have as many students who are able and willing to attend on campus for the fall semester, but only if it can be done safely. We are working with our faculty and academic leaders to prepare a dynamic and flexible educational experience, and with medical and public health experts, as well as with specialists in residential and classroom facilities, food service, sanitation and behavior to reinvent our living and learning spaces and adapt to the new realities that we will confront in all aspects of our lives. Our policies and procedures are under careful development, and final protocols will align with the latest and most reliable scientific information, experience, and local, state, and federal guidelines. We are planning at this point to put the following changes and policies in place:

All members of the Duke community will be required to wear masks in classroom and public settings and practice physical distancing as mandated by local law and university policy.
All students living on campus will be tested for COVID-19 before they are permitted to begin classes and will have to observe the testing, contact tracing, and quarantine protocols established by the Duke, Durham County, and the State of North Carolina should they become ill or exposed to COVID-19.
All faculty, students and staff will have to complete daily health checks through a monitoring app and report concerning symptoms to Student Health and Wellness or employee health, as appropriate.
All students, unless on approved travel, will be expected to remain in the Durham area during the semester.
While many co-curricular and extra-curricular activities (lectures, performances, club activities, events) will be held virtually, there will be opportunities for in-person gatherings that meet university and public health guidelines.
On-campus dining venues will provide additional take-out options and limited in-person service using reservation systems.
Student, faculty, staff, and visitor access to campus facilities will be restricted and new guidelines on space configuration, capacity, traffic flow, cleaning and sanitation protocols will be in place.

We take each of these commitments seriously at all levels. For students, failure to adhere to these guidelines will be grounds for disciplinary and other actions necessary to protect the health and safety of the Duke community.

Our academic calendar will change to maximize the time on campus, to facilitate our ability to clean and disinfect campus facilities, and to minimize the disruptions and potential health hazards of travel during the semester. Fall semester classes for undergraduates will begin a week earlier than originally planned, on Monday, August 17, and final exams will conclude before Thanksgiving. There will not be a Fall Break in 2020. The spring semester will begin a week later than normal, on Tuesday, January 19, and final exams will be held the week of April 26. Commencement for the class of 2021 will take place on Sunday, May 9. There will be no Spring Break in 2021. Graduate school-based programs will largely follow the same calendar; professional programs are being planned separately and will announce specific planning as it is completed.

No faculty will be required to teach on campus if they have concerns about their health and safety. Nor will any faculty have to disclose their personal health concerns.

All Duke courses will be offered in one of several formats to ensure inclusivity and adaptability. In-person instruction, conducted in classrooms on the Duke campus will be coupled with online versions to facilitate remote student inclusion. Fully online courses will be offered that take advantage of the best pedagogical support and technology available to Duke. It is critical that our courses are as inclusive as possible, particularly considering that many students may be unable to join us on campus. Accordingly, all in-person classes will also have an online version so that students who cannot be on campus, or who have to be quarantined or return home, will still be able to take the course without interruption.

Classroom space will be limited by new requirements for physical distancing, cleaning, building access, and capacity. We expect to use a number of atypical venues, including theaters, conference and commons rooms, studios, and tents. But even with those new spaces, we will not be able to accommodate large lecture classes, which will have to be organized into smaller sections or restructured into flipped or hybrid courses. We will also have a new course schedule to ensure that we are able to clean and disinfect our classrooms and manage the flow of pedestrian traffic across campus.

The changes in the academic calendar and classroom space mean that faculty and schools will need to revise their course schedules, and students will need to re-register for the fall semester. The university will provide the calendar framework (classroom space and daily timeslots) by June 4 and ask that the new schedule be submitted by the schools by June 19. In supplying departments and schools with the revised schedules, we will attempt to provide options that are as closely aligned with existing plans as possible. Detailed decisions on curricula and courses will be made locally; we expect and want departments and schools to optimize decisions about what gets taught, by whom, and when.

Robust support is available to assist faculty and departments in adjusting their courses for these new delivery formats. In the coming days, we will share information about a new online resource that will help you re-shape your courses — whether seminars, mid-sizes, or large lectures — using the best available evidence-based pedagogical recommendations. In addition, our colleagues at Duke Learning Innovation have prepared multiple tiers of support to help faculty apply course design principles for the full range of course types offered by our faculty. They will be offering online course design guidance, a regular series of workshops, and instructional design consultations for particular courses.

Finally, and it bears repeating, all of this is subject to change based on medical advice, local conditions and laws, and variables that may not even be known to us today. Such is the nature of life in and after a pandemic.

But regardless of the circumstances, we know we will get through this. It won’t be easy, and it won’t look anything like we’re used to experiencing. But we’ll get through it because our people—faculty, students, staff, families and friends — are thoughtful, collaborative, creative, adaptable, and committed to excellence. We will get through it because we are Duke.

Thanks again for all of the many ways you are advancing our university’s important work through these challenging times. And please accept our very best wishes for your health and safety.

Sincerely,

Vincent E. Price
President

Sally A. Kornbluth
Provost

Update for Students and Families from President Price on Fall 2020

By Kristen Brown

On May 29, 2020

In Duke University, For Students

Dear Duke Students and Families,

As we continue to prepare for the 2020-21 academic year—a year that will be unlike any other in Duke’s history—I want to provide you with an update and further direction on our planning. As it has from the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the safety of our faculty, staff, students and the Durham community is our paramount priority and will always drive decisions.

Across the university, many faculty, staff and students are working around the clock to continue our core missions of education, research, patient care, and service with the excellence that characterizes Duke. Already we have reopened—deliberately, thoughtfully and safely—numerous research laboratories and clinical practices, bringing several thousand faculty, staff and graduate students back to campus with new safety practices, and we are learning every day from their experience. We have also been in contact with many students over the last several months to understand their interests and concerns during this challenging time, and we’ll be consulting regularly with a wide cross-section of students as we move towards the fall.

We are still on track to decide many details about the upcoming academic year by the end of June. Let me tell you where we are now:

Our goal is to enable as many of our students who are able and who choose to participate in an on-campus experience for the fall semester to do so, but only if it can be done safely. We are fortunate to have, in Duke Health, the resources of a world-leading academic medical center to help guide and support our university community. As our faculty and academic leaders collaborate to prepare a dynamic and flexible educational experience, we are working with medical and public health experts, as well as with specialists in residential and classroom facilities, food service and environmental health and safety to reinvent our living and learning spaces and adapt to the new realities that we will confront in all aspects of our lives. I will describe some of those details below.

First-year undergraduate students will receive additional information on move-in and orientation programs, which are being developed now. Orientation will include online programming prior to students’ arrival on campus, which we now expect will take place over several days during the week of August 10. Final details will be provided by the end of June.

Graduate and professional schools will operate on calendars specific to their needs, and students will be notified about the schedules directly by their schools.

Assuming students will be on campus, all Duke courses will be offered in one of three formats: in-person instruction conducted in classrooms on the Duke campus, fully online courses that take advantage of the best pedagogy and technology available for remote education, and hybrid courses that involve some combination of in-person and online instruction. Students who are on campus can expect their courses to be taught in both in-person and online modes. Students who cannot or who do not wish to be on campus, or who have to be quarantined or return home will still be able to engage in a full curriculum of courses and make progress toward their degrees. To this end, all in-person classes will also have the necessary online components.

Our faculty, too, is making the transition to this new environment, and we have engaged experts in digital learning to ensure that faculty have the best guidance in developing and presenting their courses, whether they are in the front of a newly-configured classroom or teaching online. In addition, courses that include labs, performances, travel, and other unique requirements will be revised to accommodate protocols for physical distancing and online access, though we recognize that might not be possible in all situations. We are also looking to create special “immersion” periods when students might come to campus to complete lab, or lab-type, components of courses.

To do all this safely and successfully, we all must make significant changes to the way we live, study, and work, and we are reconfiguring residential and classroom facilities to make it possible. Success will only be achieved if all members of the Duke community do their part—which will call upon extraordinary mutual support, clearly articulated behavioral norms, and an unshakable personal commitment. To this end, we expect that all members of our university community will enter into a compact, the Duke Compact, that recognizes our shared responsibility for our collective health and well-being. Committing to the Duke Compact means we care enough about each other to comply with new policies and protocols. These are under careful development, and final policies and protocols will align with the latest and most reliable scientific information, experience, and local, state, and federal guidelines. At this point, we expect practices along the following lines:

All members of the Duke community—faculty, students, staff, and visitors—will be required to wear masks in classroom and public settings and practice physical distancing as mandated by local law and university policy.
Robust and wide-ranging testing systems will be in place. All students living on campus will be tested for COVID-19 before they are permitted to begin classes.
All students will complete daily health checks through a monitoring app and report concerning symptoms to the Student Health and Wellness.
All students living in on-campus or off-campus housing will be expected to remain in the Durham area during the semester.
All students who report symptoms will have to follow the testing, contact tracing, and quarantine protocols established by Duke, Durham County, and the State of North Carolina should they become ill or exposed to COVID-19.
While many co-curricular and extra-curricular activities (lectures, performances, club activities, events) will be held virtually, there will be opportunities for in-person gatherings that meet university and public health guidelines.
On-campus dining centers will provide expanded take-out options and limited in-person service using reservation systems.
Access to campus facilities by students, faculty, staff, and visitors will be restricted and new guidelines on space configuration, capacity, traffic flow, cleaning, and sanitation protocols will be in place.

We remain steadfastly committed to inclusivity, and for its sake, to flexibility. Students who choose not to participate in the on-campus experience in 2020-2021 – or who are unable to be physically in Durham due to travel restrictions, personal circumstances, or family obligations – are assured that we will make every effort to support their continued learning and engagement in campus life while remote. Our experience this spring has been instructive in many ways, and we will build on this unplanned shift to develop sophisticated, high quality remote learning experiences for all Duke students.

Regardless of the circumstances, I know we will get through this. It won’t look easy, and it won’t look anything like we’re used to experienceing. But we’ll get through it because our people – students, faculty, staff, families and friends – are thoughtful, collaborative, creative, adaptable, and committed to excellence. We will get through it because we are Duke.

I so look forward to seeing many of you on campus, in all the familiar places and, for members of the class of 2024, in your new and sometimes bewildering home. In the meantime, stay tuned to your email and Duke websites for more information and updates. And please accept my very best wishes for your health and safety and the start of what will be an unforgettable summer.

Sincerely,

Vincent E. Price
President

Duke Gardens Will Remain Closed

By Kristen Brown

On May 27, 2020

In Community Messages, Duke University, For Visitors to Campus

Sarah P. Duke Gardens will not reopen in June and will remain closed until further notice. Read the announcement on their website.

Please see their resources page for information about free online classes and other ways to explore the natural world around us.

Majority of University Staff to Work Remotely Through June

By Paul Grantham

On May 22, 2020

In Community Messages, For Faculty, For Staff

The following memo was send to University leaders and managers.

TO: Vice Presidents, Vice Provosts, Deans, Directors, Department Heads, and Managers
FROM: Kyle Cavanaugh, Vice President, Administration
RE: Update on Plans for a Return to the Workplace

As North Carolina and Durham continue to revise restrictions for public and business activity and Duke gradually reopens clinical facilities and research laboratories, we expect the majority of university staff will continue to work remotely through the month of June.

With the successful reopening of labs in the School of Medicine, Pratt School of Engineering, Nicholas School of the Environment and the Duke Marine Lab, several thousand faculty and staff have returned to the campus under controlled circumstances and with new protocols for safety, cleaning, scheduling, social distancing, symptom monitoring and testing.

University officials will be monitoring this new activity to ensure that the health and safety of all employees and students are protected and will make necessary adjustments as the reopening continues.

Each school and administrative department now has a Return to the Workplace Coordinator who is assessing staffing models, space configuration, scheduling, social distancing requirements, cleaning and safety procedures, and signage to facilitate the expansion of on-site work as departments are approved to reopen and staff their facilities. Any individual who is approved to return to the workplace will be required to submit a symptom monitoring assessment daily and wear a mask while on-site.

Please take a moment to review the Guide for the Return to the Workplace as we gain more experience in addressing specific needs of departments and more information will be made available over time.

Thank you for your ongoing support of your teams in helping Duke respond to the unique challenges of this time.

Message from President Price About Fall 2020 Semester

By Blyth Morrell

On May 21, 2020

In For Students

Dear Duke Students and Families,

I hope this note finds you and your family well despite the complications to life caused by COVID-19. The past few months have brought us many new challenges, but also daily reminders of why we are all so proud to be members of the Duke University community.

I write today because I know the question on everyone’s mind: what will happen with the fall semester?

There’s a lot we still don’t know. Like every family, community and business, we are trying to make the best decisions with only partial information that changes by the day. A month ago, we established several planning teams to prepare for the next academic year. These teams have worked closely with our faculty, our physicians and public health experts to develop a range of options that start with protecting the health and safety of the Duke community and focus intensely on ensuring the continued excellence of our education, research, public service and patient-care missions.

That work continues, but here’s what we do know right now:

First, Duke University will be open in the fall, with the specific details of attendance and schedule to be determined soon. Throughout the pandemic, our education and research programs continued, so in a sense we’ve never closed. We completed the spring semester, awarding almost 6,000 degrees earlier this month to the extraordinary Class of 2020. We started a virtual Duke Summer Session with five times as many students as last year. Our hospitals and clinics continue to care for patients, and research on COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics has only expanded. And we’ve now begun the very careful process of reopening our facilities in phases. This week, hundreds of additional Duke researchers and scientists are returning to campus to continue their vital research with new protocols for social distancing, daily monitoring, and testing, contact tracing and medical supervision.

Second, we expect to make decisions about the structure of the coming academic year by the end of June. Why not decide now? We are committed to getting this right, and responsible decision making must be based on a clearer understanding of public health and safety issues than is now available. Our decisions also have to be informed by our experience from these early campus restarts. Making choices now in the absence of this vital information would jeopardize safety of our students, faculty, staff and the wider community, even if it seems to provide the certainty so many of us desire.

Consider for a moment where we were as a country just six weeks ago: you can see how quickly medical guidance has evolved, how rapidly legal and regulatory guidance developed, particularly around matters like testing and tracing, and how much local conditions have changed. The next six weeks should give us far more reliable information upon which we will base our decisions.

And finally, we know enough to say that next academic year will not look anything like the past. As we work toward coming back to school safely in the fall, we are innovating every part of the Duke experience—from the academic calendar to residential living—to provide students the best and safest possible configuration of on-campus and high-quality remote teaching. We are dedicated to adapting the life-changing experiences that make the Duke experience so special, and to creating new ones in areas like career planning.

To be sure, there will be necessary changes in how our spaces are configured and classes are delivered, as well as in the many campus activities that make Duke so enriching and exhilarating; but, like every other part of society, we will be resilient and adapt to the new reality.

Looking beyond next academic year, we are building the Duke of the future. This too will take time, but will only be improved by the knowledge we all gain as we move through the months ahead. Our present circumstances may be daunting; but they call upon us to determine, together, how we empower the finest scholars, redefine teaching and learning for the 21st century, deepen our commitments to community, strengthen our partnerships in the region, and engage as never before our global network of Duke alumni, families, and friends.

So, while I may disappoint those of you who are looking for certainty now, this is where we stand today. We’ll be in touch with you directly as soon as we have more specific information about our programs, and the actions you can take to prepare for the fall semester.

In the meantime, I can tell you that the Duke you know and love is alive and well. The education you receive at Duke will prepare you for lives and careers of meaning and fulfilment. Whether you are a first-year or a senior, your Duke experience will be memorable for life. And wherever you are, near or far, you can follow what is happening through The Duke Daily, our daily e-mail newsletter. Our students receive it each weekday, and parents and families can sign up here.

I offer my best wishes to you and your family, my deepest thanks for your commitment to Duke, and my appreciation of your confidence in the enduring value and promise of our great university.

Sincerely,

Vincent E. Price
President

President Price Announces New Steps to Secure Duke’s Financial Future

By Paul Grantham

On May 13, 2020

In Community Messages, Duke University, For Faculty, For Staff

Dear Colleagues,

Over these past few months, the world has seen the best of Duke. Every member of our community has risen to meet extraordinary difficulties that none of us expected when the academic year began with such promise last August. For all that, and on behalf of your colleagues around the world, I thank you. I have never been prouder to be a Blue Devil.

Even as we rise to meet the public health challenges and navigate this new world of social distancing and working from home, we must also rise to meet the financial headwinds now confronting us, both individually and collectively. As I noted last month, the fallout from the pandemic has had a significant negative effect on almost every aspect of our operations. Indeed, as predicted, every one of our sources of revenue—tuition, research grants, clinical and patient care services, private philanthropy and income from our investments and endowment—has already suffered large reductions or is expected to be quite substantially diminished in the months ahead.

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