President Keel: Additional instruction guidance coming soon

Dear Faculty, Staff and Students,

Immediately after receiving the announcement from the University System of Georgia about temporary suspension of classes, I convened a meeting of my Executive Cabinet and the Augusta University Coronavirus Task Force.

We recognize our unique mission as the state’s academic health center and clearly understand the concerns associated with the latest guidance calling for the suspension of instruction, especially as it pertains to our students on clinical rotation.

We are working through those details as quickly as possible and hope to provide additional guidance tomorrow. I appreciate your patience as we work to address these and other concerns specific to Augusta University.

For now, faculty and staff are expected to report as usual. As a reminder, all Augusta University Health System employees are considered essential. I encourage each of our department heads to ensure staff are aware of their designation of essential or non-essential and review their business continuity plans.

The Governor’s office has also released guidance to stop non-essential state travel until further notice. If you need to travel for work, please consult your supervisor for further guidance.

I am also asking each of you to do the following:

1. Stay in contact with the university during this period. We will be pushing out additional details on how we will work through the rest of the semester. We will use our COVID 19 website, text message systems, institutional email and social media to communicate with you during this time. It is crucial that you check for messages daily.

2. Be on the lookout for communication from the dean of your respective college for further instructions. You will soon receive information about how this suspension of courses impacts your specific academic program. Because of differences in the work of our various colleges, it is possible that there may be some variations between each college’s path forward.

3. Faculty should spend the next two weeks preparing for online instruction so that we can complete the semester.

4. If you are a student who needs assistance, please reach out to the dean of students.

I appreciate your continued support.