Message from President McGuire: January 26, 2022
Dear students and colleagues,
With much excitement to see you back on campus, I am writing to remind you that in-person classes for the College of Arts and Sciences and School of Nursing and Health Professions will resume on campus on Monday, January 31. Hooray! We have missed you for these long two months of winter break and Covid precaution. We are reopening the campus with confidence that we continue to manage safely and with due care for all Covid protocols. Resident students have been returning all week, and the CAS and NHP semesters have started online. But getting back to regular classes on campus will be a great step forward.
Classes scheduled to be online only this semester are already underway and will continue online.
Since January 1, we have pro-actively distributed rapid-antigen self-tests on campus and we still have a supply if you need them, please be in touch with Dr. Gerlach. Many members of our campus community took the tests as we requested. The good news is that we were able to identify positive cases early on and have those individuals isolate for 10 days, which is 5 days longer than the recent CDC guidance. Resident students had to test and report results prior to coming to campus so those who did test positive stayed home for their isolation period. Most of those who tested positive in January are being cleared to return later this week or early next as they end their 10-day isolation periods.
Please review Trinity’s Covid-19 protocols on our website.
The Covid-19 virus and its variants continue to circulate through the general population, though the surge in DC has abated considerably even as we are seeing a decline in cases affecting our campus community. DC has strict new regulations requiring indoor masks and proof of vaccination at entry to a variety of businesses, and Trinity also continues our indoor mask requirements along with social distancing and the vaccine mandate. Many public health experts are now predicting that Covid may soon move into “endemic” status, meaning it becomes a routine problem like the flu and must be managed continuously, but not in a crisis mode.
Vaccinations are central to effective management of Covid, flu and other virus threats, and Trinity’s vaccine mandate will continue. If you have not yet received your first vaccinations we will be in contact with you to get that done; if you have not yet had your booster shots, please do so as soon as you are eligible and report your booster status via the form on the website if you are a student or if you are an employee by sending a copy to Tracey Prince in HR princeTR@trinitydc.edu
In other, much happier, news, 166 students graduated to become Trinity Alumnae and Alumni last week, and we have now posted the graduation videos on our website. Congratulations, graduates!!
I will be resuming our weekly “Campus Conversations” every Thursday on zoom at 4 pm starting on Thursday, February 3. Those town hall meetings have proven to be great ways to stay in touch with everyone, and also venues for presentations by faculty and students on a wide variety of topics. Please let me know if you have a topic you’d like to present at one of our Thursday gatherings. We will also have some of our distinguished alumnae, alumni and friends of Trinity join the weekly convenings.
We have many events planned in the months ahead in celebration of Trinity’s 125th Anniversary, and I will be posting news about them separately.
As always, please feel free to send me a message directly about any suggestions, questions or concerns — I try to answer quickly, and while I’m not always the right person to fix a problem, I can usually put you in touch with the right person to help you out.
May you be safe, healthy and successful in our Spring 2022 semester!
With thanks and best wishes,
President Pat McGuire