Student Orientation Collaboration Group

The Student Orientation Collaboration Group serves as a forum for people from across the University to discuss how COVID-19 health and safety requirements impact the student orientation experience; discuss what can be effectively delivered virtually and what is best handled in person; and identify how COVID-19 guidelines can and should be integrated into orientation programs. The group shares common challenges and potential solutions and can identify/surface important questions or concerns to other centralized groups where decisions might need to be made.

International Student Experience Collaboration Group

This collaboration group focuses on issues and questions related to international student engagement and experience given the pandemic. While not a decision-making body, the group provides a collaborative forum to exchange best practices, brainstorm novel solutions, and surface critical questions or decisions that a leadership group would need to consider. Key issues and ideas include how life will be for students who may not be able to join in person at the start of the year, opportunities for aggregation of students in their home regions, best practices for advising students about accessing course content from abroad, the rapidly evolving visa and immigration landscape, and more.

Many units are interested in leveraging the University’s Centers abroad to support opportunities for international student engagement and community building, and in partnership with the Global Centers Working Group, this body can help centralize those requests.

Events Collaboration Group

The Events Collaboration Group discusses how events will be best planned and executed given the health and safety guidelines in place for COVID-19. The group exchanges ideas about what has worked well in the past, raise questions about challenges/barriers, and discuss best practices for events taking place virtually and in person.

The group is not expected to produce guidelines or new policies.  A document of best practices for both virtual and in-person events during the pandemic would be an ideal deliverable.

Campus Dining Collaboration Group

The Campus Dining Collaboration Group discusses how University health and safety protocols and guidelines from public health organizations can be effectively operationalized in different food service environments. The group leverages one another to share ideas/solutions to solicit feedback and discuss best practices that should be common to all campus dining venues.

This group is a follow-on group from the Housing and Dining Working Group that developed guidance for the student residential dining program that has benefit for the larger community of dining facilities on campus – from cafés in University facilities to Lab Schools, Quad Club to Gleacher Center, retail to the new David Rubenstein Forum.

Library Building Access Collaboration Group

The Library Building Access Collaboration Group fully explored campus needs and engaged stakeholders to understand the depth and breadth of requests for Library service, resources and space. Additionally, this group discussed what the library can offer in those areas given COVID-related constraints on staffing and space use. ​A framework of priorities was created to inform the library’s strategic planning.