Student & Family Town Hall: Families have done amazing work

Graduation and a more ‘normal’ fall are topics of May 4 Student and Family Town Hall

Following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 4, 2021 student and family Town Hall.

President Andy Armacost: Good evening, everyone. This is President Andy Armacost, and thanks for joining us here on Star Wars Day. And let me offer, “May the Fourth be with you!” The Armacost family and I, of course, are huge fans of the sequence of movies, and the Force is strong in our family.

We hope you’re all doing great, and thank you so much for tuning in and for being here to ask questions. I hope we give you great answers tonight.

I know that there’s a lot on everybody’s mind. It’s the end of the school year, and we’re getting ready to graduate. There are so many great undergraduate and graduate students, and we really honor them. We had a great event on Saturday; it was called the Grad Walk. So in place of our formal Commencement ceremony, Vice President Linder and her events staff, led by Fred Wittmann, put on a wonderful event where we welcomed and honored over 500 of our graduating students.

It was a really nice way to congratulate them, and the videos from that — the individual videos — will be embedded within the virtual Commencement ceremony. So for any parents of graduates, please tune in on May 15, to see that virtual Commencement ceremony.

There’s a lot happening on campus; we’re eager to hear all of your questions. I know there will be a lot of questions about reopening the campus in the fall and what the status of the campus will be.

Just know that we’re moving ahead toward full opening in the fall semester. We’re planning to have classes as normal as they were in the fall of 2019.

Of course, there are caveats to a statement like that, and one is, we’ll see what happens with the pandemic.

There is one way that, collectively, we can all mitigate the risks of the pandemic, and that is, seek out and get our vaccinations. Let me urge every member of our campus to do exactly that.

If we all do that, we’ll be in a much better place in the fall semester.

The question of whether we’ll be wearing masks always comes up as well. On that topic, we just have to wait and see what the condition of the pandemic is, what the CDC is telling us and what the level of vaccination is on the campus. The we’ll make a judgement, and we’ll make that call probably around the first of August.

For practical reasons, that might influence your packing as you come back to school, because you’ve got to leave a little extra room for facemasks. But we’ll make a call based on the available data, the evidence that we have – so stay tuned.

Meanwhile, over the summer, we’ll still require the face coverings on campus throughout all the activities that are going on.

That’s a little bit of upfront information, because I know those are issues that you’re facing.

Let me thank each and every one of you for for bearing with us and bearing with what we’ve been seeing this entire year of the pandemic. You’ve done amazing work, you’ve been patient, you’ve listened to the advice that we’ve given, and we truly appreciate it. I truly appreciate it.

So keep up the hard work; you’ve got another week and a half left before the semester closes down. And thanks to you, in particular, for your hard work and keeping great spirits alive.

With that, let me turn it over to Dr. Cassie Gerhardt, who’s going to lead tonight’s event and really shuffle through a lot of questions and get you the answers that you deserve. So Cassie, over to you.

Cassie Gerhardt, Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Diversity, and Associate Dean of Students: Thanks, President Armacost.

As we’ve done in the past, we want to get your questions answered, as the president said. So please feel free to start adding those to the Q&A feature; we will answer as many of those live as we can.

Some of my colleagues, if the questions are more individual-specific, may answer those in the chat. But we’ll do what we can to get those all answered live.

Once again, we are recording this session and we will be posted it online in the very near future.

I will ask my colleagues (some of whom our listeners all know by name and title by now): before you answer a question, if you could introduce yourself for perspective, we would appreciate it.

We did get a few questions submitted in advance of this session, whether from parents or our student government leaders, who submitted a few. So I’m going to start with some of those pre-submitted questions, while you all submit your other questions. And maybe some of these will answer some of your questions.

President Armacost, I’m going to start with the question I think many of us get every day, and that is about vaccinations and the mandating of vaccinations.

Can you indeed mandate vaccinations, and will we mandate vaccinations for students coming back this fall?

President Armacost: The answer is no. We don’t have the authority to do this. This would require legislative and State Board action. Currently, North Dakota law has a limited number of vaccines that are on that list, and the COVID vaccination is not one of them. Moreover, there are currently no plans to add it to the list.

So I don’t anticipate a requirement for vaccinations on campus for COVID anytime soon.

Cassie Gerhardt: Thank you. Dr. Halgren, I am going to give this question to you, given that Student Health Services reports to you.

Could you tell us a little bit about what vaccination opportunities will be available in the fall? And maybe to highlight what vaccination opportunities are currently available to members of the campus community.

Cara Halgren, Vice President for Student Affairs and Diversity and Dean of Students: Thanks, Cassie. My name is Cara Halgren, and I serve as the Vice President for Student Affairs and Diversity here at UND. And actually, I think my colleague is by far better versed to be able to answer that question. So I would like to introduce Rosy Dub.

Rosy Dub, Director, UND COVID Clinical Response: Thank you, Cara. I’m Rosy Dub, currently serving as the Director of UND COVID Clinical Response.

We have very robust vaccination opportunities existing on campus. I am speaking for my colleague Jess Doty, who is the Director of Student Health Services.

There is a vaccine clinic Wednesday (May 5), and there will be a vaccine clinic on Friday (May7) available. Anybody who would like vaccine – students, faculty and staff at this time – please call Student Health at 777-4500. They will arrange to get you vaccinated as vaccines become available. And I believe that they have some in-house, ready to go.

The response this fall: I believe that Jess and the team plan to be available during Orientation Days to provide vaccines if people are interested at that time. And please be assured that once school starts this fall, as well as before the fall, there will be vaccination opportunities which you can learn about by calling Student Health at any time.

So yes, you can get vaccinations on campus, and we highly encourage it.

Cassie Gerhardt: Great, thanks Rosy and Cara.

Karyn, as I mentioned before we even began, there are lots of questions about what the academic environment will look like this fall. Can you visit about a few things, such as what will the fall semester looks like? Do we have an idea of how many classes will be hybrid versus in-person?

Some people have felt that we said we were going to have in-person classes this spring, and maybe more of the classes have been hybrid than they anticipated.

So, can you just visit about: what are the plans related to the academic environment for the fall semester?

Karyn Plumm, Vice Provost for Student Success: Hi, everyone. I’m Karyn Plumm, Vice Provost for Student Success. For this fall, we will have courses that are listed as either in-person, hybrid or online. Students can see how their course delivery mode has been set up for each class as they register in Campus Connection.

One point I do want to clarify is our hybrid courses for the fall semester, the expectation is that the instructor will be live in the classroom, and that students would have the choice in those courses to be live in the classroom as well with the instructor, or they can choose to participate remotely.

What we’re hoping to do with some of those courses is to give students a little bit more of an option. Some of our students want all in-person courses, and some of our students want all online courses still. So, a little bit of flexibility is built in there.

If you’re looking for either of those, I would encourage you to work with your advisor to take a look at what your scheduling options are in the different courses that are available across campus. Right now, we have 77 percent of all of our courses listed as either in-person or hybrid. So we have a lot of opportunities for students to be back in the classroom.

As we mentioned earlier, that may change. If an instructor, for example, were to test positive or be a close contact, of course we may need to switch to online for a short period of time or potentially for the semester, depending on the situation.

We have asked our instructors to be flexible with that kind of delivery.

The other thing that I want to touch on is the availability for students to seek out and talk with their advisors. We will have a new Advising, Learning Services and Tutoring Center on the second floor of McCannell Hall in the fall semester, which is right across from where the new Memorial Union will be.

So it’ll be a great opportunity for students who just have a quick question or weren’t sure if they could get in for an appointment with their advisor, to pop in and ask those questions and talk to somebody about questions they have about courses or what to do in a particular course.

Cassie Gerhardt: Thanks, Karyn. Orlynn, a question for you: what would the dining centers look like in the fall semester?

Orlynn Rosaasen, Director of of Dining Services: Thanks, Cassie. I’m Orlynn Rosaasen, Director of Dining Services.

We’re planning to open the dining centers more along the traditional lines of pre-COVID. The seating capacity will go back to 100 percent. We’re looking at using china versus takeout containers.

And then also, of course, we’re looking at going back to where students would be able to self-service some of the items, and that we would be able to do customizable entrees and such for students.

Of course, this is all predicated on where campus is that at that point. Obviously, if the campus is back to normal, we’ll be back to normal; and if the campus is not, we’ll adjust our plans accordingly.

Cassie Gerhardt: Thanks, Orlynn. It’s the little things like eating off of a plate in the fall semester that many of us look most forward to, so thanks again. Someday, there will be a trivia question of how many disposable clamshell containers UND dining went through this year.

Orlynn Rosaasen: And we can get that answer for you.

Cassie Gerhardt: I know you can. So thanks, Orlynn.

Cara, a question for you: will the Angel Fund still be available to apply for as we move forward?

Cara Halgren: Yes, it will be available. You know, out of every challenge comes opportunity, right? So, one of the greatest things to come out of the last year of COVID is the development of this Angel Fund. And yes, it will continue to be available.

It continues to just make me feel so proud to be a part of UND, because of the faculty, staff, students and friends of the university who contribute to the Angel Fund, which then, in turn, allows for students to get that extra financial support that they may need.

So yes, it’s available. And if you are interested in making a donation, by all means, let me know. I’ll hook you up.

Cassie Gerhardt: Thanks, Dr. Halgren.

All right, Jed, here is your favorite subject of all subjects, and that’s parking. So this one is for you, and I’m going to just read it the way it was submitted to me. It says, “The parking. It is very hard to know where to park. There is no parking at the Wellness Center.

“Can you please explain the difference between the $190 parking pass and the $400 pass? Can the Campus Patrol ease up on this? It is hard to find parking, and these kids have no extra spending money while they’re in school.”

Jed Shivers, Vice President for Finance and Operations and Chief Operating Officer: So, I’m really not the right person to go into the minutiae of parking, even though it is my most favorite thing to talk about. So thank you for that, Cassie.

What I will do is make sure that people who are in a much better position than I am will answer the question exactly. We’ll provide that response.

And one of those people is actually off traveling on university business to Bismarck. I think he probably planned it so that he wouldn’t be around to answer this question. (laughter)

Seriously, though, I think one of the things that we’re really doing is trying to make parking a little bit smoother for people. We’re also eliminating some of the various categories, making parking more available rather than less available, and doing a lot of work to create additional parking in key places.

In terms of the specifics of the pricing and everything, however, I’m gonna have to punt that one. But we’ll get the specific answers for people who are asking that question.

Joshua Wynne, Vice President for Health Affairs and Dean, School of Medicine & Health Sciences: Jed, how will people be able to access that information?

Cassie Gerhardt: In this case, Dr. Wynne, I know who sent that question. So once we get the response, I can follow up with that parent. That one was pre-submitted to me, actually, so I can follow up.

Jed Shivers: And I think that’s information that we’ll easily be able to publish. So that’s that’s not a big deal.

Cassie Gerhardt: I will clarify that while we’ve had some limitations at the Wellness Center, some changes have been made over the semester.

Starting this spring, we worked with Mike Pieper, so that issue may have been resolved. But as Vice President Shivers said, we’ll follow up.

President Armacost, I’m going to come back to you, and it was something you said at the beginning. I’ve got another question about wearing masks, and I know some people have joined us since you initially greeted everyone.

Can you just provide an update again about where you think masks are, and perhaps about the Aug. 1 timeline for providing some additional information for those who maybe joined us after your opening comments?

President Armacost: Sure. When we think about the prevention measures that have been so effective during this pandemic, a number of things come up: keeping your distance, washing your hands, wearing a face covering.

We don’t yet know – Dr. Wynne can talk about this – the full story on transmissibility of the virus, even for people who are vaccinated. And there’s just a lot that’s not yet known.

So in terms of how that impacts face coverings on campus, we’re going to continue to wear them through the summer. But we don’t know yet about the fall. It will depend upon the conditions of the pandemic, levels of vaccination on campus and a number of other factors. And we’ll make that judgment on the first of August.

We’ll let everybody know, so that you have plenty of time to prepare – either to bring your masks to campus or not.

We will have more information at that point, and we’ll make that decision on the first of August.

Cassie Gerhardt: Thanks, President Armacost. Troy, a question for you: What is the plan for a safe move-out this spring semester and in particular, University Place?

Troy Noeldner, Director of Housing & Residence Life: Thanks, Cassie. My name is Troy Noeldner, Director of Housing and Residence Life. So for our checkout process, the key thing is to communicate with your resident assistant. We are offering both a traditional checkout for those who want to schedule a time turning in their keys and review their inventory and condition with their RA. If a student feels that they would rather do more of a contact list, turn their key in separately and not be present with an RA, we can schedule that as well. Of course, all our staff will be fully masked and will respect social distancing throughout.

The main thing though, for us is just to communicate that checkout time so that we know when you’re leaving to make sure that we get all your paperwork done and get you checked out of the room properly, and get ready to turn over for the summer session for us. So other than that, pretty much a standard process and most of our students schedule checkout spread out over the week. So students will leave as soon as their finals are done.

Cassie Gerhardt: Thanks, Troy. Rosy, a question about vaccinations. If people are able to get a first vaccine here, should they knowing that they might need to get the second vaccine after they return home and maybe in another state? Thoughts on just kind of the timeline for vaccinations.

Rosy Dub: First of all, I want to correct a comment I made earlier. The Student Health vaccination clinics are tomorrow, Wednesday and Friday (May 5 and 7). I got mixed up and thought today was Wednesday. Sorry about that. Clinics are Wednesday and Friday. As far as the vaccination, our general mantra has been: get the first vaccine you can. So with that thought we would say get vaccinated here as soon as you can.

The important thing to know is if you do get vaccinated here and you’re home for the second dose, you need to take your vaccination card and make sure you finish the series of the series you started. So if you get Pfizer here, and you need the second dose in three weeks at home, you need to get a Pfizer dose. Likewise, if you get Moderna here, you need to get Moderna when you go home. The other vaccine that we are to give on Friday, the J&J – the one-dose vaccine – is available. And that has been released again by the FDA and we are still encouraging students to consider that one.

As a parent myself, my kids are well past the college age. However, I gave some thought when that question was posed that it’s not unlikely that students may not feel well for a day or two following their vaccines. Some don’t notice it at all. Some don’t feel very well. That’s something you might want to talk to a provider at Student Health or someone about. It’s finals this week. I just don’t know for sure. That’s a personal choice. Some people put it off if they have a really big test or event coming up. So you might want to give that some consideration, too. Time shots so that you can afford to take a day off or just kind of lay around and feel better. Does that answer your question? Let me know if not.

Cassie Gerhardt: I think that does. Rosy. Thank you. Matt Lukach. I’ve got a question for you. Are there any scholarships or funds, such as the Angel Fund, available to financially struggling international students?

Matt Lukach, Director of One Stop Student Services & Recruitment: Yes. Hi, my name is Matt Lukach. I am the Director of One Stop Student Services and Recruitment at UND. And Cassie, yes, we do have other funds for international students to apply for. It’s called the Open Door Scholarship and it’s just a simple application on the One Stop Student Services website. So it’s a very good option for international students.

Cassie Gerhardt: And to clarify, the Angel Fund is also available to international students should they apply. Great. Thanks. Dr. Halgren, a question for you: as people plan the fall semester, is Family Weekend happening this fall?

Cara Halgren: Put it this way. We are planning for it to happen unless we hear otherwise. So how’s that sound? So yes, we are we are busy planning Family Weekend. We are anxious to have people on campus. I am saying this today, given what I know right now. And so we will do our best to follow through with that this fall.

Cassie Gerhardt: And given that Family Weekend reports to me, we are planning it for the weekend of October 8th through 10th. So if all the things that Dr. Halgren said are in place, the weekend you can mark your calendars is October 8th through the 10th this year, with more information to come in the future.

Next question, and Jed I’m going to send this one to you. So if parking isn’t your favorite one, maybe face coverings will be the next subject for you. Face coverings are still required indoors on campus, correct? This person adds: last week there was a class in Kelley Hall among the five to six students, I could see through the glass doors, none was wearing a face covering. Wondering what’s going on? So could you just clarify where we’re at with face coverings, especially in light of what people are hearing related to face coverings and vaccinations?

Jed Shivers: First of all, it’s wonderful that we have some of this ambiguity around because it shows how much progress we’ve made in the last few months. I mean, that’s really something to rejoice from my perspective. But we really still are functioning under a mask mandate here on campus. And the reason is – and Dr. Wynne, I’m going to turn to him afterwards to maybe ask him to comment – is there still is the possibility of transmitting the disease.

I think the most effective way of dealing with it is to continue to wear masks, at least at this time. And when you look at the latest CDC guidelines, you see that people are able to engage in all kinds of activities, including fully occupied church services, singing in a choir, attending a class. But the recommendation from the CDC is that you continue to wear a mask. So I think that’s something that we really want to keep in mind. Are all systems perfect? You know, I think I said long, long ago, we’re not the mask police around here. So we really expect people to comply. I imagine from time to time there are those who don’t. And perhaps the questioner spotted one of those instances. But generally speaking, I think people are still basically complying. And so recognizing that no system is perfect, I think, in general, given the number of people that we have on campus right now, we’re not doing too badly and continuing with our mask mandate.

President Armacost: Jed, this is Andy Armacost, the president. There’s another element to this as well, and that is personal, private medical information that some people may choose to vaccinate or not to vaccinate. The CDC guidance says if everybody in a indoor setting is vaccinated, then then they can go without masks. However, on campus, I don’t want faculty or staff posing that question to students or other colleagues as well, simply because it’s not their business, right? And so, right now at this point, another reason to keep the mask mandate in place is just to protect the privacy of the people who might not be vaccinated or those who are vaccinated, but wish to continue being extra cautious.

Joshua Wynne, Vice President for Health Affairs and Dean of the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences: This is Josh Wynne, Vice President for Health Affairs and Dean of the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences. And I would just expand on President Armacost’s comments to also indicate that the CDC guidelines, where they suggest that if everyone is immunized indoors, you don’t have to wear masks, that’s specifically for small groups. They don’t define small groups, but even if we knew the status of the vaccination, and as President Armacost indicates, we don’t, it would not apply to a lot of the things that we do indoors where it’s not the five or six people that were mentioned in the question. So I think given all of those factors, I completely agree with what President Armacost said.

And let me point out again, the fastest way to that we can get maskless is to get vaccinated. The latest data for the state of North Dakota for 19 to 29 year olds, which would encompass a lot of the students at UND, the latest percentage of those students who were fully vaccinated – that is more than two weeks after the first or the second shot for the two-shot regimes – is 22 percent. So less than a quarter of all of the people in that age group have been vaccinated. We want to have classes without masks? Get vaccinated.

Cassie Gerhardt: Thank you. a question for – and this probably could go to just about anybody in the Zoom and probably one that many of us will be asking for years to come. It’s one dissertations will likely be written upon. How would you summarize the impact that COVID had at UND? Given the resiliency that college age kids have to this – they’re not necessarily staff and faculty – did UND experience any serious hospitalizations? Given hindsight and experiences other universities had, what worked well, and what would you have done differently? And then this person ends with, “Thank you for the hard work.” Thank you for the comment. So thought on looking back? Cara’s already waving your hands. To Dr. Halgren…

Cara Halgren: That’s a that’s a great question, and I think, for me, personally, when I look at it, students are resilient. And I think over the last year, we found out that we are too. We’ve had students that have been hospitalized previously, for other things, not necessarily COVID related, and we have some incredible systems in place. And I think that as a result of having those systems in place to support students, and to work with faculty and provide really kind of a web of support. When COVID came, we already knew how to do that work well. And so COVID was just another kind of piece to it, another variable that we had to consider. But again, I would look at it and say there’s probably things that we would look at and say maybe we should have done differently. But again, given what we had, I’m really proud of what we’ve done and what we’ve done with students.

Jed Shivers: Yeah, I also think this is a wonderful question, but I would actually frame it a little differently. And I think, to me, the question is, what was the effect that COVID had, and our part in it for Grand Forks County. Because a lot of the steps that we took were not just for the health and well-being of our university community, but they affected Grand Forks County as well. And the reason why I say it is, if you figure there’s like about 62,000 people in Grand Forks, and you’re introducing thousands of college students into that community, which is a high percentage of college students relative to the total population of the city, then we have to look out not only for – and we’re dealing with a highly transmissible disease — not only our own community, but for the greater Grand Forks community. And so that’s an interesting question, and I think it’s one where the results still need to be written.

I’m looking forward to really understanding whether or not we made a difference in reducing the hospitalization rate and, of course, sadly, the death rate in our county versus other counties in the state. But I kind of think we probably did. I think we – to the extent that we knocked down some of the transmission rates and by the efforts of our entire community – and testing people vigorously, putting them in quarantine and isolation, either at home or in hotels, which we provided them. I think, by definition, we took out some of the gas from the pandemic, which I believe – I don’t know for sure – would have been worse for our community had we been much more passive.

Joshua Wynne: I agree with Jed’s comments. I think from a physical health point of view, we collectively did pretty well, all things considered. On the other hand, the emotional toll that the pandemic has taken, particularly on students, but also faculty and staff – but especially on students – has been enormous. And I do think that we, the universities, stepped up and tried to make as available as we could counseling and other support services. But the impact on students has been palpable.

The good news is for students who are listening, you are resilient, and I think you’re already rebounding. But I just want to assure parents and students that we are aware of the emotional toll that this took, and we have worked hard to try to try to address it. I’m going to go to one of my first meditation sessions that the School of Medicine & Health Sciences is having at over the lunch hour. So I look forward to participating in that and seeing if that might help a little bit. But I do think that I have been impressed as far as the emotional impact. Again, I think we had good systems in place and we responded well, but I think we’ve learned just how important that component has been.

President Armacost: And let me also add just the incredible investment that the University, and really the federal government and the state government, made to allow us to have everything we needed – whether it’s investment in testing, investment in contact tracing and so forth. But on our campus we spent – Jed, correct me on the numbers – but about $35 million since the beginning of the pandemic. The vast majority of that was reimbursed by the federal and state governments. So, whether it’s been changing air handlers or buying cleaning equipment or reconfiguring rooms or developing better hybrid technology to support classes, it’s an expensive proposition to make the changes that we made. I’m extraordinarily proud of the work that campus did.

We have a pandemic group that has worked since March 11. Initially it was for five days a week, I think they meet two or three days a week now. They’ve just done an incredible job bringing their expertise to bear on how do we respond in the best way possible to the pandemic? Balancing our desire to keep things going on campus with the need to minimize the risk to our campus members, so I’m really proud of all the work everyone has done.

Cassie Gerhardt: Thanks everybody. Meloney, a question for you – people are thinking ahead to future commencements. So, are we planning for in-person summer, I’ll call it August events. If so, what’s the date?

Meloney Linder: We are planning to go back in-person commencement. We all are very excited about that. It’s Friday, August 6. There will be two commencements – one for undergrad and one for graduates.

Cassie Gerhardt: Meloney, I’m going to add to that. Information will be shared with those students who have not yet been able to enjoy an in-person commencement, and they would be able to participate in that event, correct?

Meloney Linder: That is correct. Every student who has not been able to participate in an in-person commencement throughout the pandemic is going to be invited back to participate in August. And if they can’t make in August, we welcome them back at future commencements as well. We’re excited to share this big pivotal moment with everyone.

Cassie Gerhardt: Yes we are, yes we are. Karyn, a question for you – can asynchronous courses include a Zoom option moving forward? The person adds, frustrating that students pay full price but have to teach themselves with no instructor-led lectures. So, just the use of Zoom moving forward.

Karyn Plumm: Sure, that’s a great question. I want to clarify that for online courses we have two different types, asynchronous is one type and synchronous is the other type. Our asynchronous courses are meant to be set up so that students do not meet at the same time. So to have a Zoom session, there might be instructors that have them as optional sessions that are built into the course, but if students want to have a real meet-together at the same time with a faculty-led lecture, they should look for synchronous online courses. We get that question a lot because students are unsure about the difference between the two, so if you want the live Zoom sessions, those would be a synchronous, online course. And the asynchronous online courses will continue to allow the flexibility, especially for our distance students who are taking those online courses and can’t meet at a regular time.

Cassie Gerhardt: Thanks Karyn. Brian Willis, I have a question for you. We’re going to pivot a little bit from COVID. This question states: As a parent, I am extremely concerned about the recent suicide of an aviation student. This year has been stressful on all students, but aviation students are required to maintain a certain GPA. What are you doing to ensure that you are reaching out to those students other than having a counselor available? Are advisors contacting their assigned aviation students, is the aviation department considering doing anything with regard to the GPA requirement? So, maybe just an update for everybody first, and what the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences has done, and maybe some other plans going forward.

Brian Willis, Director of Aviation Safety: Great question and comments. As Cassie said, I’m Brian Willis, director of aviation safety for UND Aerospace. And as we look forward, with the recent events of the suicide that we had just a week and a half ago, UND Aerospace has put together a task force to talk about mental health. We’ve been discussing this – part of our safety seminar or safety week that we did in February, we pulled in a few professionals. We identified from an Aerospace standpoint that flight training can be stressful in itself, then you throw the pandemic on top of that along with everything else going on, on campus.

We’ve been trying to chip away at the mental health piece and what we’ve identified is that this isn’t something that you solve in 24 hours or 36 or 48. This is something that the task force we put together spans from students to flight instructors to faculty members, UND Counseling Center, Altru members. We have folks from the community that have joined and this is their profession. We’re pilots, and when it comes to mental health, it’s not our topic but we are rolling up the sleeves and trying to use the help and not set up something for short term. What we identified is that mental health is going to be an issue that we face not because of the pandemic this year, but they’re starting to see it throughout the industry. So we’re trying to develop programs that we can embed in our culture today that will last five years, ten years and beyond.

As for what our current staff is, yes we have a counselor at the Odegard School for students, flight instructors, faculty, whomever might want to have those conversations. That’s a small step. Another is that when students are dealing with stressful scenarios, whether it be they’re out for a period of time due to COVID, we’re strongly recommending that they go talk to their faculty members that are teaching those courses. And I think that I can speak for the majority of the University as well, but we have told our faculty to be flexible when it comes to those that have missed classes or those that have maybe had to take care of a sick family member. Those are all things that we’ve had cross our desk. The biggest thing was we asked that we communicate.

To answer the question, we are attempting to. I can’t say that every advisor is calling every student on the flight line. However, we do say that again we have those means to open that communication. I’m not sure about the GPA requirements, that’s something that I can get back to Cassie on a later date, but I can work with our Dean’s Office on if there is any exceptions there. But I do know that flexibility has been part of the message given within the Aerospace School where faculty members are hopefully working with students as we approach final’s week, final projects, things like that.

Cassie Gerhardt: Thanks Brian, I know it’s been a tough couple weeks for you and your staff. But I’ll just say to everybody that Brian and our colleagues in Aerospace responded immediately and I think every day have been talking about what more they can do, and looking for other ways. So, my thanks to Brian and his colleagues have done to support our students – truly exceptional response to a very difficult situation.

A question about how we’ll know the percentage of students vaccinated. I don’t know if this question will go to President Armacost or you, Dr. Wynne. Sometimes we give these medical ones to you, because you’re the only doctor on this screen who can write prescriptions. In light of the fact that we can’t ask students who’s vaccinated, how will we know what percentage or how many members of our campus community, students in particular, have been vaccinated?

Rosy Dub: I can lead with a limited amount of information. Student Health Center does plan to interface with North Dakota Immunization Information System and UND students. So interfacing means that we have a direct connection with the information system that records immunizations. We already have that in place. They’re hoping to capture the percent of students that are vaccinated at UND in a North Dakota information system. So, we’ll have an idea about that percentage, however that system isn’t perfect. It doesn’t capture students vaccinated outside of North Dakota. So, we’ll have some idea with that, but we won’t have great factual information.

I don’t have much more to add to that except to go by what the state and the county provides for us by age group, percentages of vaccinated persons. We know that includes our UND students as well. Besides the students that we know are vaccinated so far, I struggle to think of a number, but they’ve vaccinated more than a couple thousand so far. But we know that students have gone to the mass vaccination clinics at the Alerus, so we’re just happy they’re getting vaccinated. We don’t know the exact number but we keep encouraging and know that they’re getting them.

Joshua Wynne: Thanks Rosy. I would just add on one comment she made that there are data available, publicly available, by age group. If you Google North Dakota Department of Health and then look for dashboard, one of the choices is vaccination status. If you click on vaccination status, it shows by age group. If you pick 19-29, that will encompass many of our students. That will give you an idea of how we’re doing across the state. That does not break it down by institution, but that’s at least a publicly available website that you can access. NDDOH Dashboard, then go to vaccination status and it will show that information.

President Armacost: And Josh, correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s no national vaccination registry. So, all of this data is maintained by each state, and other than our North Dakota citizens, students or those vaccinated on our campus, it’s tough to know the rest of the folks. We’ll look at all of the data and try to make a good assessment about that percentage.

Cassie Gerhardt: Thank you all. Another question has come in, in response to our conversation about the Aerospace student. Cara I’m going to give this question to you, I don’t know if you can see this in chat. But the question for everybody says: I am the parent of an aviation student and this is the first time that I’ve heard about a recent suicide of a student. Why weren’t parents of aviation students notified about this so that we could discuss this issue with our kids? It’s great that the aviation department has brought a counselor in to meet with kids, but parents also need to know when their kids are dealing with serious situations such as this. Parents should have been notified. Cara, I’m not sure if you have any thoughts to share.

Cara Halgren: First of all, I would say that we always welcome your feedback on ways to do this better. Any time a student dies, it is awful, it is horrible. It is tragic for a family and it is tragic for the community, and those who know the student. Again, we have some standard pieces in place that we use. So we communicate with the campus, typically, with a notification about the death of a student. That information goes out to all people with UND email addresses. The other thing that we do, in cases like this, we will often include that information to people who are members of the parent’s listserv that is available through the University. Again, if you’re looking for information that is going out and public announcements, and you’re not a part of that listserv, we would love to make you part of that. We can help you figure out how to sign up for that.

In terms of sharing information with a particular college about a student, it is always a fine line between sharing information that is appropriate to help people, versus sharing information about families that is private. Again, every situation is a little bit different and again we welcome your feedback. But please know that our intent is not to try and hide information from you or not share, our intent is to try and provide information in a limited way so that we are also able to respect the family who is grieving as they go through something that is horrible. Again, all feedback is helpful.

The other piece I’ll say is that we try to reach out to students if we think they have been personally impacted by the death of another student. But we don’t know about all of those cases. So if you’re a parent out there or a student on the line, and you want to talk to somebody further about ways to get some help or ways to get some support, please let us know. We are interested in making sure that people get to the right places and feel that they have the support that they need. Sometimes the hardest thing is to ask for help, again you need to know that all of us on the line here are committed to doing that. If you let us know, we’ll reach out.

Cassie Gerhardt: We’ve reached that point where we still have time left, and we’re happy to answer questions, but we’re running out of questions. So, if you have other questions, please feel free to submit them.

I did see the follow-up to Dr. Halgren’s comments about a parent who is on any of the listservs and blogs. In the past, we have not necessarily – and I need to update Dr. Halgren as my supervisor and clarify expectations – we have not necessarily forwarded notices of student deaths to the parents’ listserv.

So if we should do that going forward, we certainly can.

I should also state that when that notice is shared with campus, the circumstances surrounding the death are not included. I think what happens as communities converse, people find out and maybe share some information. And so it’s shared through some informal means of communication.

But we can also do better in sharing those notices with our parents’ listserv. So my apologies for not forwarding that.

Cara Halgren: Thanks, Cassie.

Cassie Gerhardt: I will give it another minute for questions. I do want to say thanks. Many of you have submitted thank yous to us for the work that we have done. Please know we appreciate those. Those are kind comments.

I also want to go back to what people said: we know that our students have been very resilient. And this has been a year of accomplishment for them.

We also know they couldn’t have done it without the support of parents and family members back home, who are taking calls and texts and sent care packages, and maybe navigated them through a quarantine or an isolation or a search for where they could get a COVID vaccine or helped increase the wi-fi network at their apartment complex or whatever the case may be.

This was a village that worked together this year of campus faculty, staff, our students, and family and parents.

So we just really want to thank you all as well for everything that you’ve done to support your students, because it truly does take all of us working in partnership to support our students.

Some more thank yous coming in; we do appreciate those.

I will also say in case we don’t get other questions or you have questions, please know once again, if you want to email me, it’s cassie.gerhardt@und.edu.

I will either answer your questions or get them to my colleagues.

Again, send me your parking questions. I will gladly send them to Jed and our colleague Mike Pieper where appropriate response. I don’t go near the parking questions for anything, but I know Jed and Mike would love to answer those, so feel free to send them my way.

Troy, as we think to move-out coming in the not-too-distant future, do you want to just update everybody on plans for the move-out process in the coming days and weeks?

Troy Noeldner: The specific question was, are there any limitations as far as two-hour move-out window, as we did last spring? At this point, we haven’t implemented any limitations on time. We just ask that students and their families to help us in respecting the social distancing, as well as just trying not to create long lines.

The faster we can get people moving out and get their stuff transitioned out of the building will create a safer environment for everyone. But no, there is not a specific two-hour limit this year.

Cassie Gerhardt: Troy, there’s another question about move-in for summer? I’m assuming that is communicated directly to the students who are with us this spring and then transitioning to summer housing?

Troy Noeldner: Is it a specific question about where to move in?

Cassie Gerhardt: It’s a question about how is move out for this semester and then move in for the summer is being handled. So just the move-in for the summer piece.

Troy Noeldner: For move-in for the summer, the numbers are not as much as what we would have in the fall semester, and so we don’t have any specific distancing precautions put in place. So students will get information about their move in time or their move in process in their email when they get their assignments.

If you have questions, I would just contact us directly, and we can go through them one by one with people.

Cassie Gerhardt: Thanks, Troy.

I will do a last call for questions. We did get a couple of thank yous from students. So thank you to the students who are with us tonight, probably wrapping up projects for the spring semester, getting ready for finals. Thanks for your kind words as well.

We can’t wait to see you in person this fall.

Troy and Cara, here’s one for you. The question is, how come some of the halls are being closed for the fall semester?

Cara Halgren: There is a great Grand Forks Herald article out there right now that talks about some things that we are hoping to do with our residence halls over the next year.

We are looking at the possibility of taking down West Hall and McVey Hall and renovating Brannon Hall, which means that we are not using those halls for the next year.

This isn’t final yet, but this is our hope. So we hope to have some more information for you real soon. But that’s why some of those spaces aren’t available for fall.

President Armacost: Dr. Halgren, you said we’re taking down McVey and West. Are we just taking them down?

Cara Halgren: Good point, President Armacost. We’re taking them down, and we’re building something bigger and better. So we are excited about creating new housing spaces for our students that they will be excited about. So again, more information to come.

Cassie Gerhardt: I have not seen another question. And so, this is the point, President Armacost, where I’m going to turn it over to you for some final comments.

President Armacost: Great. Well, thank you. And let me thank everybody for tuning in this evening.

Again, if you have follow-up questions or things we just didn’t get to, please do write in and we’ll get to the answers as quickly as possible.

This is the end of my first full academic year on campus. And it’s just been a joy working with these great colleagues that you see on the screen.

But the most important thing are the great students that we have. I’m always amazed when I walk around campus and I just engage with with our students, how kind they are, how hard working they are there. They’re going to be great leaders for for our society.

They’re going to do some wonderful things after they graduate from UND.

Family members, you should be proud of what you’ve done. You got them ready to bring them into this college environment. We’ve done a lot here to further develop them, to educate them, to give them opportunities to grow.

And you should be really proud — parents, family members, grandparents, aunts, uncles, whoever is on tonight.

You’ve done great work, and we know that these students are going to go do great things.

With that, let me sign off and wish everybody a great spring. Happy Commencement Day coming up on the 15th. And we really appreciate you dialing in tonight. We’ll talk soon!

Q&A

Following are answers to questions that were not answered live due to time constraints.

Since my son is coming back to Illinois for the summer, we decided to have him wait and get vaccinated when he gets home so that he can get both shots at the same location. Are you encouraging students to still get the first shot, even if they won’t be there to get their second shot?

With the semester so close to ending, that is a choice for your son and you.  We promote “get the first vaccine you can,” so if he wishes to receive the vaccine before going home, he is welcome to do so.  The main thing if he chooses to get the vaccine here, and the second one at home, he needs get the same vaccine for the second  dose as the first dose.  The vaccine available Friday  is the one-dose Johnson & Johnson.

If he were my son, I would give consideration to his schedule with finals coming up this next week. He may not feel well for a few days after getting vaccinated. Please ask him to call Student Health at 701-777-4500 if he would like to speak to someone about receiving the vaccine. Thank you for encouraging vaccination – whether at home or at UND.

FYI, I think Rosy mentioned that the vaccine clinic was today but it is actually May 5 and Friday, May 7. Info on the website: https://und.edu/covid-19/vaccine.html .

I would also like to hear the answer about parking costs/options, please.

The $190 parking pass is a surface lot pass. The more expensive option is for the parking ramp.

As an incoming transfer student in the fall, is Swanson Hall the only dorm that houses transfer students?

Transfer students can choose from any of the residence halls or campus apartments to live in. Swanson Hall is set up to be available for transfer students and other students after their first year. If you have additional questions about living locations please feel free to contact me at troy.noeldner@und.edu .

Thank you for the amazing work this year. Can you clarify one addition around move out? Are we limited to a two-hour move out window as it was last spring?

No. We have not initiated a time limit at this time. We would just ask that students and families continue to be mindful of social distancing and continue to wear face masks where appropriate.

Thank you! You’re all awesome.

Thank you for putting the health of students and staff first. We appreciate all of your coordination and support throughout this academic year!