May 14, Operational Update
May 14, 2020 Update (View on YouTube)
Transcript:
President Feinstein (00:00):
Well, good morning, everybody. It's Thursday, May 14th, and this is our new weekly
operational status update report. This new format marks the transition from our spring
response to COVID to our planning for return in the fall semester. These calls will
provide updates and share critical decisions that are made affecting fall instruction,
operations and our budget.
President Feinstein (00:25):
And our activity over the summer will be led by three main groups. The first group
is a reentry task force led by Provost Mark Anderson and Vice President for Student
Affairs Katrina Rodriguez. And they'll be focused on scenario planning for fall instruction
and to talk about student life. There'll also be a logistics working group headed
by Associate Vice President for Administration Blaine Nickeson to assist the reentry
task force in navigating details associated with information technology, space and
also university operations. And there's also a financial impacts task force, which
is cochaired by myself and Senior Vice President and CFO Michelle Quinn. Membership
is composed primarily of the President's Leadership Council with additional representation
from the faculty and student body. And we're going to assess the financial impacts
of COVID in fiscal '21, and also discuss and develop strategies to address them.
President Feinstein (01:25):
So, as cochair of the financial impacts task force, I can give a brief report on the
financial outlook that we have right now. So on Tuesday, the state released a special
revenue forecast for fiscal '21 projecting about a $3 billion shortfall, actually
a little bit more than that. And this is about 10% of the total state budget and almost
25% of the $13 billion general fund. Prior to the forecast, the joint budget committee
had already began meeting to review budget balancing measures, and they spent time
on a higher education budget balancing discussion, and the JBC voted to reverse the
7% increase to higher education. If I recall, I spoke earlier in the year about Governor
Polis' 2.5% proposal, the work that we did to increase that to 7%, and we're on track
for a 7% increase in the budget through February.
President Feinstein (02:21):
So in light of the recent revenue forecast, it is very likely that the JBC will take
further action that will result in cuts to higher education funding. The $18.5 million
revenue loss scenario that we discussed with the Board of Trustees in April, it did
include an assumption of a 10% state funding reduction. And hopefully that will hold.
President Feinstein (02:43):
I'm continue to work with other Colorado CEOs and the Joint Budget Committee to lobby
for higher education funding, whether it be from state resources or the federal coronavirus
relief fund money associated and allocated to Colorado. I've actually called for the
CEOs, CFOs and lobbyists to meet this weekend, to talk about the impact of possible
additional reductions by the JBC. So I'm now going to turn over the conversation to
Dan Maxey, our chief of staff, to moderate our other reports. Dan?
Dan Maxey (03:16):
Thank you, President Feinstein, and I want to join Andy in thanking everyone who's
joining us for these updates as we transition our response from a response to the
pandemic in the spring to our planning for the fall semester. Although we are rolling
these updates back to a weekly report, there's still a significant amount of work
being done. And this weekly update will summarize all of the activity that's happening
among the task forces and the cabinet, along with reports on specific decisions that
we're making regarding our fall operations.
Dan Maxey (03:47):
The cabinet has transitioned, beginning this week, to Monday and Wednesday meetings,
and we'll plan to have reports on decisions that are made as I noted from those Monday
and Wednesday meetings on this Thursday call. The Student Affairs portion of the task
force meets today, and the Academic Affairs portion convenes tomorrow. As Andy mentioned,
our financial impacts task force also met this past Tuesday. Much as we did in the
spring, these calls are being recorded and will be uploaded around midday each Thursday,
and will be available on the UNC coronavirus website, which is www.unco.edu/coronavirus.
Dan Maxey (04:28):
We have a little bit of a change in our lineup with the change in the format for these
calls. We will still begin our weekly calls with Associate Vice President Blaine Nickeson
to give us a brief report on the current state of affairs here in Colorado, and the
latest guidance that we're receiving from federal, state, local, and public health
officials. But we will then transition to Vice President for Student Affairs Katrina
Rodriguez and Provost Mark Anderson for reports from the task force. So with that,
I will start off with Blaine Nickeson.
Blaine Nickeson (05:02):
Thanks Dan. Good morning, everybody. Good to see you. Earlier this week, the governor
shared a decision-making timeline where he put some parameters around some of the
more pressing decisions that we're all waiting for. A couple of the key milestones
will come on May 25th, where a decision will be made about limited restaurant reopenings
and summer camps. A decision of any kind of modifications of the safer at home guidance
will come "after June 1st," so we'll be waiting for that.
Blaine Nickeson (05:32):
The date of the 25th allows for a little over two weeks to pass since the lifting
of the stay at home order in all of the individual counties or cities around the area.
And we should have a good idea about how people's behavior has changed and be able
to see it via case counts and hospitalization numbers.
Blaine Nickeson (05:51):
On top of their regular reporting for positive COVID tests, the states also started
reporting on serology or more commonly known as antibody testing data. This is the
testing that it doesn't look to see if you currently have COVID-19. It looks to see
if you have antibodies, which means that you had COVID-19 at some time in the past,
and you may have some immunity to it as we move forward in the future. They've been
doing about 1200 tests per day, but it's showing a lower positive rate than we thought
we might see. Right now it's only about 7% positive. That indicates a pretty low percentage
of the population that has had COVID. Especially since those seeking out this serology
testing are most likely those that had some kind of unexplained illness earlier this
year. And so they really want to know, "Did I have COVID back in February or January?"
Blaine Nickeson (06:44):
Also, it changed the data reporting that CDPHE, Colorado Department of Public Health
and Environment, is doing. They added a new hospital data point that shows the number
of new daily admissions for COVID-19. That's going to be really helpful as we move
forward to see if hospitalizations are spiking. Over the last week, it's been about
50 people a day that have been admitted to inpatient care for COVID.
Blaine Nickeson (07:06):
Today, UNCs community drive-through testing site in partnership with King Soopers
kicks off in about an hour, a little over an hour here. It'll be in the parking lot
west of Candelaria Hall. It doesn't require a doctor's note, but folks do have to
preregister through KrogerHealth.com. We have the capacity to do about 330 tests per
day, and we really want to utilize that full capacity. So we want to make sure that
all of the community in Greeley and Weld County knows about this great resource that
we're lucky to be able to host on campus. The governor stated a desire to be doing
about 8,500 tests per day by the end of the month, but right now we're closer to 4,000
per day. So bringing these kind of capacities online is going to be really helpful.
Blaine Nickeson (07:53):
For just a brief look at the latest data, the state has identified over 20,000 positive
cases. Our week over week growth was about 15%, but compared to the prior week over
week from August 30th... Or I'm sorry, August. Wow. What year is it? From April 30th
to May 7th, that growth was about 21%. So again, we're at 15 as opposed to 21% the
week prior, which is good, especially considering that there's been an increase in
testing capacity over that period of time. Locally, when you look at Weld County specifically,
last week, we saw cases grow by about 12% compared to 17% the week before. So those
are the updates that I have this morning, Dan, and I'm happy to turn it back over
to you.
Dan Maxey (08:39):
Great, thank you, Blaine. If it's August, it's time for the fall to start, and I'm
not ready for it quite yet. We just have to-
President Feinstein (08:45):
It will be here soon enough.
Blaine Nickeson (08:47):
I feel like I've been home for a long time, but not that long.
Dan Maxey (08:52):
Right. Next we'll turn things over to Vice President for Student Affairs Katrina Rodriguez
and Provost Mark Anderson. And I understand that Katrina is going to lead our report
this morning on some of the work that will begin this week in the Thursday and Friday
meetings for the task force. Katrina.
Katrina Rodriguez (09:10):
Thank you so much, Dan. Hi everybody. Today, we launched the Division of Student Affairs
reentry task force. This afternoon, we'll be meeting weekly. And so we're excited
to get the group going. We've got about 20 folks on campus who will be joining our
group. We are excited to have a number of students as well. So we certainly want to
have student input as we look at our reentry. We understand this is a very complex
process, looking at our residential students in terms of their housing and dining,
campus engagement, student engagement and what the new normal is going to look like
for the fall. And then, our goal too, is to really look at promising practices with
our professional associations and across the country, what other institutions are
also doing, and to really recommend some data-based proposals that will allow campus
to feel inspired by that we're really utilizing strategy process protocols for a safe
return to campus.
Katrina Rodriguez (10:24):
We certainly will be looking at an array of options for the fall. We know that we
are still... We want to follow local state and federal guidelines. And so as those
recommendations and or orders from the governor, we will be following those. So we'll
have a look at multifaceted approaches so that we can shift when we know something
more solidly as the weeks come together here.
Katrina Rodriguez (10:55):
So I think some of the things that we are looking at initially, certainly we want
to provide some, a lot of time to, again, our residential campus, because we know
that that's where we have a lot of things to consider. We also know that our students,
family, and support people are very interested in how we will operationalize our housing
and dining.
Katrina Rodriguez (11:23):
Being involved in a call last night of family... Losing my thought here. An open house
with our families last night, as well as knowing that Housing open house that happened
on Monday, there were a lot of questions about how we will go forward. So that will
probably want to be one of our prime introductory discussions, so that we can get
that one rolling. So I'm excited to see where this goes. It's, while complex, I think
also somewhat stimulating to be in this planning mode to take a look at all of those
pieces. And then Mark, I will turn it over to you.
Mark Anderson (12:11):
Thank you, Katrina. Academic Affairs is the reentry portion of the task force focused
on academic affairs. We'll meet Friday. I think it's important to recognize that although
we have two subgroups, we will be meeting collaboratively. We'll have a steering committee,
and we're going to be bringing people from both groups into the others as needed.
Mark Anderson (12:33):
Katrina talked a little bit about housing and the on-campus student experience. We
can't separate that from the academic experience. And so the Academic Affairs task
force is really going to be looking at primarily the academic experience, how classes
will be taught, how students will be able to interact in those classes. Some students
at the open house last night were, or families were expressing concerns about safety
and where safety and health of our community is of utmost concern for both students,
staff, and or for all students, staff and faculty. We'll be looking at how the modalities
of course delivery and recognizing that we need to have some level of variability
to meet the needs of our community.
Mark Anderson (13:24):
We'll also be looking at infrastructure, how we'll be using classrooms in a way that
respects and honors the social distancing and public health. And so we have a broad
representation of primarily faculty on the Academic Affairs task force, but we'll
be bringing in people from IT, Facilities. And we'll be asking students from the Student
Affairs portion to also participate as well. I'll be attending the Student Affairs
meetings. Katrina will be attending the Academic Affairs meetings. And we hope to
have a lot of cross pollination if you will, by looking at the holistic student experience
and how we can make sure that the student and academic experience is a robust one
that meets the needs of our community. So with that, I'll turn it back to you, Dan.
Dan Maxey (14:23):
Great, thank you, Katrina and Mark for those reports. And we'll look forward to updates
on the task force activity in the coming weeks. I want to stress that in addition
to these reports, if we have the need to bring in additional presenters and panelists
to give reports on some of the specific areas of our planning and preparations for
the fall, we'll be prepared to do that. But this is our daily structure. And with
that, I'll turn it over to President Feinstein for some closing remarks.
President Feinstein (14:53):
Thanks, Dan, and thanks to everybody for being on the call today. And as always, stay
safe, be healthy, and we'll see you here again next Thursday at 9:00 AM. Take care,
everybody.
