Dear fellow Civil and Environmental Engineering students,
The College of Engineering Student Advisory Council (COESAC) has received a great deal of feedback about students’ experiences as a result of the impacts of COVID. We appreciate all of the input and ask you to continue to reach out to us or our department SAC so that we can better support each other. By now, we have all seen President Cauce’s email about the University’s plan to return primarily to in-person instruction. As students, we have all experienced how challenging the past two years have been; it is important that we work together as learners navigating our education during a global pandemic and partner with our instructors to advocate for our needs.
With the return to in-person instruction announcement by President Cauce, we wanted to make sure that students know what they can and cannot expect from your UW instructors. In short, professors should be clear about their sick policy and you should not feel pressured to attend class in person if you are ill or need to isolate/quarantine due to COVID. There should be clear and fair expectations set by your professor about what to do if you are sick, how the absence will be treated, and how you can achieve the learning outcomes for the course.
Additionally, we want students to know what to do if they become ill or have a COVID exposure by highlighting the University’s updated COVID Quarantine and Isolation page and flowchart. For everyone’s protection, please do not go to class if you aresymptomatic, even if you think “it’s not COVID.” Please isolate, get tested, and notify your professors that you will be absent until you test negative or complete your period of isolation if you test positive. Activate/install WA Notify on your phone ASAP, the UW COVID EH&S team relies on it for support with contact tracing and close contact notifications.
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