UH classes remain online for one more week

Spring 2022 courses that were shifted online for the first two weeks of the semester at the 10-campus University of Hawaiʻi system will remain online for one more week, according to a letter shared today with students, faculty and staff.

UH President David Lassner wrote in the letter that a return to originally scheduled course delivery mode (in-person or hybrid) will resume on Monday, Jan. 31, 2022.

On Dec. 28, UH announced that many courses were moved online because of the surge in COVID-19 cases due to the omicron variant.

“While we are cautiously optimistic that COVID-19 hospitalizations in Hawaiʻi are starting to plateau, we experienced the highest case count of the pandemic today, and believe that it is prudent to allow the online shift to continue for one extra week. We do not expect to revisit the Jan. 31 restart date, which is consistent with many other higher education institutions,” Lassner wrote.

All classes presently meeting in-person should continue to do so, according to the letter.

“Faculty who are teaching classes online now that are scheduled to meet in person can opt to begin in-person instruction on January 24, with no formal approval required. However, these faculty need to contact their students as soon as possible to provide information about how students who cannot attend class or may have delayed their return to campus can participate,” according to Lassner’s letter.

 UH’s 10 campuses have extremely high vaccination rates among students and employees, which can now be tracked on the UH COVID-19 dashboards. According to the dashboard, 92% of the 279 employees at UH Maui College are vaccinated; and 99.8% of the 641 students at UHMC are fully vaccinated or exempted.

The requirements for vaccination, will soon include booster shots for future semesters, or regular testing for those with approved exemptions, according to Lassner. UH COVID-19 guidelines include mandatory face masks when indoors and daily health screenings via the LumiSight UH app.

“We have persevered through this unprecedented health crisis for nearly two years now. We can now foresee moving past COVID-19 as a university-wide health crisis in 2022. We have learned through this pandemic, and no doubt more lessons are ahead. But we can finally look forward to the time in our near future where we can really be together again,” Lassner wrote.