Welcoming NJIT Community Back

NJIT Community Members,

Based on Governor Murphy’s recent executive order, NJIT is prepared to welcome students back to campus on September 1st. This means residence halls will be open at reduced capacity, and indoor dining will be permitted at reduced capacity with strict adherence to social distancing rules. It also means labs and courses designated as “converged” will begin meeting in the classroom but with strict adherence to all safety standards. The following outline some of the guidelines put in place for instructional spaces:

• All students, faculty, and staff must wear face coverings in classrooms and in any common campus areas where people congregate. 
• Face coverings with exhalation valves or vents are not effective and therefore not acceptable. 
• A face shield may be added to a face covering for additional protection but is not considered an effective alternative.
• Instructors may ask students who are out of compliance with the face covering requirement to leave class and attend remotely. Repeat infractions or uncooperative individuals should be reported to the Dean of Students office and/or Public Safety.
• Plexiglass screens will be available in classrooms to assist faculty in placing a physical barrier, as an engineering control, between them and their students.
• Students always must use the designated seats for that class period (red or blue), and classrooms will be cleaned before any seat is reused to ensure students always sit at a clean desk.
• Disinfecting wipes and/or sprays will be available in classrooms and teaching labs for anyone who wishes to wipe down their desk or chair.
• Initial supplies of disinfecting wipes and/or sprays for departmental offices have been provided with the expectation that restocking orders being placed by respective departments through Highlander eMerchant.

These and many other measures have been implemented to ensure the health and safety of our students, faculty, and staff. However, we understand that despite our best efforts, positive cases of COVID-19 may occur. Our Recovery Steering Committee has therefore established thresholds at which modifications to campus operations will be considered. As an example, if a student or faculty member who attended class in person tests positive for COVID-19, the entire class will move online for 14 days from the last time the individual attended class in person. Furthermore, if COVID rates in the state or county rise to levels identified by the CDC as high, the university will move all operations online until rates return to a safe level. A full list of considerations for modified campus operations can be viewed here.

We are committed to your safety and will move university operations online immediately if needed to protect students and staff. Throughout the semester, we will monitor the health of our campus community through initial and recurring testing; wastewater, surface, and air quality monitoring; and follow-up viral testing. All NJIT community members should already have received information about initial COVID-19 testing. As the Pandemic Recover Plan continues to evolve, we are examining the feasibility of surveillance “pooled” testing with our healthcare partners. These tests will help tell us if there is any spread of infection on campus. Additionally, NJIT has created a dashboard on its pandemic recovery web page to track the number of COVID cases reported by individuals who have visited campus. At the time of this message, our baseline testing has not yielded a positive test result for anyone on campus. The cases reflected on the dashboard are from last spring. We did receive one positive test result from a student, but they were asked to stay at home until they were cleared by a medical professional. 

The university also has implemented a robust plan, including the Johns Hopkins training, for contact tracing that will allow us to contact all positive cases on campus and identify people who should be tested because they may have been exposed. We will use all data available to us for the purposes of contact tracing to assist in quickly identifying and stopping potential outbreaks.

We look forward to seeing you on September 1st. In the meantime, we remind everyone that protecting the health of the NJIT community is a shared responsibility. We all must be committed to doing our part, most importantly by complying with the rules and guidelines described on our Pandemic Recovery website, taking the online training that has been disseminated, following the signs posted throughout campus, and using good judgment during our time on and off-campus. Additionally, we encourage you to sign up for the NJIT Campus Wide Notification system to be sure you receive emergency communications.

Sincerely,

Andrew P. Christ, PE
Senior Vice President, Real Estate Development and Capital Operations