24 Mar Working together in a time of crisis
Presidents and campus communities:
I don’t think I’ve ever been so proud of you all as today. We’ve already come through a lot together in the past few turbulent weeks and I just wanted to say that your incredible energy and courage to continue to provide quality instruction to our students has been remarkable.
Of course, our priority is the health, safety and well-being of all our people, and today our actions speak louder than words. Based on what we’re seeing from here in Bismarck, this may be the “end of the beginning”, but clearly much will be asked of all of us going forward. Pay attention to what is happening in New York, for example – in a period of a few short weeks they now have the highest number of cases of COVID19 in the US.
This is deadly serious business as you can see, in China, Europe, and now here at home.
In North Dakota, we still have a brief period to continue to prepare and adjust planning as testing ramps up and we have to deal with our own COVID19 related issues. That said in higher education we have established a “COVID19 NDUS working group” to handle issues that need system and board attention and it is functioning well. ALL the North Dakota institutions of higher education are working together.
People’s safety is the highest priority and our key words are accommodating and flexibility. Our faculty will work directly with their students to ensure completion of course work and final exams. Our administrators are working with staff to ensure the campus community continues to support our student services in safe and necessary ways.
The good news is these things run in cycles and as Dr. Josh Wynne said in his recent article if we put the effort in now, and do the things we should, then six months from now we’ll look back and say “we did all we could”. Short term pain for long term gain.
The stakes are high. It’s about nothing less than the future of North Dakota and her people.
So thank you to every single person working to ensure the health, safety and well-being of everyone in the North Dakota University System and in all of Higher Education in the State of North Dakota.