News

Local public health officials have confirmed today one case of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) in the city of Berkeley. The individual is not affiliated with the campus and, at this time, there is no obvious connection.

On Tuesday, March 3, Californians will head to the polls to vote in the state’s presidential primary elections as well as weigh in on a number of state and local ballot measures. We encourage everyone who is eligible to exercise their right to vote.

There have been a number of new and significant developments regarding the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), consequently we are writing to you today to share the latest information and guidance with you.

On November 1, 2018, we announced the creation of a new interdisciplinary division that we provisionally named the Division of Data Science and Information. After gathering valuable input from a wide range of stakeholders and reviewing nominations from across campus, we are excited to announce the permanent name: the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS).

News regarding the coronavirus (2019-nCoV) continues to evolve and we are writing today to keep you informed of the latest information from public health officials, governmental entities and others.

Update on the coronavirus (2019-nCoV), and campus response and preparedness efforts.

Spring 2020 final exam period (Monday, May 11 to Friday, May 15) falls during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. We would like to remind you of the campus policies that outline the rights and responsibilities of both faculty and students with respect to course conflicts and accommodations of all types.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) influenza activity is high across much of the United States. So far, influenza B/Victoria viruses have been reported more frequently than other influenza viruses this season, but this may be changing. It’s not too late to get protected! It is recommended that anyone over the age of 6 months get a flu shot, and especially people with chronic medical conditions are at high-risk for flu-related complications. Please see below for information about flu vaccinations at the Tang Center.

We are writing to welcome you back to campus for the Spring Semester of 2020 and to inform you of some positive new developments and activities on campus. These include implementation of an academic accommodations hub, a new policy for auditing classes, the celebration of 150 years of women at Berkeley, and announcements of town halls to gather your input and thoughts on instructional resilience and the search for the next president of the UC system.

Senate Bill.698, which goes into effect on January 1, 2020, allows employees to file a claim with the California Labor Commissioner if the University fails to issue wage or salary payments on time.

Frances Hellman has been reappointed as dean of the Division of Math & Physical Sciences (MPS) for a second five-year term, beginning January 1, 2020.

We write to inform you that PG&E is monitoring the weather in the Bay Area for a possible shutoff in selected areas on Wednesday and Thursday. While this situation is evolving and there is considerable uncertainty, we believe it is in the campus’s best interest to be prepared for the possibility of an outage.

UC Berkeley — together with UC San Francisco and the University of Washington — is launching the Weill Neurohub, thanks to a $106 million gift from the Weill Family Foundation.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has notified UC of its intent to strike. The 24-hour strike is planned for 12:00am through 11:59pm on Wednesday, November 13.

An update on Instructional Resilience Week and outlining the steps we will be taking to put the campus in a better position to weather power outages or other disruptions to instruction.

We are writing to urge our entire community to collaborate this week in creating and using a new approach for Berkeley to become much more resilient to power outages, air quality challenges, or other events that could disrupt ordinary instruction in the future. Accordingly, the Chancellor and Provost, in collaboration with the Academic Senate, are declaring the next week “Instructional Resilience Week.”

In order to be more resilient to campus-wide class disruptions, such as those occasioned by power outages, smoke from fires, or other possible events, we encourage instructors to creatively consider all options to make up for lost class time. Next week we will establish an administrative-senate joint instructional resilience working group to develop systematic plans and guidelines for this. Our goal will be to quickly learn to manage through these unpredictable situations with much improved resilience, offering students an instructional experience as close as possible to the originally-planned instructional experience, either during a crisis or just after normal operations resume.

We want to make sure that students and those staff who work with faculty and students are aware of how instructors are being guided relative to missed coursework from last week’s cancellation of classes.