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We’re getting ready for spring semester. Your health and safety are important to us.

Campus leadership has worked collaboratively with faculty representatives and consulted with public health officials and medical experts to develop a comprehensive set of guidelines to help protect the health and safety of our community. Here is the latest information and FAQs for fall semester.

Your Health and Wellness

To help our campus community remain healthy during the semester, please review this information about COVID-19 symptoms and this step-by-step guide for faculty who suspect they may have been infected.

  • Please review our detailed protocol for faculty and staff who test positive for the virus. The key element is to inform your supervisor by phone and not return to campus until you obtain a return to work certification from a healthcare provider.
  • Faculty are responsible for checking their temperature daily and monitoring their personal health. 
  • Face coverings or masks are required in all classrooms and teaching/research labs, in addition to all public spaces on campus where social distancing cannot be maintained or if otherwise required by federal, state or local public health orders. 
  • Please watch this video to better understand how the protocols and policies we have implemented will keep you safe and your exposure limited. These protocols will ensure that in the event there are positive cases of your students, your risk of being considered a close contact by CDC definition, will remain slim and should cause no disruption to your course schedules.

Teaching and Research

  • The key element for classroom instruction is flexibility. Be sure to be ready to teach courses in in-person, online and hybrid formats whenever possible.
  • The vital opportunity for students to engage with faculty outside of regularly scheduled instructional hours, either virtually or in person by mutual agreement, must be maintained.
  • Instructors are also strongly encouraged to assign seating in face-to-face classes to facilitate contact tracing should a student or faculty member become ill.
  • Reasonable accommodations will be granted in accordance with Collected Rules and Regulations Section 600.080, Policy Related to Employees with Disabilities, and may include alternative work schedule or location, extension of telework or enhanced safety measures.
  • Details on these and many other important factors are available in the Fall Academic Planning Guide 2020 [pdf].
  • The overriding guiding principle for research activity is to protect the emotional as well as physical health and safety of our workforce, clinical patients and human research subjects.
  • We will continue to limit the number of researchers permitted to work in rooms and buildings. In some cases, we will limit the duration of time that researchers can work in the same room, even with physical distancing.
  • Learn more about research adaptations in Return to Research Operations 2020 [pdf].
  • UM System Human Resources has a list of policies and guidance about Working Through COVID-19.  

Classroom and Office Regulations, Recommendations and Etiquette

  • Information on policies regarding masks, distancing and personal health monitoring is available on the Health and Safety page.
  • Information on pandemic-related time-off policies, child-care issues and isolation/quarantine procedures can be found in the UM System Human Resources policies relating to the pandemic.
  • If you are in a supervisory position, please review the UM System Human Resources Guide for Supervisors.

Faculty FAQ

You may have many questions that are not addressed in the current set of FAQs. Please send your questions to telltheprovost@umkc.edu, and we will obtain answers and add them to this list as appropriate. Information about final exams and grading issues will be provided as we get closer to finals week.

All university-related non-essential international and domestic travel is suspended until further notice. This includes travel connected to university activities or programs for all faculty, staff and students, whether that travel is funded by the university, an external grant, or any other sources. Requests to engage in essential travel must be approved by deans, vice chancellors or vice provosts and may require quarantine and/or negative COVID test results prior to returning to campus.

If a student contacts you with concerns about attending classes and requests accommodations, please direct them to Student Disability Services (816-235-5612) and then work closely with that office and with our Instructional Design and Technology team to provide the accommodations needed.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) states that all public spaces must be accessible to all users. This includes digital spaces. As an online instructor, you must make every effort to ensure your course materials can be used by all students, including those who might have disabilities. Here is a resource guide from UM System.