Thursday 17 March 2022 

Returning to campus 

Kia ora 

Thank you all for continuing to do what you can to reduce the spread of Omicron in our community, by working remotely and by adhering to the CPF Red tertiary education guidelines while on campus. To those of you currently affected by Covid-19, or with whānau who are unwell, my best wishes for a speedy recovery.

A staggered return to campus 

As we anticipate the end of the peak of the current Omicron outbreak, we are looking forward to opening our campuses once again. 

I know many of you are eagerly awaiting a return, while others are more cautious. We are balancing learner success and the campus experience that they signed up for with health and safety, and while we’ve taken a conservative approach to protect our staff and students, we do want to open our campuses up when it is safe to do so. 

This week, the ELT has agreed on when we will return to campus. Note these decisions all rely on a continued reduction in daily cases, and may be reviewed should the situation change.

1. Support teams may resume working on campus from Monday 04 April, working within our Flexible Working Guidelines. There may only be a small number of teams wishing to start back on this date and we're allowing for different levels of eagerness and caution after such a long time away from campus. When your team is ready to head back onsite, it’s important to plan with your manager to reduce the risk of Covid-19 spreading through the team. For example, splitting the team into ‘bubbles’ and scheduling the days each team member will be on campus. This planning is at the discretion of each team's manager and members so each team may have a different plan. Managers, please liaise with your DCE to ensure there is awareness and coordination across teams.
    

2. Academic staff and students can return from Tuesday 26 April (after Anzac day), or Monday 02 May (after the mid-semester break) for teaching and learning activity – whichever is relevant for the course. Our expectation is for all courses to start reverting to their accredited delivery mode after this date. For most courses this means on-campus teaching and learning, maintaining some online and blended activity to help manage capacity limits based on CPF Red 1-metre spacing requirements. Our return to teaching on-campus can be staggered over a week or so as appropriate to help our teachers, support teams and students adjust. For non-teaching mahi, academic staff can return earlier if required, following the support teams guidance above. Heads of School and Academic Programme Managers will work with academic staff to plan for their School.  

We are looking forward to seeing you all back on campus so we can teach and work kanohi-ki-te-kanohi, and enjoy our wonderful campus environment once again.  

As always, if you have any concerns around returning to campus or any other aspect of your work, please talk with your manager, or explore some of the options that Chris Hutton shared last week.  

Please also check the Nest Covid-19 page for updates on our current response and your responsibilities in reporting when you have Covid-19 or are a household contact. 

I’ll be back in touch closer to the date to confirm our return to campus. 

Ngā mihi 

Gus Gilmore 
Chief Executive