Academic Council hears update on COVID-19 policies in first meeting of year

Academic Council heard an update about Duke’s COVID-19 protocols in its Thursday meeting, the first of the academic year.

Professor of Biology Steven Haase; Carol Epling, assistant professor in family medicine and community health; and Paul Grantham, assistant vice president for communication services, presented the COVID-19 update to the Council.

According to Haase, national trends have indicated a plateau in the number of cases. Throughout the summer, student and faculty cases also remained at a steady level. There was a boost in the number of cases during the move-in period for undergraduate students and during the two weeks of classes. 

Haase said that despite the boost, this was at the “low end of what we were seeing at the end of the semester last spring.” 

Now the University is back to a low and steady stream of faculty and student cases, with Haase noting that the majority of cases come from the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants.

Duke still plans to remove its mask requirement in classes once Durham stays in the medium risk category for COVID-19 for two consecutive weeks. Durham entered the medium risk category last week, and if it remains that way until the weekly CDC update on Sept. 22, the University’s mask requirement will be removed, Grantham said.

However, even after the classroom mask mandate has been lifted, faculty can establish mask requirements in their individual classes, Grantham said.

“We think it's important to include some flexibility for faculty in the classroom,” he said. “So if you want to require masking … you can do that.”

Epling also encouraged members of the University community—including faculty—to get a flu vaccine, even though they are not mandated this year. 

Return to campus

After the main presentation, Provost Sally Kornbluth urged faculty to “come back to campus.”

“I understand that working from home can be really convenient,” Kornbluth said. “I just hope that we can start populating the campus for our students.”

Erika Weinthal, professor of environmental policy and public policy and chair of the Academic Council, echoed Kornbluth’s sentiment, claiming that some faculty felt that participation in Council meetings on Zoom leads to decreased levels of engagement during meetings.

“We’re trying to encourage more in-person attendance,” Weinthal said. “As we move to returning to a fully in person, residential campus it’s really critical to the building of our community at Duke.”

Faculty asked to keep remote attendance a regular option for governance meetings at an Arts & Sciences Council meeting on Sept. 8.

In other business

The Executive Committee of the Council is revising the Faculty Handbook, and aims to have a draft ready for the Council’s consideration and approval this spring.

The Council approved new members of the Faculty Hearing Committee. The FHC has jurisdiction to consider procedural issues relating to complaints from faculty regarding issues including academic freedom and tenure, misconduct, discrimination and harassment.

The new members of the FHC are William Mayew, Martin L. Black Jr. distinguished professor of business administration; Joseph Blocher, Lanty L. Smith ’67 professor of law; Geraldine Dawson, William Cleland distinguished professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences; Adrienne Stiff-Roberts, Jeffrey N. Vinik professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Professor of Pathology Herman Ford Staats.

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