Faculty Return to Campus COVID-19 FAQ

As of March 1, 2022, the university will no longer require regular rapid testing or vaccine declarations except as needed to comply with the relevant Public Health Orders such as in health settings. Please refer to the February 28 UBC Broadcast message for more information.

No. This is a breach of privacy. We cannot request or collect personal health data from our classes. 

Events no longer require approval by an associate dean. Please review the UBC Ceremonies and Events COVID-19 Resources webpage.

Please contact Michelle Burchill, Allard Law Events Manager if you are organizing an event to avoid scheduling conflicts and for further guidance.

Quite a number of you are planning to have guest speakers in your classes participate via Zoom. While this is a great use of technology, please remember that it can take 20-30 minutes to set up and test a full hybrid set up. Depending on when your class is scheduled and what room you are in, you may have to rely on slightly lower tech audio options – for example students type questions in the chat rather than the presenter being able to hear them speaking from the audience, or you may need to repeat the questions to the speaker, etc. Please contact UBC IT/AV as soon as possible to discuss the options. 

The BC Centre for Disease Control’s Return to Campus Public Health Guidance (March 22, 2022) specifies that “post-secondary institutions are not responsible for contact tracing, and should not provide notifications to faculty, staff or students about potential or confirmed communicable diseases cases (including COVID19) unless requested to do so by the local Medical Health Officer.” Any members of our UBC community who may be experiencing COVID-19 symptoms are asked to follow the guidance of the BCCDC. The current guidance advises individuals who test positive to contact their own close contacts.  

A close contact is generally someone who has been near a person with COVID-19 for at least 15 minutes when health and safety measures (e.g., masks, distancing, physical barriers) were not in place or were insufficient. Based on the BCCDC guidelines, Allard Law in-person classroom and learning settings are not considered close-contact environments and are low risk. No notification will be sent by Allard Law unless deemed necessary by Public Health.

Private information about a person, including their health status, should not be shared without consent. See the fact sheet, Disclosing Personal Information for Health and Safety Reasons (PDF).

Students should be directed to follow the current Public Health guidance for individuals who test positive for COVID-19.

In addition, instructors should ensure that the student is provided with support as required to continue learning whilst unable to attend class (see the Allard Short Term Absence Policy).

Currently, any members of our UBC community who may be experiencing COVID-19 symptoms are asked to follow the guidance of the BCCDC. The current guidance advises individuals who test positive to contact their own close contacts.  

A close contact is generally someone who has been near a person with COVID-19 for at least 15 minutes when health and safety measures (e.g., masks, distancing, physical barriers) were not in place or were insufficient. Based on the BCCDC guidelines, Allard Law in-person classroom and learning settings are not considered close-contact environments and are low risk. No notification will be sent by Allard Law unless deemed necessary by Public Health. 

For more detail, see the answer above: "A STUDENT TELLS ME THEY HAVE COVID-19..." above.

If a student tells you they have tested positive for COVID-19, you may follow the points in the question above (A STUDENT TELLS ME THEY HAVE COVID-19 …).

Visit the BCCDC website to determine whether isolation or monitoring is the right approach. 

Please continue to monitor your symptoms and use the BC COVID-19 self-assessment tool to determine whether or not you need to get tested. 

Follow the directions from Public Health and/or the BC COVID-19 Self-Assessment Tool.  

As of Aug. 23, 2021, if vaccinated you would normally self-monitor rather than isolate and can thus continue teaching in person. 

If you need to self-isolate, please inform Associate Dean Isabel Grant (adaa@allard.ubc.ca) and follow the options in the Short-Term Absence Policy. 

If a faculty or staff member informs you that they have been confirmed to have COVID-19, these are the steps that you should take:

• With their consent, inform Catalina Policzer, Senior Manager, HR and Operations (policzer@allard.ubc.ca), who will inform Human Resources – Employee Relations (Director, Employee & Labour Relations) or Faculty Relations (Director, Faculty Relations), as appropriate.
• Please ask for their permission before sharing any information with their team, and then only do so on an as needed basis. 
• Ensure the faculty or staff member is provided with support as required.
• Follow all instructions from Public Health.

Masks are no longer required in UBC public indoor spaces, including Allard Hall. Please see the June 27, 2022 UBC Broadcast message for more information.

Start with an educative approach; remind them that every student is required to do a COVID-19 self-assessment before they come to campus each day. Coming in sick is a violation of the student code of conduct and you can ask them to leave. If they feel they are experiencing viral-like symptoms they should leave the class. 

In a broader sense, the way we are responding to sick people is no different than our approaches pre-pandemic; however, people certainly have a heightened sensitivity to it. Pre-pandemic, many students would come to class sick. We should do things to discourage this. For instance, make allowances for this in participation grades and record lectures or provide note takers.  

Just because someone coughs or sneezes does not automatically mean they are sick (e.g., chronic coughing not related to being sick), and these issues should be recognized. We should encourage students to come forward with these issues so you (i.e., the student and instructor only) can discuss them. If a student has identified a condition such as this to you as an instructor and others are indicating discomfort, you can find an opportunity to remind students that there are examples of, e.g., non-contagious cough, and that they should not assume that others are sick. 

No. This is a breach of privacy. You can ask the student if they feel they meet the standards of the daily personal health assessment, and encourage them to complete the health assessment if they have not done so. 

A student should hopefully never be put in this position. We should try to make it clear to students that we will – as we always have -- make concessions for illness.  Please remember that at Allard Law all requests for concessions are handled centrally. Tell the student to immediately contact Student Services. 

These types of situations are an unfortunate part of teaching every year. You’ll want to handle this fairly and consistently with the past.  

Tell the student to stay home. Ask them if they have notified their group members, if applicable. Ask the student to contact Student Services about concessions that allow the student to complete the assignments. An option is to have the group present, knowing that the part of the presentation will be missing. Tell these students that their grade will not be affected by this. If the concession is approved, have the student who can’t make it send you a video of their part of the presentation to assess. 

If these are symptoms that are common to you and you know they will disappear, you are fine. For instance, some people have a chronic cough/throat clearing caused by post nasal drip. This would be good to disclose to your class. Or you may have seasonal allergies that are recognizable to you as such. 

In the case that you actually feel sick, follow the instructions in the Short Term Absence Policy. 

You can ask students to pick an area of the classroom and sit there each day. Or ask them to fill the rows so no one has to push past others to the last empty seat. 

Please make sure that you finish your classes on time or even a little bit early. It is helpful to have everyone from the first class exit the room and the area around the doorway before the next group enters, and it will give the next instructor time to set up comfortably. If students want to chat with you after class, please move to the lounge or your office. 

If you want to hold a zoom or phone office hour, feel free to do so, but remember that students will be taking classes from within the building, and may not have any private space in which to meet with you. Please also provide a mechanism for students to meet with you in person. This can be by appointment rather than drop-in. The mask order applies to meetings with students in offices.