Dear Campus Community,
Creighton University will begin a stepwise approach for implementing a ramp-up of research activities on campus beginning Monday, June 15. Principal investigators approved to return to campus were notified this morning.
To ensure the health and safety of our campus community, we will open a COVID-19 Screening Station in the atrium of the Hixson-Lied Science Building beginning next Monday, June 15, to screen University faculty, postdoctoral fellows, technicians and graduate students who have been approved to return to campus beginning on this date to continue their research activities and education.
The screening station is being coordinated by Creighton’s Student Health Education and Compliance Office, and will be open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Those approved to return to campus are required to visit the screening station daily between these hours.
This is part of a phased approach to gradually re-establish access to our research facilities to allow our faculty, students and other researchers to resume their scholarly work. This process has been approved by Creighton’s Critical Incident Response Team, and adheres to national, state and local public health guidelines.
Under this plan, undergraduate students requiring access to Creighton laboratories, whose names were previously submitted and approved, will begin on Monday, June 22. They, too, will be required to use the COVID-19 Screening Station in the atrium of the Hixson-Lied Science Building. High school students and college students from other universities, however, are not approved to engage in summer research on the Creighton campus.
Those returning to campus will be required to complete a COVID-19 screening survey and take daily temperature checks. Admittance to campus will be based on the survey results and temperature readings. Individuals with temperatures of 100.4 degrees or higher will not be allowed to remain on campus.
Survey questions will address if individuals have tested positive for COVID-19 or are symptomatic, been in contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 or is symptomatic, or traveled outside the United States in the last 30 days.
Those returning to campus must wear a face covering or other personal protective equipment (PPE) while in the laboratory or other public spaces, agree to follow the Creighton COVID-19 Community Standards, and complete daily screenings coordinated by Student Health Education and Compliance. Individuals will be migrated into a daily screening app in the near future.
Additional requests for faculty to return to campus to engage in research should be submitted to CIRT through the COVID-19 Campus Access Request Form. Information on how to access and complete the form can be found in this step-by-step guide.
Tom Murray, PhD
Provost
