February 8, 2021
Aloha,
As the new year takes off, the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa is fixing its gaze upon the start of the fall 2021 semester. Discussions and planning are well underway to prepare for a new academic year, one that we hope you will be a part of!
We are optimistic that the fall semester will continue with a healthy mix of in-person, hybrid and online instruction. This past year, we persevered by capitalizing on the extraordinary expertise and resilience of our campus ʻohana. We successfully shifted in a time of immense uncertainty and global impact. While the vast majority of instruction this spring semester remains online, we are hopeful that the fall will bring a slight increase of in-person classes. We remain committed to providing our students a high-quality education and will continue to teach, learn and work as we did successfully in 2020.
Although the numbers of positive cases have ebbed and flowed in Hawaiʻi, the State has been largely successful in keeping both its number of cases and the stress on our island health care system at low levels. Our campus case count has remained low (45 students and employees as of this message), but we must remain vigilant. We will be continuing several additional measures to protect our campus community from the virus this spring, including surveillance testing and testing wastewater from our student housing complexes for COVID-19. You can find out more about COVID-19 and our campus online.
As the COVID-19 vaccines become more available to our communities, we are hopeful that our students, faculty and staff may return to campus safely soon.
Students like you are the core of our university, and we remain committed to your well-being and success. We invite you to be a part of an UHM-azing campus community steeped in world class research, scholarship and service.
Brighter days lie ahead; we’ll get there together.
Mahalo nui loa,
Provost Michael Bruno