The Return to Campus (RTC) Initiative was established in Spring 2020 to be at the forefront of all decisions regarding community health and safety for NYUAD’s gradual return to campus. The Steering Committee has proceeded with the intention of making this effort practical and safe for students, professors, and staff. The Committee sends memoranda, organizes town halls and places public health signage around campus to ensure that the community is always aware of and informed about public health guidelines.

The Gazelle spoke to Jessica Sederquist, Chief of Staff to the Vice Chancellor, and Peter Christensen, Chief Administrative and Business Officer, co-chairs of the Steering Committee, to understand how RTC decisions are made and which factors are considered in the decision-making process.

The RTC committee consists of five portfolios, each one with a specialized area of focus — Academics, Student, Operations, Public Health and Research. “Each portfolio team deliberates on issues and makes recommendations for Steering Committee approval,” explained the co-chairs. The Steering Committee, in addition to determining direction and priorities, reviews and approves or rejects recommendations before reporting to the Vice Chancellor and Provost for approval. Some portfolios, such as the one pertaining to students, have direct student representatives on their team, while others have regular discussions with Student Government. For instance, the Academic subcommittee regularly meets with the Student Government Academic Board.

“Over the past two years, we navigated testing, research, vaccination drives, immigration issues, remote learning and working complexities and many other challenges together, while building empathy and understanding across the University,” Sederquist and Christensen added.

Most of the rules the Steering Committee follows come from detailed regulations issued by the Ministry of Education. “...Most of our work on the guidelines is to determine how best to implement the MoE regulations,” the co-chairs emphasized. “All the teams and the steering committee meet at least weekly and the portfolio teams add input for the RTC memos throughout the week,” they stated. The committee receives input from across the portfolios in a continuous manner and public health policies are assessed in real-time.

The Steering Committee also acknowledged that there were difficulties that they encountered in the decision-making process.

According to the Committee, the early days were the most difficult, as there was a lack of information about the virus. Since then, they have taken a number of difficult decisions while following NYUAD’s guiding principles of health and safety, academic and research continuity and community, which have guided all of their actions since the outbreak began. “Even when we had to make the hardest of decisions, like canceling J-term at the height of the omicron wave, it was done to keep our students and community safe,” they emphasized.

Nevertheless, the chairs suggested their decision-making process mandate in organizing community health and safety was made easier by the fact that NYUAD is in the UAE. “We are fortunate to be in Abu Dhabi, which has taken the pandemic very seriously and ensured easy access to vaccination and testing, while maintaining consistent public health guidance,” the co-chairs said.

Importantly, the RTC initiative brought to the committee’s attention the reaction of individual components of the wider NYUAD community. “[The RTC process] helped us step out of what would be considered silos, and understand the student, operational, academic, research perspectives and impacts,” they stated, which in turn allowed them to solve problems and pivot in a way that supported the entire institution. “This collaborative work has served as a blueprint for other institutional initiatives such as WorkSmart and the Academic Strategy workstreams,” they shared.

Lastly, the community helped make this process a more impactful one. Despite the difficulties, NYUAD’s response to the pandemic “showed the power of our community,” they added. “We are thankful to all community members for their empathy, patience, and adaptability,” the co-chairs concluded.