This year was not a typical arrival for students moving into campus housing. Because of COVID, extra precautions for the safety of students had to be enforced before move in, including presenting a negative test within 10 days of and on the day of a student’s arrival. But teamwork by IU South Bend staff helped the process, which ran from August 19-22, go smoothly for students.
Tiffany German-Hall, the emergency management and continuity specialist for IU South Bend, served as the operations chief for the arrival testing of housing students.
German-Hall was responsible for the on-arrival testing planning, set up, supplies, scheduling and training of volunteers. Many were involved with getting students situated and ready to go, including staff from Housing, Student Affairs, the Health and Wellness Center, IU Police Department, and Administration. Whenever a need arose, someone was quickly there to address it, German-Hall said. The volunteers and staff were on top of everything communicating and working together.
German-Hall mentioned that one of the challenges that arose was technology. We had to work through some technology issues as well as traffic flow initially, but once those were addressed, things ran smoothly, German-Hall said.
Another key aspect to the campus move-in was the pool of volunteers from the Vera Z. Dwyer College of Health Sciences, including undergraduate and graduate nursing students who put their curriculum into action. Of the 277 on arrival tests conducted, IU South Bend had only a 1.4% positivity rate.
Now that students are settled, they still need to be smart and safe. Students should continue to maintain social distancing, wear masks, practice good personal health hygiene, stay off campus if they’re sick, utilize the IU Health resources and the IU South Bend Health and Wellness Center resources if they aren’t feeling well or need testing. Be sure to participate in mitigation testing when asked, German-Hall said.
