I&S Employee Newsletter - August 2021

Taking stock, looking ahead

Dear Infrastructure and Sustainability team,

As I’ve noted before in this space, the successes you achieved over the past 17 months, as the university faced one of the greatest challenges in its history, were nothing short of monumental. Getting a sense for the true magnitude of what you collectively accomplished, however, can be difficult to grasp without seeing some of the metrics on paper. So as we prepare for a more traditional 2021-22 academic year, I want to take one last numerical look back at the ways you made the 2020-21 academic year a reality.

1,085: Total rooms set up for socially distanced instruction
- 555: Total traditional classrooms and laboratories
- 530: Non-classroom/lab spaces converted to accommodate instruction
728: Outdoor seats set up for study and remote learning in 22 temporary tents
50,000: Signs sorted, delivered and hung in 204 campus buildings/locations
665: Portable HEPA filtration units deployed
19,280: MERV-13 air filters installed in campus buildings
500: Hand-sanitizing stations deployed
800: Disinfecting wipe stations deployed
1,153: Bottles of disinfectant distributed to campus departments
284,080: Masks acquired for provision to students, faculty and staff
600: Mask fit tests for faculty, staff and students
500: Research and creative work spaces supported by the Distribution Center through material receiving, storage and distribution of cleaning supplies and PPE
390: I&S employees on campus during the pandemic
20: Doors upgraded to proximity card readers to facilitate enhanced building access protocols
3,332: 360-degree photos taken of physically distanced classrooms to assist in remote academic planning
13,727: Seats moved, stacked or adjusted for physical distancing
29: Facilities Task Force meetings
8: Building proctor forums
0: Verified cases of COVID-19 transmission in classrooms

This list is by no means comprehensive of the countless contributions you all made. And it doesn’t even touch on the customized risk analysis and recommendations for the music, theater and dance programs; capital construction projects that endured, including the Imig Music Building addition, Business/Engineering expansion and 1135 Broadway renovation; or the numerous other maintenance and construction projects that moved forward. It also doesn’t account for some of the other non-COVID related priorities that kept moving forward, such as a doubling of our campus deferred maintenance funding from $5 million per year to $10 million and the completion of our Energy Master Plan, which will help place our campus on a path to carbon neutrality in the years ahead.

The list does, however, give some illustration of just what a massive undertaking it was to keep our campus operational amid COVID-19. Getting back to a more traditional in-person, on-campus experience this fall will be no small feat in itself, and I know many of you are working just as hard to get our campus ready for Aug. 23.

I am excited to begin seeing your faces on campus once again, and I hope as many of you as possible are able to join the Buffs Back Together event for faculty, staff and graduate students on Aug. 11. I can’t say enough how grateful I am to work with you and how valuable your contributions are to this university.

Sincerely,

David Kang, vice chancellor for infrastructure and sustainability