OIT, Dining, ResLife mobilize against and prepare for outbreak

With flu season right around the corner and the number of suspected swine flu cases on the campus increasing by the day, every part of the university is mobilizing to fight the spread of disease.

From the Office of Information Technology to Campus Recreation Services and everything in between, the university has a plan to prevent more students from contracting the H1N1 virus and take care of the many who inevitably will.

Dining Services

Dining Services is jump-starting a program allowing sick students to give others the ability to use their ID cards to purchase them food from the dining halls.

“We understand that the Diner is a very high traffic area,” Dining Services spokesman Bart Hipple said. “If someone is sick, we want to do everything we can to keep them from having to come.”

Students who are sick, or think they might be coming down with something, can fill out an authorization form available on the Dining Services website, on which they can designate up to eight others — Dining Services suggests friends, roommates or resident assistants — to buy food for them with their student ID cards.

After the form is turned in, Dining Services will keep a copy for future use.

“It makes sense,” freshman electrical engineering major Brianna Murphy said. “If you’re at school and don’t feel well, you shouldn’t have to get up and buy food.”

Dining Services employees are also taking measures to keep the dining halls germ-free by sanitizing high-contact areas, such as tables and chairs, more often.

They are also teaming up with representatives from the University Health Center, who will set up a table of information about flu prevention techniques in the dining halls later this semester.

“This is the first time we’ve allowed any organization to set up a booth in the actual dining halls,” said Hipple. “We think the threat is really serious and we want to do everything we can to keep everyone well.”

OIT

The Office of Information Technology is making accommodations for electronic access to class materials, both for sick students to stay up to date and to enable professors to host classes without physically being there.

Professors will be encouraged to continue use of the course mail reflectors, which allow e-mails to be sent to an entire class at once. And OIT says they are prepared to facilitate large-scale conference calling, said Ellen Borkowski, OIT’s director of academic and user support.

They’re also taking to the Internet to keep academics afloat in case of crisis — the university opened a public section on iTunes U in August, enabling instructors to post audio and video files online.

In addition, Borkowski said about 70 percent of class sections use Blackboard — the university’s independently-hosted system that allows instructors to post course materials to pages only their students can see. Borkowski said this is an efficient way to reach their classes, as 83 percent of students had at least one class with a Blackboard space last semester.

The newest addition to the OIT repertoire is the integration of Wimba Live Classroom into the Blackboard system — a feature that allows instructors to host virtual conferences with students where they can upload slideshows and narrate in real time.

Resident Life

As students returned to the dorms for the fall, the Resident Life Department has adopted a set of extra precautions to protect students against the spread of the new swine flu, besides giving out antibacterial hand wipes, as they did last semester.

Resident Life Director Deb Grandner says the department’s main priorities continue to be educating students about how to avoid catching the flu as well as making sure students with flu-like symptoms know what to do and where to go.

“We conducted training sessions with all of our resident assistants in August to prepare them to get the main messages out to students:  Wash your hands frequently, if you feel ill don’t go to class and contact the Health Center, use antibacterial wipes to keep surfaces clean and get a flu shot,” Grandner said.

RAs were supposed to issue information about what to do if students come down with the H1N1 virus during the first floor meeting of the year.  And posters in floor hallways reinforce the messages.

The ERC

Even Eppley Recreation Center is participating in the campus-wide efforts to curb the spread of the flu. 

Campus Recreation Services has installed hand sanitizer stations throughout the ERC, increased the frequency with which gym staff is cleaning heavily used equipment and increased the number of educational signs and posters displayed on its walls. 

If someone is observed coming into the facility looking or acting sick, Campus Recreation Services staff have been told to ask them to stay home.

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