The health and safety of our students, faculty and staff are our highest priority. While it is our desire to have all our students return on campus, our decisions are impacted by the guidelines set by our government and health officials. Therefore, Burman University has chosen to adopt a flexible, hybrid approach to the Fall 2020 term. All courses for our Fall 2020 term will be delivered online and students can choose to take online classes remotely, or choose to take their online classes while being on campus. Social distancing protocols will be in place.
To ensure that our students continue their academic path no matter where they are, our courses for the Fall 2020 term will be offered online. Students can be assured that classes are being developed and designed for online delivery. Our campus community responded to the pandemic decisively and moved quickly to transition our Winter term from face-to-face to alternate methods of delivery. With more time to plan, our faculty are going through training and receiving support to adapt our face-to-face courses to online courses. Burman will continue to provide quality learning for our current and incoming students. There may be a choice of in-person lab and practical experiences for those who choose to be on campus. Flexible protocol for practicum will be developed by each department.
We recognize the importance of the Burman experience in the social and spiritual side of our campus. We strive to offer these experiences in person and to our students who study remotely. The government of Alberta has provided a relaunch guide for post-secondary institutions and Burman will follow the directives and guidelines stated by the province and its health officials. The health and safety of our students, faculty, and staff are our highest priority and plans are in place and will continue to be developed to safeguard our campus and community. Due to government and health guidelines for social distancing, residence space will be limited on campus. We will share our plans for what residence hall life will look like as plans are finalized. Our rural setting and Central Alberta’s low COVID-19 cases, combined with our small student body, provides flexibility in ensuring government and health guidelines are implemented.
Recognizing the challenges our students will face financially during this pandemic, Burman University is launching a student aid campaign for those affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Current students can contact our Student Financial Services Department and they will be more than willing to walk you through the process. Burman will also rollback the 2% increase in tuition and all other planned fee increases for the 2020-2021 academic year to help ease the financial burden on our students.
The landscape is ever changing. Burman will continue to follow direction from health and government officials as they are made available. We will continue to communicate to all our community groups as decisions are made and campus plans developed.
The last few weeks have been difficult, but the resiliency of our campus community has given us hope that we can move forward through the challenges of this pandemic. We pray for the health and safety of our community at this time and we are excited to once again engage with our students this coming Fall and hopefully welcome back all our students in January 2021.