Published on Sep. 1, 2021
Updated on April 13, 2023
Dear campus community,
It has been exciting to see everyone back on Mizzou’s campus, and we hope your fall semester is starting off on the right foot. Many in our community are getting vaccinated since our return, and active student cases are significantly lower than this time last fall.
While we are encouraged by these trends, our continued vigilance is still needed to protect the health and safety of our campus community. We want to reiterate our temporary indoor mask policy, which will be reviewed by Sept. 15:
| • | All students, faculty, staff and visitors, regardless of vaccination status, are required to wear masks in classrooms, including while entering and exiting classrooms, as well as other meeting spaces where social distancing is not possible. For more details, see the Show Me Renewal website. |
| • | If you cannot socially distance yourself from others while waiting to enter a classroom, you are expected to wear your mask. |
| • | Whether fully vaccinated or not, instructors are required to wear masks in classrooms and lab classes except when 10 feet from their audience and wearing a face shield or behind a physical barrier. When not distanced from the audience by 10 feet, the instructor must wear a mask. More stringent requirements may apply to clinical education, e.g. health care or veterinary health care. |
| • | For the remaining indoor spaces on campus, if you are not fully vaccinated, you are required to wear a mask. If you are fully vaccinated, MU recommends wearing a mask indoors. |
If someone in a classroom is not wearing a mask, instructors will ask them to leave until they can comply. Violations of this requirement can be reported here.
Exceptions to these requirements and recommendations include:
| • | When you are alone in a workspace. |
| • | When your workspace has at least a 6-foot distance between all employees or has physical barriers between employees – such as a plexiglass shield or cubicle wall. |
| • | When you are eating or drinking and 6 feet away from others or divided by a physical barrier, such as a plexiglass shield or cubicle wall. |
| • | When you are with small numbers of people you consistently live or work with daily (known as a stable group) including roommates, officemates or lab coworkers. |
Some units across campus, such as MU Health Care, School of Medicine and facilities in the College of Veterinary Medicine, may have different requirements that are specific to their units.
A reminder to students, faculty and staff: upload an image of your COVID-19 vaccination records or cards to assist the university in managing COVID-19 and to win prizes in biweekly drawings. Students can easily upload their document to our Secure Document Upload in myZou. Faculty and staff are asked to provide information through our COVID Vaccine Uploader in myHR, where it will be kept confidential and can be helpful in contact tracing efforts. If you are interested in receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, a list of upcoming vaccine events on-campus and in the community can be found on Show Me Renewal’s vaccine information page.
We thank everyone for their careful attention to these practices. With your help, the campus will continue to be vigilant as we keep our community safe.
M-I-Z!
Mark Diedrich
Incident Commander
MU Incident Command Team
John Middleton
Operations Section Chief
MU Incident Command Team