Dear Pacific faculty,

We are continuously examining our responses to COVID-19 to ensure a balance between student privacy and the health and safety of our campuses. After careful consideration, Pacific will begin cc’ing Stockton and Sacramento course instructors on the email notification sent to a student who tests positive for COVID-19. Faculty will only receive notification about students who are registered in their course(s). This new process will begin September 22, 2021. This should be considered instructors’ formal notification of a COVID-19-positive student in their class. 

During the intake conversation with the student upon a COVID-19-positive test result, the Pacific contact tracing team will ask for a list of “close contacts” as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As a reminder, the CDC defines a close contact of a COVID-19-positive person as someone who:

• Lives in or has stayed at their residence, OR
• Are intimate sexual partners, OR
• Provides or provided care to them without wearing a mask, gown and gloves, OR
• Were within 6 feet of them for a cumulative 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period. (Note: some specific health care programs have different criteria for “close contacts.”)

Students are encouraged to contact their faculty members to discuss missed work during this time or they may opt to work with the Care Managers team. After receiving the formal notification from our contact tracing team, faculty can reach out to students directly to discuss coursework, makeup exams, etc. 

Faculty should not inquire about a student’s vaccination status or about any underlying health conditions. Please be aware that a student’s COVID-19-positive status is confidential information protected by FERPA and should not be further distributed. Every effort must be made to protect the privacy of the impacted student(s), including not providing any directly or indirectly identifying information to classmates or campus colleagues. 

As a reminder, we utilize the Isolation and Quarantine Guidelines to help all of us determine what to do, depending on vaccination status. If you have concerns that a student may not have adequately informed the contact tracing team about close contacts, please notify our contact tracers. 

As you can imagine, there are several scenarios where a student in a class may or may not have had several close contacts. Any decisions to temporarily transition courses to remote learning must be done in consultation with the academic dean and have their approval; deans will inform the provost. Temporary transitions to remote instruction must also include a defined start and end date that is clearly communicated to students by the faculty member. 

The university is posting information about vaccination rates and the active testing that is occurring on all three campuses on dashboards linked from Pacific’s COVID-19 website (at the bottom of the webpage). 

If you wish to discuss legal and compliance obligations to protect privacy, please contact Jared Gaynor, Chief Compliance Officer and Assistant General Counsel, or Lindsey Green, Privacy Officer.

Sincerely,

Maria Pallavicini
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
COVID-19 Council Co-chair

Maria Q. Blandizzi
Vice President for Student Life
COVID-19 Council Co-chair