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From the Desk of Willie Brown

Willie Brown
By Willie Brown - October 19, 2021

UCSB Together Again!

Fall quarter is underway and I am thrilled that it has been relatively uneventful as far as COVID surges. As of October 12, the campus rate for fully vaccinated students, staff and faculty is an extremely high 96.84%. This has allowed us to return to campus, achieve full occupancy in housing, and continue to hire student workers in order to open and expand our services. I want to take a moment to thank you for getting vaccinated for COVID, a key step to protecting our community, ending the pandemic and achieving some sense of normalcy. 

As we settle into the quarter, I want to share with you some highlights of what’s been happening in HDAE. 

  • A tremendous amount of work has been done managing the housing crisis, including expanding campus housing spaces, coordinating contracts for local hotel rooms and communicating with thousands of students and their families.

  • We continue to have staff supporting the campus COVID Response Team with the pandemic response effort by staffing the COVID-19 Testing Center, performing contact tracing, and coordinating Quarantine and Isolation Housing.

  • Four new websites have been launched in the last six months: the overall HDAE site, Campus Housing, Campus Dining and UCSB Conference & Hospitality Services.

  • Take Out at Ortega has been reimagined and now uses a mobile application for ordering food and lockers from which to retrieve said tasty food.

  • Automatic License Plate Readers have been deployed by Transportation & Parking Services, making parking permit decals on your windshield a thing of the past.

  • A complicated multi-day move-in process requiring precise and extensive planning, including testing all students before they could move in, was successfully achieved.

While a few of the above bullet points involve supporting the campus on its COVID-19 response, I am particularly proud that we still managed to implement some very innovative initiatives as is the HDAE way. Thank you to everyone for your partnership and hard work. You’ve always found a way to get it done – and done well!  

Before I sign off, I’d like to remind you that the University of California has mandated annual flu vaccinations for all faculty, staff and students. The deadline for this year is November 19, 2021. You can learn more on UCnet. Be well and stay safe HDAE Team!

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