After nearly a year and a half of online semesters, students and faculty returned to campus on August 30. Courses were delivered online, in-person or a hybrid of both.
The Ralph O’Connor Center for Recreation and Well-Being is scheduled for completion by Oct. 4 and will open at full capacity by mid-October. The University announced plans to expand the Recreation (Rec) Center in 2020.
Leadership, Engagement & Experiential Development (LEED), formerly Student Leadership and Involvement, hosted the annual Student Involvement Fair (SIF) on Sept. 3. The event allows Hopkins students to engage with the over 400 student-run organizations and departments on campus.
The newly elected Student Government Association (SGA) held its first in-person meeting of the year on Tuesday, August 31 to discuss past projects and prepare for the upcoming semester.
The University held Orientation Week for incoming first-years, international students and transfer students between August 22 and August 29. In contrast with last year’s virtual Orientation Week, this year’s event consisted of both virtual and in-person programs.
The University announced in an email to the student body on August 27 that all fully vaccinated undergraduate students living both on and off-campus will need to be tested once a week. Previously, fully vaccinated students living off-campus were not required to be tested. Those with approved exemptions to the vaccine regulations will still need to be tested twice a week.
In a reversal from previously declared policy, the University announced in an email on August 19 that it will only accept COVID-19 vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which currently includes the Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccines.
Last month, the Jewish advocacy groups StandWithUs and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law wrote a letter calling on Hopkins to take a stronger stance against antisemitism, in light of an ongoing investigation into a teaching assistant’s tweets regarding Jewish and Zionist students.
In a reversal from previous fall semester masking guidelines, the University announced earlier today that it will reimpose the indoor masking mandate and reinstate social distancing requirements for indoor dining.
The University announced in an email on July 27 that it has appointed Branville Bard, Jr. as vice president for public safety. Bard will assume the position on August 30 and will be responsible for overseeing public safety operations for the University and its medical campuses and facilities, excluding the Applied Physics Laboratory.
A year after the University paused efforts to create the Johns Hopkins Police Department (JHPD), it announced the nine winners of its $6 million Innovation Fund for Community Safety. According to the University, the purpose of the fund is to bolster community programs aimed at reducing violent crime.
University administrators announced updates to its fall health guidelines in an email broadcast yesterday. In line with changes to the citywide mask mandate, individuals who upload proof of vaccination will no longer be required to wear masks indoors or outdoors and may also eat and drink without social distancing. Testing for vaccinated individuals will be required only once a week.
Lou Forster, the chair of the University’s Board of Trustees, announced a five-year extension of University President Ronald J. Daniels’ term in an email to University affiliates on Monday. His term will now extend through the year 2029. This extension will make Daniels the second longest-serving president in the University’s history at the end of his term.
The University announced in December the discovery of evidence suggesting that Johns Hopkins, long regarded as a staunch abolitionist, owned enslaved people. Research conducted by Professor of History Martha S. Jones under Hopkins Retrospective, a program launched in 2013 to investigate the history of the University, contended that, according to census documents, Hopkins had enslaved one person in 1840 and four people in 1850.
The University announced on June 16 that it will designate $10 million in funding in the form of grants to students across the University to help offset the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott announced on June 16 that the citywide mask mandate and state of emergency will be lifted as of July 1. Scott noted that businesses and workplaces will be allowed to continue their own mask mandates. These new mask guidelines came the day after Maryland Governor Larry Hogan did the same for the state.
The University announced in an email that Smita Ruzicka will be leaving her post as dean of student life on July 16 to work for Middlebury College. Allison Avolio, current deputy to the dean of student life, will serve as interim dean.
The University announced on June 2 that Alanna W. Shanahan will be stepping down as the vice provost for student affairs on July 9 to work for her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, as the athletics director. Kevin Shollenberger, the current vice provost of student health and well-being, will serve as interim provost.
University leaders announced updates to the University’s fall semester COVID-19 policies in an email to constituents on Wednesday. The broadcast reiterated the vaccination requirement for students announced in April and extended the mandate to all faculty and staff.
The Hopkins community mourns the death of Ahmed El-Morsy, who passed away on May 22, 2021. El-Morsy was a rising junior studying Molecular and Cellular Biology.
