{"id":1985,"date":"2020-03-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/blogtest\/march-12-news-and-updates-from-president-sidney-a-mcphee\/"},"modified":"2025-03-27T17:19:36","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T17:19:36","slug":"march-12-news-and-updates-from-president-sidney-a-mcphee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/march-12-news-and-updates-from-president-sidney-a-mcphee\/","title":{"rendered":"MARCH 12: News and Updates from President Sidney A. McPhee"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p>To the University community,<\/p>\n<p>There have been several new developments and decisions today as MTSU and other institutions respond to the rapidly evolving novel\u00a0coronavirus\u00a0situation (COVID-19). In our efforts to keep our community informed, here are several updates:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee declared a state of emergency in Tennessee, which he said \u201cwill move us into a position to utilize additional emergency funds as needed and relax provisions of certain laws to provide the flexibility needed to respond to this disease.\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tn.gov\/governor\/news\/2020\/3\/12\/gov--bill-lee-issues-executive-order-declaring-state-of-emergency-in-response-to-covid-19.html\">Read more here.<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Students graduating in May\u00a0<strong><u>will not be required<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0to take the General Education Exam or Major Field Test.<\/li>\n<li>Conference USA, of which MTSU is a member, suspended its spring sports seasons until further notice and canceled its tournaments. Our Women\u2019s Basketball team, which was set to play Louisiana Tech in the quarterfinals of the C-USA Tournament, is returning home, along with members of our Band of Blue pep squad and cheerleading team.<\/li>\n<li>The True Blue Preview, our student recruitment event scheduled for Saturday, March 21, 2020, has been postponed. We have sent information about alternative events to those who registered.<\/li>\n<li>Walker Library will be closed until the end of March. Library faculty and staff will still report to work and do all they can to assist students and faculty\u00a0access\u00a0remotely the materials they need. As the end of the month approaches, we will reassess the library\u2019s status.<\/li>\n<li>Next week\u2019s committee meetings of our Board of Trustees will be conducted via public-access teleconference.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mtsunews.com\/trustees-committee-teleconference-march17\/\">Read more here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Dr. Deb Sells, our vice president for student affairs,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mtsu.edu\/coronavirus\/archive\/post\/32\/students-mtsu-s-covid-19-response-and-you\">sent this update note to our students<\/a>\u00a0about several topics, including residence halls and MT Dining.<\/li>\n<li>We are working on\u00a0strategies to significantly ramp up online tutoring and will release details when they are determined.<\/li>\n<li>We have not yet determined how, or if, our Commencement Exercises in May will be affected by these precautions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As of today, there have been no confirmed COVID-19 cases on campus.<\/p>\n<p>In case you missed it:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mtsu.edu\/coronavirus\/archive\/post\/29\/mtsu-extends-spring-break-for-students-as-coronavirus-precaution\">We decided Wednesday to extend our Spring Break by one week,<\/a>\u00a0through Sunday, March 22, to prepare for the remote delivery of instruction beginning Monday, March 23, and continuing until further notice. A future decision will be made as to if and when face-to-face classroom instruction may resume.<\/p>\n<p>We remind all to check our website,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/coronavirus\">www.mtsu.edu\/coronavirus<\/a>, for updates and resources.<\/p>\n<p>Sincerely,<\/p>\n<p>Sidney A. McPhee<\/p>\n<p>President<\/p>\n<p>Sidney.McPhee@mtsu.edu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To the University community, There have been several new developments and decisions today as MTSU and other institutions respond to the rapidly evolving novel\u00a0coronavirus\u00a0situation (COVID-19). In our efforts to keep our community informed, here are several updates: Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee declared a state of emergency in Tennessee, which he said \u201cwill move us into [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":360,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}