Corona at UM: looking back and forwards
Mid-March 2020 saw UM, along with all other Dutch universities, close its doors due to the corona crisis. The situation placed extraordinary demands on our entire academic community. A Crisis Management Team was installed, which did everything it could in the ensuing months to support our staff and students, as well as other stakeholders, such as PhD candidates and prospective students. Our goal was to allow education to continue as far as possible (albeit in an entirely new form), to ensure that colleagues could meet as needed, and to give people who genuinely had to work on location the opportunity to do so. In recent months, employees from all levels have been involved in the preparations to restart our education, research and operational management, with health and safety as our top priority.
This website provides a concise overview of the guidelines drawn up and measures taken in four domains: education, research, students and staff.
Education
Thanks to a solid online infrastructure and ample flexibility and adaptability on the part of both staff and students, UM switched to online education with unprecedented speed. This was later supplemented with several on-campus options.
Research
The corona crisis had a major impact on research at UM. Research involving human subjects was halted and many academics struggled with additional (online) teaching tasks, care tasks and limited facilities for working from home.
Students
When UM closed its doors on 15 March, many dedicated lecturers worked hard on the transition to an online-education model. Students were also provided with psychological, administrative, logistical and financial support.
Employees
In principle, employees have been working from home since March (and on campus in specific cases). This will remain the case until at least 2021. For colleagues with teaching duties, this meant switching to online education practically overnight.
