VP Update May 14

Dear MIIS Campus Community,

Tomorrow, we look forward to celebrating the accomplishments of our May graduates at spring commencement. Our entire community is looking forward to a summer filled with new adventures, new projects, new jobs for some, and a well-deserved rest for all. We also wish Eid Mubarak to our Muslim community members.

Even as we finish up this semester and celebrate commencement, our planning for a return to campus continues. Below are the latest updates, and as always, you can access previous messages about our return-to-campus plans on our COVID-19 site.

Spring Commencement: We are counting down the last few hours to the virtual Spring Commencement ceremony, to be held tomorrow May 15 at 4 pm Pacific Time. We hope that you will join us for this special day.  Regular and visiting faculty, staff, graduating students, and speakers received emails with individual links yesterday around 2PM to join via Zoom as a “panelist”. These emails frequently go to Outlook’s clutter or junk mail folders, so please look carefully for an email with the subject line of “Panelist for MIIS 2021 Virtual Commencement.” All other guests can join via Zoom at this link with the Passcode 197823.

Fall Semester Planning and Vaccination Requirements: President Patton and I released an important announcement Thursday with vaccination expectations and requirements for the fall 2021 semester. Please note that, effective Monday, May 17, everyone in Monterey County who is 12 years of age and older is eligible for the COVID vaccine. The Monterey County Department of Health and the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula are both good resources for finding sites and appointments for the vaccine. 

New CDC Guidance: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidance for fully vaccinated individuals Thursday, particularly related to wearing of masks and social distancing. We expect these changes will lead to new guidance from the California and Monterey County public health authorities within the next month; those local changes, in turn, will shape the Institute’s protocol for the fall semester.

For now, we celebrate your accomplishments in this most extraordinary year and look forward to celebrating with you all tomorrow.

Sincerely,

Jeff Dayton-Johnson

VP of Academic Affairs and Dean of the Institute