Dear Campus Community,

For this quarterly campus update, I want to focus on a scary topic: emergencies. This fall, I asked the XCITE Center for Teaching and Learning and the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) to partner on developing a suite of resources for faculty to help them to be better prepared in the event of an emergency in or near their classrooms. Staff and students are also invited to review the information on the websites listed below.

•    Teaching.ucr.edu has a new Emergency Preparedness information page for faculty: https://teaching.ucr.edu/emergency.

•    Classrooms.ucr.edu now includes a link to an interactive campus map showing the Emergency Assembly areas for all instructional buildings.

•    UCR’s Instructional Continuity Plan for Campus Shutdowns has been updated to reflect the latest information and guidance as of January 2025.

Faculty, staff, and students are encouraged to download the new UCR Safe App for additional resources that can be accessed directly from your phone. The app is available in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.

Department chairs can request a visit from XCITE to attend a future departmental meeting to share the new safety resources and to answer any questions your faculty may have. 

I want to thank the members of the Faculty Emergency Preparedness Committee for their work on this effort: George Anderson, Heather Davis Russell, Richard Edwards, Israel Fletes, Andy Flores, and Sohail Wasif. I also want to thank all of you Highlanders for taking the time to learn what to do in case of an emergency on campus.

Best wishes for a happy and safe 2025!