Our Deepest Gratitude

May 24, 2021

Dear Tulane Community,

With the Spring Semester now officially completed, we once again extend our heartfelt appreciation and admiration to our faculty and staff. Your hard work, ingenuity, innovation and determination made the impossible possible, and ensured a successful semester and academic year under the most trying of circumstances.

You kept the health of our campus community and neighbors forefront in your mind, helping us maintain a rate of infection far lower than that of the city and state. We are not yet at a point where we can safely eliminate all the COVID-19 protocols that restrict how we can socialize, work and learn together, but that goal is within our reach. We simply need to increase the number of our community members who are vaccinated. A fully vaccinated Tulane community will help protect our own health as well as that of our students, colleagues, families, and neighbors. We are getting so close to achieving this. Currently, 66 percent of our faculty and staff have reported their COVID-19 vaccination.

Are you in that number?

To recognize the incredible work of our faculty and staff this past year, and your continuing commitment to the health and safety of the community going forward, all faculty and staff who report that they have been fully vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine will receive a one-time payment of $500 for full-time faculty and staff and $250 for part-time faculty and staff. This includes employees who received their vaccinations months ago or who just recently completed their vaccination schedule. It will also include those who completed a Vaccine Declination Form through which they declined the vaccine due to medical or religious reasons. Employees who decline the vaccination based on personal reasons will not be eligible for these one-time payments. All one-time payments, subject to applicable withholdings, will be delivered via direct payroll deposit beginning in June. You must report that you are fully vaccinated or complete the Vaccine Declination Form by July 31 to be eligible for the one-time payments. 

If you receive(d) your vaccination through the downtown Tulane Vaccine Clinic, located on the ground floor of the JBJ building, you will be automatically enrolled to receive the one-time payment. If you have been, or will be, vaccinated outside the Tulane system you must report your status through the Campus Health Patient Portal to receive your one-time payment or fill out a Vaccine Declination Form citing a medical or religious exemption. If you have problems submitting your vaccine status in the portal, please e-mail CHContactTrace@tulane.edu for assistance. 

In addition to the one-time payment, if 90 percent of faculty and staff are vaccinated by July 31, 2021, we will host a special university celebration with multiple prize drawings. To track our progress toward this exciting goal, we will add a tracker on the COVID-19 dashboard that shows the growing percentage of vaccinated Tulane faculty and staff.

To make receiving your vaccine as convenient as possible, we will open an uptown Vaccine Clinic on the ground floor of Phelps Residence Hall beginning June 4. To make an appointment at the downtown Tulane Vaccine Clinic now or, beginning June 4, at the uptown clinic click here. Employees can get vaccinated during work hours and are eligible for COVID-19 leave if they experience symptoms after receiving their vaccine. We will soon announce a webinar where Tulane health experts and administrators will address any questions or concerns you have about the vaccine or the vaccination process. 

This is an exciting time at Tulane, filled with much hope and anticipation that we will soon be able to return to life as it was before COVID-19. The rate of vaccination among the Tulane community is higher than that of the city or state; but we have further to go before we will have achieved a level of immunity that allow us to engage safely with each other without masks, distancing and the other COVID-19 precautions. Please help us do this - for yourself, your family, friends and colleagues, and for New Orleans. 
 

Michael A. Fitts, President
Patrick Norton, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
Robin Forman, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost