Email From Alan Rudolph, Vice President for Research at Colorado State University on March 17, 2020

Colleagues:

As you are aware, CSU is mobilized to respond to the current COVID-19 outbreak. The CSU safety team has created an excellent website with important information related to COVID-19.

As concerns about COVID-19 continue to escalate, we have made the difficult decision to suspend all non-essential research activities on campus as soon as practical.

In order to protect our community, all non-critical research labs and other non-critical research facilities will move to virtual operations by the end of the day on Monday, March 23. Clinical labs will continue to provide services. 

Critical research is research that if halted, delayed or interrupted, could result in:

  • Endangerment to human subjects or pose unreasonable risk to human subjects;
  • Endangerment to animal subjects or pose unreasonable risk to animal subject;
  • Loss of experiments or data that will be impossible to replicate or could benefit the pandemic response effort; and/or
  • Loss of instrumentation, infrastructure, and/or an unsafe/unsecured laboratory environment or other catastrophic loss.

We will reevaluate this guidance by April 15, but anticipate this guidance could remain in place significantly longer.

We have set up an email inbox ([email protected]) for you to submit your questions. We will be using your questions to add an FAQ section to our website.  

Additional Details:

  • Critical research operations and personnel are determined within institutes, schools and colleges, in partnership and coordination with the Research Associate Deans; the final determination rests with the Dean’s Office. All such determinations are then promptly shared with the Office of the Vice President for Research, and any concerns will be addressed on a case-by-case basis.
  • OVPR website. The OVPR has provided guidance and resources on the OVPR website. These pages will be updated as new information becomes available.
  • Grant guidance. For specific impacts on your federally-funded or other grants, please refer to the guidance pages provided by the Office of Sponsored Projects
  • Safety and social distancing. The health and safety of our people is our highest priority. Please review your lab’s safety protocols, ensure your space and equipment are properly secured, cleaned and sanitized, and adjust as appropriate to account for any impacts to normal safety measures and cleaning procedures. Additionally, please follow social distancing practices during and outside of your time in the lab to keep yourself safe, including throughout your travel to and from research spaces.
  • Graduate and undergraduate student research. Faculty advisors are the best resource for graduate and undergraduate researchers who have questions or may need to adjust research-related protocols or operations.
  • Human research / IRB. Changes to research studies may be necessary to protect participants, staff and yourself. Federal regulatory and OSP policy requirements must still be met. The IRB must approve any changes in the ways in which you interact with study participants before implementation. Please direct any IRB inquiries to [email protected].
  • Vivarium and animal research. Basic research animal care (health checks, feeding, watering and husbandry) will continue. New animal orders, imports and transfers are suspended, and no new technical service requests will be accepted without strong justification to the Director of LAR. Requests should be directed to Lon Kendall at [email protected].
  • OVPR. The OVPR main office will remain open.

We are living in unusual times. With the current outbreak of coronavirus added to our already growing concerns about our climate, our lives are more stressful than ever. Please remember to take care of yourselves and look out for those around you.

As always, we are here to help each other in ensuring that CSU Research continues its fantastic impacts from discovery to commercialization. Please do not hesitate to reach out to our office or to your neighbor for support and any further information that we can provide. 

Best,

Alan