President Price Provides Update on Spring Semester

Dear Duke Colleagues, 

This holiday season, we are grateful for the many ways that our community has come together to support one another and look toward an even brighter future.

We are grateful to our health care providers and frontline workers for keeping us safe and allowing us to continue our missions of teaching, learning, and discovery. We are grateful for the remarkable launch of the COVID-19 vaccine this week and proud of Duke’s role in it. We are grateful to all of our students, faculty, staff, and neighbors who worked tirelessly and selflessly over the last year to make our fall semester a success.

The holidays also offer a moment for quiet reflection—and resolve. We are now in the midst of a deeply concerning surge of COVID-19 across the country and around the world. Now more than ever, we must continue to observe public health guidelines to protect our health and safety, and that of our families, friends, and fellow Blue Devils. Even in this holiday season, that means wearing a mask, practicing social distancing, avoiding social gatherings, and washing our hands.

In the new year, we look forward to welcoming our students back to campus for the spring semester. Undergraduate, graduate, and professional students will soon receive specific details with regards to academic programs, living arrangements, food service, access to campus facilities, health and safety protocols, testing, and limitations on gatherings. And while we expect that the spring semester will look much like the fall, it is important to remember that all our plans are dynamic and subject to change on short notice depending on current conditions and the guidance from Duke medical experts, public health officials, and state and local government directives.

I thank you for all you’ve done to lift our community in this most unusual and challenging of years and wish you all safe and peaceful holidays and brighter days in the New Year. Warmest wishes from everyone at Duke.

Sincerely, 

Vincent E. Price
President