Principles and Stages of Recovery

Guiding Principles of Recovery

Our mission is to advance knowledge and accelerate solutions for humanity, and educate students for a life of purpose.

Our success depends on attracting and enabling the best faculty, researchers and students, and supporting them with the best staff.

In setting priorities, we will strive to:

• Ensure continuity in our research and teaching;
• Ensure continued access for students, including through robust financial aid;
• Anchor decisions in respect and concern for our community, and an understanding of the broader societal context in which they are made; and
• Position Stanford for a strong recovery in the near term and steward our resources wisely for the long term

Stages of Recovery

As we approach a phased recovery of university operations in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, Stanford will need to define a ’new normal’ for our campus environments. Recovery will prioritize safety while using mitigation measures to allow the campus to restart low-risk activities.

As part of this planning, groups on campus need to think critically about their operations and predict the sequence of tasks that are necessary for recovery to begin. For example, a group may not be able to begin planning for certain engineering controls (e.g., installing partitions) until they have identified necessary administrative controls (e.g., staffing changes). Another critical part of recovery planning is predicting secondary issues that are likely to arise later in the year, such as HR questions, questions regarding travel, and staffing/hiring.

Stanford’s recovery process is shaped in three stages, all designed to be scaled up or down depending on the environment and public health context in that particular time period. The stages are guided by county/state orders, but Stanford may decide to move more conservatively. Stanford may choose to implement guidance that preserves the progress our community has made so far, such as restricting event size and travel. The stages should be viewed on a sliding scale, where the University has the ability to reduce capacity as needed to protect the health of the on-campus community. Stanford will not accelerate the return stages beyond county and state recommendations.