Friday, February 28, 2020
To the Tuck Community:
As Senior Associate Dean Joe Hall shared on Wednesday, we have cancelled the upcoming Global Insight Expedition to Vietnam, after cancelling the China GIX in late January. Since Wednesday, even more countries have confirmed COVID-19 cases.
Guided by the twin priorities of our community’s health and safety and the integrity of our students’ education, we have made the difficult decision to cancel all Tuck-sponsored international travel in March. This includes the international travel component of all upcoming Global Insight Expeditions and Global First-Year Project courses, and any other Tuck-sponsored international treks.
We did not come to this decision lightly, given how central TuckGO is to the Tuck education. However, with the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the worsening COVID-19 situation, we believe that the risks of moving forward with these hands-on global experiences outweigh their educational benefits.
While COVID-19 poses a challenge to all academic institutions, the scale and depth of Tuck’s global learning endeavor makes our situation especially challenging. In a little over a week, close to the entire first-year class—253 students—as well as 14 second-year students and 18 faculty members and staff were scheduled to head out from Hanover for highly immersive educational experiences across the globe. A worsening COVID-19 situation has the potential to dramatically impact not only these experiences, but more broadly the entire spring term at Tuck—and, most importantly, the health of our community.
Many will understandably be disappointed with this news, and will have questions about what it means for their education. On Monday, March 2 at noon in Georgiopoulos Classroom, we will hold a town hall with members of the Deans’ Office and the TuckGO team to answer these questions and discuss how we as a community will navigate this unexpected change, including its impact on the global requirement and on travel reimbursement.
For those with upcoming personal travel, the U.S. State Department and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued new travel advisories regarding COVID-19. We strongly urge that any community member who might be considering international travel in the time ahead consult the sources below:
Thanks very much for your understanding during this difficult time for our school and others.
Matt
Matthew J. Slaughter
Dean of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth