At this time, the University is not requiring students to share their booster shot information with University Health Services (UHS), although students are strongly encouraged to do so.

Students at University Park, Commonwealth Campuses and Dickinson Law who have received their booster shot can upload their vaccination records through myUHS. The process is similar to the one used by students to share proof of being fully vaccinated.

Penn State faculty and staff who have received their booster shot can upload an image of their COVID-19 vaccination card into Penn State’s Salesforce Health Cloud, a secure online platform for collecting and storing health data.

Students who test positive and need to enter isolation will be encouraged to reach out to their course faculty. While students will be expected to contact their instructors and make every effort to work with the instructor to complete the work and stay on track, faculty are encouraged to work with students to the extent possible, given the challenging circumstances. Additionally, faculty should receive a message from Student Support Services whenever a student must be absent from class to isolate. Academic advisers will also be alerted when one of their advisees must miss classes due to isolation and students are encouraged to reach out to their advisers for assistance. Student Affairs will be providing support to these students and may be in touch with faculty to assist with the coordination necessary to encourage continued academic progress for these students. For students who are unable to attend class because of isolation requirements, faculty have many options for meeting their needs.

Per University Faculty Senate policy 42-27, instructors should work with students to provide, within reason, an opportunity to make up work that they have missed, recognizing that not all work can be made up. Many of the tools that have been used during the last year may assist in helping students continue learning while temporarily absent. Providing live lecture-streaming or recorded lectures, though not required, can be useful in supporting absent students; these are also great examples of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in that they can support a variety of students beyond those who are absent (e.g., English language learners, those with undisclosed learning disabilities, etc.). It is important to emphasize that while the creation of these materials is good practice, they should be temporary and not used to provide fully remote instruction to students for an entire semester, as it creates reporting and regulatory issues, especially for international students.

The University strongly recommends face masks be worn indoors on campuses in counties designated by the CDC to have high COVID-19 Community Levels.

Even on campuses in counties with low or medium COVID-19 Community Levels, the University encourages anyone who wishes to wear mask indoors on these campuses to continue to do so.

Face masks are required in facilities providing health care and in other locations where required by law, including indoors at the College of Medicine, Penn State Health locations, University Health Services and other campus health care centers.

Masks also are required for some in-person human subjects research. Masking is optional for in-person human subjects research that recruits healthy participants; for studies recruiting high-risk participants (as defined by the CDC), masking continues to be required for both participants and study team members at all indoor locations.

Employees at Penn State who work in their own individual offices on mask-optional campuses may request that visitors wear masks while in their private offices, and faculty may request that their students wear masks during classes. The University asks that community members cooperate respectfully with these requests.