March 25, 2020

On Tuesday, officials from Denton County and the City of Denton announced a shelter-at-home order effective at 11:59 p.m. today (March 25). The order means that area residents can only leave their homes to shop for necessary items, and it also closes all non-essential businesses.

A limited number of UNT employees have been identified as essential for serving students who remain on campus and continuing critical business operations of the university, and they are allowed to be on campus. UNT Police ask that you always carry your university ID during this time.

As a reminder, UNT employees who do not fall into the essential personnel category for being on campus and are unable to do their work from home - as determined by your vice president and supervisor - will be reassigned to other duties or receive emergency leave. Please visit this UNT System website to learn more about COVID-19-related emergency leave.


Many of our students are facing great hardships as their on- and off-campus jobs are eliminated or drastically scaled-back or their families face uncertain times. Please consider a gift of any amount to help support our UNT students.

Visit: https://one.unt.edu/untcares.


UNT System Chancellor Lesa Roe hosted a COVID-19-related Town Hall Tuesday, March 24, with UNT President Neal Smatresk, UNT Dallas President Bob Mong, UNT Health Science Center President Michael Williams, and Vice Chancellor & Chief Human Capital Officer Barbara Abercrombie.

The video is archived and can be here.


Going above and beyond: Stories from UNT's COVID-19 response

UNT student Kelly Schmidt wants to give a shout out to her supervisor, Brecken Wellborn, at the Learning Center. Kelly wrote the following:

“He is the director of Tutoring Services and has been working overtime to keep all his student employees connected, safe, and up-to-date during this scary time. Transitioning all of the Learning Center's tutoring services to online offerings in the space of a week and coordinating the changing schedules of 10 different tutors and their appointments was a huge task, but he has managed it amazingly well. I think all of my fellow employees would agree that he goes above and beyond for UNT and for us, and that he deserves some recognition.”

If you know of someone who is going above and beyond, please share their information with untpresident@unt.edu so we can give them a shout out.


Reminder: Employees (non-exempt and exempt) who are working in direct response to the current health situation, as directed and approved by your supervisor, and/or employees who are performing emergency response work (e.g. essential personnel) in direct response to the current health situation, must record the time worked on the response differently. Please review important timekeeping information procedures whether you are working direct response or not..


Don't forget that healthalerts.unt.edu is updated frequently with new information about how we are working together through this global health crisis.