President and Vice-Chancellor Rhonda L. Lenton and Vice-Provost Students Lucy Fromowitz will be hosting a Student Virtual Town Hall on Thursday, April 30 for all undergraduate and graduate students in the York community.
The event is a chance for students to come together with York University’s senior leaders during these challenging and anxious times to discuss the path ahead. It also serves as a great opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students to ask questions about the University’s evolving response to COVID-19 and hear about how it will affect their academics, fees and future student experience.
Students have been asking about the pass/fail option, course delivery methods for Summer and Fall/Winter terms, residence availability, ancillary fees, among many other things via social media, on the phone and through registrarial services online chat. The Virtual Town Hall will be a great space for students to hear what the University is planning regarding these topics, as well as a good way for them catch up on items and updates they may have missed.
“I’m looking forward to connecting with students at the Virtual Town Hall. Since we aren’t able to connect with students face-to-face at this time, we wanted to provide them with an opportunity to engage and join us virtually,” says Fromowitz. “We are conscious of how stressful this time is for students, so we want to provide them with as much clarity and be able to respond to any questions they may have at this uncertain time.”
The town hall will be hosted via the video conferencing platform, Zoom. Learn about the platform and download Zoom here. The webinar can accommodate 3,000 viewers, so should that maximum be reached, or if students prefer an alternative, the webinar will also be livestreamed at https://vp.students.yorku.ca/town-hall#livestream.
Students will be able to submit questions prior to the event via an online form available at https://vp.students.yorku.ca/town-hall/questions; during the event, students will be able to submit questions to the email vpstudents@yorku.ca.
Lenton, Provost & Vice-President Academic Lisa Philipps and Fromowitz will be joined by: University Registrar Darran Fernandez; Vinitha Gengatharan, executive director, York International; Ian Roberge, interim principal, Glendon Campus; and Thomas Loebel, dean and associate vice-president, Faculty of Graduate Studies. They will address questions from students. The Student Virtual Town Hall will be moderated by Brendan Schulz, executive director, student success.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, students have been kept up to date through several channels including This Week @ York, which doubled its distribution for four weeks, emails, social media and online chats.
Students have also been able to check for available self-serve tools and resources on My Online Services to get what they need, from wherever they are, at almost any time of the day. The list of available resources is growing daily as new online and mobile methods are introduced to deliver services and resources they need.
All the latest updates, resources and emails that have been sent, as well as answers to frequently asked questions, can always be found on our COVID-19 website.