A Message About Winter Weather and UK Alerts

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Jan. 25, 2021) — Below is a message from Eric N. Monday, University of Kentucky executive vice president for finance and administration.

Dear Students, 

It is important that all UK students, faculty and staff are familiar with the university's policy and procedures for dealing with severe weather conditions. Your safety is important to the university.

This winter, the changes that COVID-19 has made in regard to how instruction is delivered to you are also resulting in changes to how we react to inclement weather.

While our goal is to always keep campus fully operational and sustain our critical missions of education, research, service and patient care, there are rare occasions when we must alter our normal schedule due to severe weather.

In previous winters, excessive snow or ice may have resulted in cancellation of classes and closing of non-health care offices. However, remote working and learning practices in place now due to COVID-19 are altering our severe weather plan for this winter.

The university has worked with emergency management officials, faculty and staff on the following procedures.

Students enrolled in online classes (or hybrid classes whose schedule for the day of closure or delay was to be virtual or online) will continue course work and meetings virtually, regardless of an emergency closure, unless canceled at the discretion of the course instructor.  

Please check your syllabi. Faculty members may include syllabus language during the spring semester that provides guidance for students regarding such winter weather closings during the COVID-19 pandemic, inclusive of the method of conducting class in the event of a closure or delay and of reporting absences in the event of a closure or delay.

For students who are attending in-person classes on campus, UK Alert, the emergency notification system, will be activated in times of class cancellations, delays and early dismissals.  

This is an excellent time to review and update your UK Alert account. To review and update your account, simply log in to myUK (https://myuk.uky.edu/irj/portal) and click the UK Alert tab in the Student Services tab.

Students should note that individual faculty members may also cancel classes when the university is operating. Students should check email and Canvas for notifications directly from instructors. 

Locations for the most up-to-date information from the university during emergencies are:

• UK home page
• UK Alerts web page
• UKNow
• UK’s official social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter
• The UK Infoline at 859-257-5684
• UK cable channel 184
• Other local media outlets 

The safety of our students, employees, patients and visitors in times of severe weather is of the utmost importance to the university. Details about the University’s severe weather procedures can be found at http://www.uky.edu/PR/News/severe_weather.htm.