Editors Note: This article was updated to correct an error in the original story. Students who are symptomatic can now acquire free testing in the Medical Clinic.

The Eastern Faculty Senate met via Zoom Tuesday afternoon for the first time in three weeks.

Following the approval of minutes from the last meeting and committee reports, Eastern Provost Jay Gatrell joined to give his Provost’s Report.

Most of the report was used to discuss SHILED COVID-19 testing that has been available on campus for most of the semester.

“I want to start by strongly encouraging everyone to participate in our SHIELD testing,” Gatrell said. “We will continue to do the random sampling but we also have opened up testing to anybody who wants to test here on campus.”

He said that getting tested often is important as well.

“As a rule of thumb, every 10 to 14 days seems like a reasonable sort of framework,” Gatrell said.

He also said that testing at the Medical Clinic is now free for students who are exhibiting COVID symptoms. These tests used to require a fee from those seeking the tests.

Gatrell said that removing the fee is intended to encourage more people to seek testing.

Following Gatrell’s report, Faculty Senate Chair Don Holly gave his report. He updated the senate on the actions of the Naming Committee, which met last week. Holly also gave an update on a plus/minus grading scale, an idea he has been pushing since last semester.

The senate then continued an ongoing discussion regarding the EIU Open Access policy. Discussion of the policy was tabled in the senate’s last meeting. They voted Tuesday to draft an amendment to the policy that would simplify the oversight of the policy.

The final segment of the meeting was set aside for Vice President for Business Affairs Sean Reeder, who took over as VPBA in June 2020.

Reeder discussed some highlights of his first eight months on the job, including some developments coming to campus that he said he finds exciting.

“The provost and I were able to sit in on the selection of the architecture team for the new sciences building, which is I think a very exciting development for the campus,” Reeder said.

The new sciences building is going to be built on the area south of the Tarble Arts Center.

Faculty Senate is scheduled to meet again Feb. 23 on Zoom.

Adam Tumino can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].