Truman State University President Sue Thomas sent an email to students Thursday evening in which she addressed scholarship hours, federal work-study jobs and institutional pay.
Thomas wrote in the email that students with scholarship hour obligations will be allowed to keep their scholarship funding and will not be required to fulfill any more hours this semester. Students with federal work-study jobs will be compensated for the remainder of the semester based on the number of hours they were projected to work.
Additionally, Thomas wrote that students who are working for the University and receiving institutional pay should contact their supervisors if they would like to continue their employment.
“Even with all of the changes that have been made, it is important to remember that our University is open,” Thomas wrote in the email. “We are not ceasing operations and we are working as hard as we can to effectively fulfill our mission.”
Junior Isabelle Albers has been working as a grader for a statistics class as her scholarship job this semester. She said she hasn’t been able to do any grading since before spring break.
Albers said she spoke recently with the professor for whom she grades and they are considering switching to institutional pay so she can continue grading even though she is not required to fulfill any more hours on the job under the new policy.
“I honestly wanted to do it to help out the professor so that they didn’t have another thing they had to be doing,” Albers said.
All of the policies in the email seemed fitting for the situation, Albers explained. Since most people have in-person scholarship jobs they won’t be able to attend to, she said she thinks the new policy makes sense.