COVID-19 UPDATE 24 March 2020

Kia ora SAE Auckland students and whānau,

Yesterday in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, our Prime Minister announced that New Zealand is moving to Alert Level 3 immediately, and will be moving to Alert Level 4 tomorrow.

Alert Level 4 aims to eliminate widespread outbreaks and community transmission of the COVID-19 virus by instructing people to stay at home and by closing all businesses except essential services. This means you must go home, and stay home. This lockdown period will occur for at least 4 weeks.

As part of these measures, the SAE Auckland campus will be closed from 5pm, Tuesday 24 March. This includes all offices, all classrooms, all labs and all studios. Students and staff will not be allowed to access the facilities until further notice.

We appreciate that such measures are stressful. It is understandable if your anxiety levels are high. However this collective action will help slow the spread of this virus. You need to play your part – please stay home unless visiting an essential service. If, at any time, you are concerned for your health, please contact Healthline on 0800 358 5453. We also advise you to regularly visit the Government COVID-19 website on https://covid19.govt.nz/.

Our focus at SAE Auckland is to support you through this period by minimising disruption to your studies. To this end, we are implementing the following:

The full 2 week trimester break will be brought forward so that it falls within the lockdown period. There will therefore be NO CLASSES for 2 weeks, from Monday 23 March until Friday 3 April.
Classes will now resume on Monday 6 April through online delivery. We will send you more information about that online delivery in due course.
If the lockdown period extends for 4 weeks, that means your studies will only have 2 weeks online, with the first 2 weeks of lockdown occurring in what is now the trimester break. Our team have also planned for scenarios should that lockdown period be extended further.
As part of our planning, we are pushing much of your hands-on practical learning to occur later in the year once you return to campus. That means, over the course of the year, you will still learn the same content including practical skills – it may just be in a slightly different order.
Thank you for all of you that have completed our IT survey. If you haven’t as yet, please do so immediately: https://forms.gle/Gk1KSAD4F99TQcay7. As part of that survey, it is clear that most of you have computer and internet access at home. For the few students who do not, we will be in touch with you to talk through options.
I’m pleased to let you know that our broader SAE global family has managed to negotiate free access to multiple pieces of software for this period. For further information, click here. https://sites.google.com/sae.edu/sae-software-processes/home Please note, the dates on this website relate to Australian course delivery – please ignore. However, the software list is relevant to New Zealand.
Our Student Support team will be in regular contact with all students. This will be particularly important for those of you at home alone. Access to counselling support will be maintained, albeit online/by phone. Reach out to Student Support at any time if you feel that counselling support would be helpful on auckland.studentsupport@sae.edu
IT support is also available during normal working hours. If you having any IT issues relating to your SAE studies, please contact Brad on auckland.it@sae.edu

Trimester 2 Music Production intake

At this stage, we have an intake due to commence at the beginning of Tri 2 on 18 May. We are currently exploring options, and may look at pushing that start date back slightly so that you are able to commence on campus rather than online. We will provide some clarity about that intake start date within the next few days.

Finally, as always, we encourage you to stay safe and follow the guidance of the government at https://covid19.govt.nz/. We will continually update this website, as well as communicate to students via your SAE Auckland email and our Facebook page.

If you have any queries, please don’t hesitate to reach out to the team. While we may be working off campus for a while, we are still here and your SAE studies, as well as your wellbeing, is at the forefront of our minds.

Take care everyone. Stay safe and stay well.

Ngā mihi nui,

Suzette

DR SUZETTE MAJOR, CAMPUS DIRECTOR SAE AUCKLAND