News and Announcements
Letter from Dean Frykberg: Impact of Los Angeles Fires
Dear UWLA Family,First and foremost, I hope this letter finds you safe and well under these trying circumstances.
We are a small University with just over four-hundred students and performance participants within our School of Business and School of Law and sixty-eight Professors. We think of each of you as part of our extended UWLA family. Some of you predate my time at UWLA and have been here for almost four-decades, others will have just begun their study of business or law this week. Regardless of the length of your relationship with UWLA, I feel an obligation to do my best to ensure your safety to the maximum extent that I can.
The fires plaguing Los Angeles have impacted many within our community. The survey we conducted over the past 24-hours has shown us that of the Students, Faculty, and Staff that could and did respond to the survey that:
56% have been personally impacted by the current fires.
46% are currently under an evacuation order or evacuation warning.
Thus, due to the current state of emergency in Los Angeles County, the unknowable evolution of firefighting efforts to confront these fires and the worsening air quality that resulted from these fires, UWLA has chosen that effective Monday, January 13, 2025, UWLA’s School of Business and School of Law will use our distance learning modality exclusively, all courses that were designated on campus will for the week beginning Monday, January 13, 2025, through Saturday 18, 2025, will be conducted through our distance learning modality Zoom.
UWLA will remain open and will function virtually through Zoom for any student and faculty needs. If you need technological assistance, please email ELVIS@UWLA.edu.
Please bear with us as I am sure this will be a transition with some unforeseen changes, as an example it is possible some faculty will not be able to teach even in an online format due to their own personal impacts from the fires. We will update all through email as additional facts are known, that being said there will be no sacrifices made to your student learning expectations and business or legal education.
It is our hope and expectation that by Tuesday, January 21, 2025, we will be able to reconvene our on campus courses for our Spring 2025 semester/term and our return to campus event for the School of Law, but we will reexamine this next week as facts evolve.
You are not alone. You are part of the UWLA family, and we are here to help you.
Jay Frykberg
Provost, Dean - School of Law, Professor of Law & ALO