Catastrophic Event Policy

This policy defines a catastrophic event as one that severely impacts Oblate School of Theology’s (OST) ability to provide services to students. Examples of this could include natural disasters, extreme financial crises or any other unforeseen circumstances that could substantially and negatively attenuate OST’s operations. In the event that, despite preventive measures, a catastrophe occurs that affects regular academic activities, all courses would move online. If courses cannot be moved online, and no other option is available for students to complete their courses, students’ tuition would be refunded for the number of weeks left in the semester. All efforts would be made to ensure a smooth transition to another academic facility, if needed. If at least half of the course has been completed, half credit Page 49 will be awarded. If the course is near completion, the Dean, in conjunction with the faculty, may make other determinations. A primary goal of strategic planning is Business Continuity, academic and financial. In trying to assure that OST will be able to operate academically and administratively after a catastrophe, steps have been taken to try to diversify how services are provided and where data is stored. In planning for continuity of education of our students, OST has attempted to reduce or eliminate single point of failure risk by using multiple cloud-vendor Software as a Service (SaaS) providers for managing student services, Learning Management platforms and Financial Accounting. OST also keeps both hard copy and digital documentation of student records in secure storage in the event of cloud service failure or dissolution.