The University of Saskatchewan worked on some major projects over the last four months with the purpose of trying to get our international students back to Saskatoon and set up for success.
- USask leaders have been seeking every opportunity to ask our federal government, respectfully, to allow the return of international students. We have done this through many individual conversations with government officials as well as working with universities across Canada to make the case for our students. We have also been working alongside the Ministry of Advanced Education for the province of Saskatchewan.
- In response to the current travel restrictions for foreign citizens and other requirements set out by the Canadian government, we have provided letters to returning international students wherever possible and appropriate to ensure that our students, who were required to be in Canada this fall, had the documentation they needed to demonstrate a “non-discretionary” need to return to Saskatoon for their studies.
- A team of staff members worked to develop a readiness plan that we submitted to the Government of Saskatchewan as a way to demonstrate that USask is ready to receive and support the successful return of international students to our campus and our wider community. We were recently told that our plan has been accepted by federal government authorities and that we are recognized as being ready to help students return to Canada safely.
- We worked through a plan that would provide our returning international students with two USask facilitated quarantine options to consider so that they can meet Canada’s requirement to demonstrate you have a safe plan to return and also so that USask was able to provide supports to our students during their quarantine.
- For our international graduate students, much effort was dedicated over the summer to finding a way to provide you with scholarship money that was offered to you upon your admission. We are glad to inform you that there is a now a process in place so that students within and outside of Canada can receive support from their scholarship funding, regardless of their current study location.
Each time the Canadian government has taken a step to make it easier for our international students to study remotely from your home country, we have been very grateful. We want you to know that we will continue to push forward in any way that we can identify to advocate for changes to immigration regulations that will make it easier for our international students to study remotely in the short-term and come to Canada. We are working hard and we will continue to work hard to see that happen. Your success matters to us and we know that many of you are anxious to return or anxious to get started.