The University of Arizona has identified three students who are studying in Mexico with Tec de Monterrey, a student exchange program at the Tecnológico de Monterrey.
UA spokesman Paul Allvin said classes at the Mexican institution have been cancelled, and the students are coming back to Arizona.
In addition, the university has identified 42 visiting scholars at UA who are from Mexico, and five more are expected to arrive soon, Allvin said. The ones who are on their way will be informed about health precautions before they arrive, he said.
Officials at UA have been meeting daily to discuss what they’ve learned about the swine flu and to determine if actions need to be taken at the university that day.
Allvin said he wouldn’t speculate what UA would do if a confirmed case of the flu was found on campus because the response would be based on a number of factors such as if the infected student lived in a dorm.
“We also have 88 faculty-sponsored projects ongoing in Mexico, but it is impossible to know which of these have faculty on the ground in Mexico right now and how many other employees are down there on unfunded service projects,” Allvin said.
A message from the provost’s office went out to campus leadership this week explaining that the university needs to develop a system to easily indentify which faculty might be out of country at any given time, he said.