The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley will give $100 cash to each student that completes their vaccine portal and registers for the fall semester by July 12.
The vaccine portal is a voluntary, private and secure website that was launched earlier this year to organize and record UTRGV’s vaccine efforts, the university said.
The portal asks for the student’s first name, last name and vaccination status.
“We are excited about returning to normal operations this Fall Semester, and we also want to ensure we’re doing all we can to keep our campus community safe,” the official website reads.
“This campaign to encourage students to fill out the UTRGV Vaccine portal will help provide UTRGV with important aggregate data that will help guide university operations this fall.”
The university said the information provided in the portal does not affect the student’s access to campus services personally. The aggregated data — such as the total percentage of who has been vaccinated, whether on or off campus — will be used as the university works to keep the campus community safe.
Students can access the vaccine portal and read more information about this initiative by visiting link.utrgv.edu/studentvaccineincentive.
To support the academic, financial, and total-well being of the students, the university also launched its Fall Liftoff, which will give $1,000 off tuition and mandatory fees for full-time students that register for classes by Aug. 1.
To receive the liftoff, undergraduate students have to register for at least 12 credit hours and graduate students for at least 9.
“We’re helping make the transition to college life a lot smoother with some tuition and fees relief. Enroll now for fall classes and start your university studies with a little less to worry about,” the official website reads.
For more information about the liftoff, visit link.utrgv.edu/fall-liftoff.
For the fall semester, UTRGV will offer different type of classes so that students and faculty members feel safe and decide what option works best for them.
There will be asynchronous online classes where students do not meet on specific days and times, synchronous online where they have a specific class time, hybrid/reduced where some of the classes will be online and some in person and traditional classes where students and instructors will meet at specific times in a classroom.
In Cameron County, there are 258,768 people vaccinated with at least one dose totaling 61.36 percent of the population and 220,515 fully vaccinated, a percentage of 52.29, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
In Hidalgo County there are 507, 426 people vaccinated with at least one dose, a percentage of 59.74 of the population and 432,397 fully vaccinated, a percentage of 50.91 percent.
