May 29, 2020
Colleagues,
As many of you wonder about BU plans to prepare buildings for re-entry, I wanted to share the note below that I just received from central administration. As I shared previously, SSW’s Director of Finance and Administration, Douglas Luke, has graciously agreed to serve as the Building Coordinator for our school. The note below explains this role.
In addition, I have created a small SSW committee to support Douglas in his role that includes Ellen DeVoe, Judith Gonyea, Douglas Luke, RenéeSpencer, Michele Walsh, student rep. Jordan Ahmed, and myself. Douglas and I will co-chair this group and will maintain ongoing communication with our Econ colleagues to coordinate efforts. We’ll keep you informed as things develop.
Wishing everyone a safe and healthy weekend.
Jorge
NOTE:
We are writing today to provide an update on the facilities-related planning efforts that will be required in order to safely return to on-campus activities. Our first focus has been preparing the buildings that house research labs, which are gradually being reactivated through the Research Recovery process rolled out earlier this month. Over the last few weeks we have worked with several of you to identify Building Coordinators for all buildings with research labs. Campus Planning & Operations, in partnership with the Offices of Environmental Health & Safety and Occupational Health Services, are now working with each of the research Building Coordinators to establish building-specific plans for circulation, common area usage, and general operation/logistics to ensure safe physical distancing in keeping with CDC, state and local guidelines. The research buildings will continue to be our primary focus until plans for the resumption of in-person activities in those facilities are finalized, approved, and implemented.
Although we still have work to do in the research facilities, we know that those of you with non-research buildings are starting to wonder what work might be needed in your buildings as we approach the time when staff and faculty will gradually start to return to campus. Therefore, in the next week, staff from Campus Planning & Operations will be reaching out to each of you to request that you identify a Building Coordinator for each academic building. Once the non-research Building Coordinators have been identified we will set up an initial meeting with EH&S, CPO staff, and the Building Coordinators to introduce them to the planning process and to clarify the timeline for this effort.
In parallel to the work with Building Coordinators, our offices have undertaken additional work to help prepare our buildings for the fall. Campus Planning & Operations and other offices have developed a toolkit to assist schools and colleges in the reactivation of their academic spaces. This toolkit will be shared with your Building Coordinators and will be available online. Planning for de-densification of teaching spaces to support fall semester instruction has also begun. Each room on the course schedule will be studied in order to determine the new capacity with 6’ spacing between seats. This includes Registrar-scheduled rooms as well as proprietary spaces that are typically used for teaching. Any questions about this planning effort can be directed to Amy Barrett or Gregg Snyder.
We are grateful to you and your teams for your patience throughout this planning process and for your partnership in these efforts. This is important work that will need to be done gradually and thoughtfully, but working together we are confident that we can safely prepare our physical spaces as we look forward to a gradual return to campus over the coming months.