Planning for the Spring Semester
October 13, 2020
Dear Colleagues,
As you receive this letter, we are well into the fall semester. We have returned to our campuses after months away and we are learning—perforce—to teach and conduct research with the presence and risk of COVID-19. The many months of hard work needed to redesign almost every element of campus life have made it possible to have nearly 19,400 students back on campus, along with more than 7,000 faculty and staff. Because of careful compliance by members of our community with our public health protocols, as well as our procedures for symptom attestation and testing, we are off to a very good start in identifying, isolating, and preventing transmission of the infection on our campuses.
I very much appreciate the difficult circumstances that many of you experience as you have returned to campus while balancing child- and elder-care responsibilities. The complexity and challenges are daunting. What were normal daily tasks are now altered and entangled with the protocols and restrictions needed to lower the risk of transmission of the virus. Unfortunately, I do not believe there is a clear end in sight.
We are planning for the spring semester under the assumption that COVID-19 will still be with us and that all the protocols we have in place will continue, including our testing regimen. The 2021 spring calendar has been set; we will soon announce the extended move-in schedule for our housing units, which will follow the approach we used in August.
During the next two months we will evaluate how our educational and support programs are working this semester for our students and researchers so that we can make improvements for the spring that will optimize our work and impact. I am asking all academic and administrative leaders to conduct such an assessment. In our academic units that should include surveys of students and faculty on how to improve the Learn from Anywhere (LfA) learning modality; I ask that academic units and the Office of the Provost collaborate on surveys where appropriate.
As a result of this assessment, I anticipate that we may likely conclude that it is necessary to expand staff presence on campus in order to more effectively support our students and faculty. To make this change, we will modify the guidance that we issued last June that “all staff should work remotely if possible,” to a request that managers determine who is needed on campus and how to bring those staff back while honoring city and state guidelines about physical distancing. This assessment will occur simultaneously with the review of workplace adjustment requests from faculty and staff for the spring semester. This process, managed by the Office of the University Provost and Human Resources, is underway for faculty, and will begin in November for staff.
It is heartening and revitalizing to see and hear our students back on campus. The buzz of activity that we missed during the spring and summer months reminds us of our mission, even if the density of activity is less than normal. While we have quickly learned to deliver instruction and services in different ways, we know that the campus experience that is an institutional hallmark remains critically important. Thank you for everything you are doing to help us fulfill our mission.
Sincerely,
Robert A. Brown
President