September 9, 2020
Dear L&S faculty and staff,
You have likely read Chancellor Blank’s message sent a short time ago. We are once again asking for your patience, support and resilience during these unprecedented and rapidly changing times.
Summarizing some of the main points of her message:
- All in-person instruction – undergraduate and graduate – will be canceled on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (September 10 – 12) and will then move to all-remote instruction for two weeks beginning on Monday (September 14 – 25).
- Campus is closing all public study spaces that had been set aside for students during this period.
- In-person research activities can continue, although undergraduates should not participate in any in-person research until at least September 25.
- Campus will monitor and reassess campus operations over the next two weeks.
Collectively, we’ve all worked very hard as a college and campus to make this semester a success. Success is a subjective metric; in the context of an institution of higher education operating during a global pandemic, success under any definition is a challenge. Remaining committed to the health and safety of our students and each other must be our top priority. At the same time, we must be nimble and flexible in how we deliver a world-class education to our students during these difficult times.
We asked some of you to be present on campus for our students – and we thank you for answering that call. Given this operational change, we encourage you, if possible, to return to working from home for the next two weeks to protect yourselves, our students and the greater campus community.
Our dedicated and highly resourceful L&S Continuity of Instruction Planning team will be working hard to assist with these transitions. If you have specific questions about instruction, please reach out to L&S Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning Administration Shirin Malekpour, your division’s Academic Associate Dean, or your department chair. As a reminder, there are several online resources available to you, which we will be updating as soon as possible to address the two-week move to remote instruction announced this evening:
- L&S Instruction: Resources, Policies and Guidance (COVID-19/Fall 2020) includes L&S resources and policies related to continuity of instruction. This will be updated as new information becomes available, and we will indicate the date of last update to each item.
- The L&S Remote Teaching Toolkit includes a complete planning process to help instructors design a remote course or to make targeted refinements to an existing teaching plan. It includes quick guides for online discussions, remote testing, online interactive teaching and more.
- Each department has an assigned “Batch Lead” to provide direct support to instructors with teaching challenges. Please involve your Batch Lead in departmental continuity of instruction conversations. Instructors can request an individual consultation by emailing the Batch Lead contact directly.
- You can access a compilation of COVID-19 related email updates from L&S administration on the Knowledge Base (Net ID required) and campus resources on the Smart Restart website.
We continue to participate in campus-level discussions to advocate for the needs of our faculty, staff and students and will send additional information as it is available.
Thank you for all you continue to do for our students and one another. I wish you and our entire campus community good health, strength and resilience in the weeks ahead.
Eric
Eric M. Wilcots
Dean and Mary C. Jacoby Professor of Astronomy
College of Letters & Science
University of Wisconsin-Madison