Update From the Provost – Letter to Faculty

Monday March 16, 2020 8:00 pm

Dear Faculty,

First, I would like to thank you for the tremendous amount of work you are doing to continue to teach and work virtually. This is, for many of us, a huge lift and for all of us stressful. You have continued to work at making progress and have shown great resilience. Thank you.

As you have heard from the President our situation has changed on campus. As planned, we will be conducting technical trials tomorrow and Wednesday to check our capacity for ZOOM and other modes of virtual teaching and learning. We strongly encourage you to conduct those virtual sessions from your home unless you need to come to campus for technical help. (You can call in for IT help at 657-278-7777.)  Students should be involved virtually. 

We will then have four non-instructional days on March 19, 20, 23 and 24. During these days you may continue your asynchronous virtual classes or you may cancel them to work on preparation of courses.

These changes occur in a moment, as happened for me last night when it was announced that all of us who are over 65 or health compromised (or as in my case both) must isolate from campus. I appreciate what you are all doing to help protect people like me in the population. I am truly grateful for your effort. I am still available virtually and will join meetings through ZOOM.

Related to potential rapid changes, please be sure your grade books in Titanium are up-to-date as of today. We need the grades available in case of an emergency shut-down of campus. 

Please remember that, for the health and safety of our students and their families, we cannot require any student to come to campus for an exam, presentation, etc. (The Faculty Development Center and Online Education and Training have created a webpage that contains testing strategies for assessing students virtually €“ and I know this is not ideal. It is just what we have to do.)

Bottom line:

1. Today or tomorrow post updated grades in TITANium.
2. We may not require any student to come to campus for any reason.

Thank you for your kindness, patience, and support.

Pamella H. Oliver, Ph.D.
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs