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School Talk

Our president sent out his third letter to the campus this month.

In the last letter on May 19, he stated a commitment to reopen in line with the announcement from the FL Board of Governors that all campus would be open. I though this shift was interesting:

May 1: "We have every intention of resuming face-to-face instruction and some activities during the fall..."

May 19: "The announcement reaffirms what I shared with you earlier this month regarding our intention to resume some face-to-face courses, services and activities in the fall."

May 27: "As I have said previously, we intend to offer some face-to-face classes in the fall."

On top of that, we got an email from the chair that even if we didn't sign up to convert our courses to online, we should be prepared to do classes online.

Based on what I'm seeing here and have seen from other campus, it looks like the universities are going to do the bare minimum they can to say campus is open to please the Republicans in Tallahassee.
 
Our president sent out his third letter to the campus this month.

In the last letter on May 19, he stated a commitment to reopen in line with the announcement from the FL Board of Governors that all campus would be open. I though this shift was interesting:

May 1: "We have every intention of resuming face-to-face instruction and some activities during the fall..."

May 19: "The announcement reaffirms what I shared with you earlier this month regarding our intention to resume some face-to-face courses, services and activities in the fall."

May 27: "As I have said previously, we intend to offer some face-to-face classes in the fall."

On top of that, we got an email from the chair that even if we didn't sign up to convert our courses to online, we should be prepared to do classes online.

Based on what I'm seeing here and have seen from other campus, it looks like the universities are going to do the bare minimum they can to say campus is open to please the Republicans in Tallahassee.

FWIW, my new institution in FL is not following the same path. We got the May 1 style announcement for a plan to make a plan to safely reopen, but we've not received the follow up hedges that you've gotten. Caveat, I am really brand new here and may not be on all the email lists.

I was supposed to be bringing in three new grad students and postdocs to start this fall semester, but we are going to delay until January for at least 2 of them because the logistics of interviewing and bringing on new people, when I haven't even seen my new office and gotten an ID badge, is too complicated. The funding agencies are, so far, willing to delay.
 
WSFCS is unveiling a 'Virtual Academy' option for next school year.
The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education has given its approval to a new virtual option for students for the 2020-2021 school year. The WS/FCS Virtual Academy is designed to provide K- 12 students with a personalized education option that offers flexible virtual experiences that are also innovative and rigorous.

Classes will be taught by WS/FCS teachers unless there is a special circumstance that requires otherwise. In those cases, a fully certified North Carolina teacher will be utilized. While the school day will be flexible, direct instructional times with teachers will be scheduled. There will also be some selective non-core courses like art and music. The academy will follow district grading guidelines. Electronic devices and hot spots will be provided for those students who need them.

The academy will have its own attendance policy and transportation will be provided to the student’s residential school for any required state assessments. Students will be allowed to participate in extra-curricular activities at their residential school.
 
Freakonomics podcast earlier this week interviewed three university presidents about reopening. Boston U, Arizona State, and American U I believe. Worth a listen.
 
 
VT, obviously has a lot of students from the DC area.
 
VT, obviously has a lot of students from the DC area.

Yep. The talk about discouraging unnecessary travel by students seems unrealistic, especially when you're giving them a Fall break.
 
They should schedule classes for 7 days a week and shrink the semester down to 10 weeks,
 
 
Out look not good for a major public university:

 
A few updates. We have a big virtual town hall tomorrow to go over campus policies. We hope to get more information on this. Earlier this week, perhaps the most qualified person on campus to comment on infectious diseases projected a best case scenario of 6,000 new cases a day in the county, but it could get up to 13,000 to 18,000.

Right now, I have 24 students enrolled in a course that's capped at 55. I was asked if I would teach it face-to-face if they capped it at 25. I accepted. So now it looks like the class will be in a big auditorium that seats at least 100 or if it has to be in a 55 student classroom, the class will be split up between in person or online. I taught a 70 student class in an auditorium before things shut down and I think that would work fine for 24 students. I wouldn't be anywhere close to them. Parking won't be an issue. In an out. I may even just teach one class a week in person and do the other class online. If I don't get an auditorium, I may just keep the small class and do lectures and discussions online.

I'm curious what your universities are doing with respect to race and racial injustice. Our department just put together comprehensive list of changes we plan to make. I was also asked to be on a new research task force.

"We are very pleased to invite you to serve on a Task Force that comprises a diverse and select group of researchers and scholars to understand and address the effects of systemic racism at the community, state, and national levels."[FONT=&quot][/FONT]

If the people I think should be on it are on it, there's a lot of potential to do some real good. We have a lot of excellent scholars but for the most part, we're each doing our own thing.

I worked with one of my wife's colleagues and a community non-profit on a grant proposal aimed at improving career opportunities for young Black fathers from low-income communities. The grant would have built on each of our prior work to teach these young men employability skills, identify community factors that hinder and advance their progress, create a network of employers committed to hiring men from these communities, and train the employers how to get out of their typical comfort zones to recognize the skills these men already have at the recruitment stage and help the employers hire, train, retain, and promote them. Unfortunately, only one project could come out of the university and another project was chosen. Getting some seed money for this project would be huge and I'm working on another grant proposal aligned with those goals as well.
 
A few updates. We have a big virtual town hall tomorrow to go over campus policies. We hope to get more information on this. Earlier this week, perhaps the most qualified person on campus to comment on infectious diseases projected a best case scenario of 6,000 new cases a day in the county, but it could get up to 13,000 to 18,000.

Right now, I have 24 students enrolled in a course that's capped at 55. I was asked if I would teach it face-to-face if they capped it at 25. I accepted. So now it looks like the class will be in a big auditorium that seats at least 100 or if it has to be in a 55 student classroom, the class will be split up between in person or online. I taught a 70 student class in an auditorium before things shut down and I think that would work fine for 24 students. I wouldn't be anywhere close to them. Parking won't be an issue. In an out. I may even just teach one class a week in person and do the other class online. If I don't get an auditorium, I may just keep the small class and do lectures and discussions online.

I'm curious what your universities are doing with respect to race and racial injustice. Our department just put together comprehensive list of changes we plan to make. I was also asked to be on a new research task force.

"We are very pleased to invite you to serve on a Task Force that comprises a diverse and select group of researchers and scholars to understand and address the effects of systemic racism at the community, state, and national levels."[FONT="][/FONT]

If the people I think should be on it are on it, there's a lot of potential to do some real good. We have a lot of excellent scholars but for the most part, we're each doing our own thing.

I worked with one of my wife's colleagues and a community non-profit on a grant proposal aimed at improving career opportunities for young Black fathers from low-income communities. The grant would have built on each of our prior work to teach these young men employability skills, identify community factors that hinder and advance their progress, create a network of employers committed to hiring men from these communities, and train the employers how to get out of their typical comfort zones to recognize the skills these men already have at the recruitment stage and help the employers hire, train, retain, and promote them. Unfortunately, only one project could come out of the university and another project was chosen. Getting some seed money for this project would be huge and I'm working on another grant proposal aligned with those goals as well.

Currently I am affiliated with two academic institutions, I departed one in Alabama but still have a grad student fishing up, and I started this month at a new one in Florida. I think I am not getting full information from both institutions because of my transition status. Mostly I have been unimpressed with the University wide responses to the BLM movement. There have been some politically evenhanded statements from the Presidents and a committee or two formed, but I feel like they took these steps because they thought they had to not because they really wanted to be supportive. I definitely get the sense that they are mostly simultaneously trying to not piss off the student and also alumni and parents. The departments I am affiliated with have also been a bit unimpressive. Both released statements in support of black and minority students, but both department chairs needed prompting from one or two faculty saying "you've got to do something!" It was pretty disappointing because in the wildlife and ecology fields are woefully under-represented. We straddle a divide between academic ecology/evolution fields where faculty and students tend to be very progressive (hippy environmentalists Birkenstocks wearing vegetarians) and Natural resource / forest management where faculty and students tend to be very conservative (gun loving, tree cutting, hunting pulled pork barb-b-que eating at every faculty meeting carnivores). Personally I really want to find a way to have minority grad students in my lab, but I am not sure how to do that. I very intentionally focused on having women grad students over the last 10 years because women are also woefully under-represented in my field. My first and so far only PhD students were women, but it is pretty easy to figure out how is female and who is male in the application process without asking too many questions, race is a bit trickier, I think.

On the COVID side, We just received mandatory mask wearing directives and class size reducing directives. The admin at each school is trying to figure out how to host our classes that typically hold 75-100 students in classrooms that have 100 student capacity. They are really stressed because they don't want to lose any tuition money, but meanwhile, it was also announced that 22 students at my old school tested positive for COVID last week. This morning I received a mass email form one faculty complaining about the mask wearing rules and demanding that they give her a microphone or she wasn't wearing one while teaching. I am fairly confident the fall semester is going to be really bad. I typically don't teach large undergraduate classes, just 10-15 student graduate level courses and I am not scheduled to teach until the spring semester, so personally this will have little impact on me.
 
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This semester is going to be a mess. Everywhere. It will be a manageable mess in some places and a disaster in others. We’ve got football programs reporting 20+ cases. How does that extrapolate to the entire community? Even a small university like Wake has hundreds of cases. Upwards of 1000 at large public universities.

I learned after my post above that in-person instructors will be behind plexiglass or have to wear a face shield.
 
how many cases will be tolerated at a, for example, 20,000-student campus before housing is shut down for the fall semester? Or have most universities just decided they need the housing payments to stay alive, and they'll do what they can to mitigate spread and just allow it to happen?

Liberty University says they had zero cases this spring; I thought they had a few
 
Headline in the Roanoke Times last week for article on VT's plans : "...Tech to require students to 'adult in a very different way'." The article is behind a paywall so that's all I've got but it sure says a lot.
 
how many cases will be tolerated at a, for example, 20,000-student campus before housing is shut down for the fall semester? Or have most universities just decided they need the housing payments to stay alive, and they'll do what they can to mitigate spread and just allow it to happen?

Liberty University says they had zero cases this spring; I thought they had a few

I don't know. If football programs are showing up to campus with 20+ cases among 150-200 players, coaches, and staff, that translates to plenty of cases on campus to start the semester anyway.
 
McSweeney's does it again.

[h=1]We Condemn All Institutional Racism Except Our Own[/h]
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/we-condemn-all-institutional-racism-except-our-own

Black people have been a vital part of this institution since its very beginnings when they built it for us on stolen land. While we regret that we did not admit Black people for centuries after it was established, we are proud to boast that seven percent of our current undergraduate student body is Black, and we can’t stop reminding historically excluded students how lucky they are to be here.
Our surrounding community is taking notice of how far we’ve come. And it’s no wonder. Students and faculty take a strong interest in Black members of our campus family — asking them questions like “Do you go here,” “Do you play football,” and “Does Admissions still use affirmative action?” Our attentive staff, from campus police to brochure photographers, is keen to follow their every move. Most impressively, we’re so adept at preparing our non-white students for real-world success that they keep leaving early.

  • To update our curriculum, in addition to Regular History, we will be offering “African American History” as an elective. The course will cover all three events: slavery, the Harlem Renaissance, and the quaint parts of the Civil Rights Movement.
  • Students will now be required to comment on their white professors’ hair and attitudes on their mandatory teaching evaluations.
  • All faculty members of color will serve on as many committees as humanly possible. (#RepresentationMatters)
  • Any and all future grievances related to discrimination will be handled by the new Colorblind Rainbow Center for Campus Diversity. Because the recent Black program coordinator stepped down after signing a non-disclosure agreement, all employees of the Center are white, but deeply sympathetic.
  • Kente cloth graduation stoles are now mandatory.
 
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