Lots of helpful predictions about what #cdnpse will look like in the Fall from @JLisaYoung, @ryankatzrosene, and others. I’ve been thinking about this not in terms of public health practices but this: what will people need?
1. Immuno-compromised faculty, staff, and students will need support to continue to work or study from home. This may require adjusting which courses are available.
2. Each program should ask: can someone who can’t come to campus still get the courses they need to proceed in their program? We won’t be able to avoid delaying progress for all students, but we should at least try.
3. Graduate students and untenured faculty need to conduct research to progress. Keep their work in mind as a priority when labs, etc. re-open, esp. if there’s a graduated re-opening.
4. Until we're fully back to normal, prioritize access to the library stacks for graduate students & untenured faculty: divide the library into 5 sections & only open 1 section per day per week, so that there’s a full week for the virus to die on surfaces. We can’t bleach books.
5. And of course support them with extensions on their programs, scholarships, tenure processes, etc.
6. If there’s no primary school or daycare, faculty, staff and students with children will need workarounds, even reduced workloads, until those public services are back. We need to think seriously about pandemic parental leave.
7. Some faculty, staff & students may need medical leaves or accommodations because of pandemic stress, family responsibilities or challenges specific to, say, a disability. Be generous. Yes, it's an emergency, & folks are doing extraordinary work. It shouldn't be an expectation.
8. Stop telling faculty there’s tech support as if that will magically move their courses online. The hard part is reframing the message for the new medium. And we need to prepare for various possibilities—that takes time and academic expertise.
9. That extra, difficult work needs to be offset with reductions somewhere else. Give faculty the time to do their best for their students, in prep work as well as supporting their students. Remember, the students' work has been disrupted by the pandemic, too.
10. This may mean fewer course offerings: don’t prioritize the cash cows (large-class electives). Prioritize program requirements and protecting precarious faculty from excessive workloads.
11. The pandemic has already required an interruption to the academic year, and that interruption may be extended into the Fall: do what you can to mitigate the effects of that interruption on individuals' programs, careers, and lives.
12. Reassure graduate students, faculty, and staff that no one will count 2020 against them, ever.
