Faculty member?
Want to talk with your dean/chair about how we can be in-person in the fall?
Here are my rules of engagement:
Want to talk with your dean/chair about how we can be in-person in the fall?
Here are my rules of engagement:
1. I need to hear your assumptions about how public bathrooms (& spaces more generally; but bathrooms are key) would be used. If you haven’t thought about this, you’re not serious.
2. I need to hear your assumptions about whether there would be hybrid (some students online & some inperson) classes. If you haven’t thought this through with pros & cons (research on the topic, anyone?!), you’re not serious.
3. I need to hear you grappling with implications for additional work faculty, staff, TAs would need to do (especially on the extensive margin - i.e., if more class sessions will need to be taught) & how we’ll obtain those human resources given constraints on $, HR (different+
for each type of labor, with radical differences across types of faculty), work-family balance (childcare anyone?) & faculty health. If you haven’t grappled with these issues, you’re not serious.
4. Finally & most crucially, I need to hear recognition that a) this is an extremely hard problem for anyone to solve, b) anyone trying to solve it will undoubtedly make decisions that look like mistakes ex post, c) reasonable people can disagree ex ante about how the problem+
should be solved, d) the costs and risks of any solution will be borne more by some than by others in ways that are impossible to know & adjust for ex ante, probably ex post as well. All those ingredients make for a stew of potentially great unhappiness+
& our only best defense against it is general acknowledgement of it.
P.S. Especially given the last point, I’m really happy to talk to anyone about this challenge. The more the merrier! 😜
P.S. Especially given the last point, I’m really happy to talk to anyone about this challenge. The more the merrier! 😜
PPS. Yeah I know there are other parts of the challenge I haven’t even mentioned
