Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us for this
special meeting of the President's Council. Also thank you for your
flexibility as we've changed from an in-person meeting to this remote format.
This was done both to eliminate a large gathering and to make it possible for
more of our colleagues to join us. I should also mention that today we
expanded this group to include department chairs the Senate Executive
Committee and the leadership of UUP and CSEA.
Thank you all so very much for making the time to participate in this very
important conversation today. Colleagues as you know this is a fast-moving
situation and frequent updates are absolutely necessary.Yesterday
you received an email from me explaining that after Spring Break, on March 23rd
all UAlbany classes will be delivered remotely. This morning you received
notice that we suspended classes today, Thursday. This was done as a precaution
after we learned of a confirmed case of COVID 19 in our campus community. This
individual will remain isolated from the campus population until they have been
cleared by public health officials. Please know that we are working very
closely with Albany County Department of Health to reach out to any student,
faculty, or staff member who may have come in contact with this individual. As
we also move forward we are coordinating very closely with SUNY admin. Also as a
precaution we closed the business building today for cleaning and the
building will be re-cleaned, if you will, this evening just to be safe. We expect
that building to be open tomorrow morning for regular operations. It is
critical that we reiterate as of now that our three campuses will remain
open. The closure of the university can only take place at the direction of the
governor. As I said, these fast changing circumstances are going to continue to
require frequent updates, but as this at this juncture, as we embark on some very
big changes, we want to provide the most complete information available to the
people who will be largely responsible for implementing those changes and that
is all of you. In a moment I will be passing the but I will be passing this
on to Provost Carol Kim who's also the chair of our COVID 19 task force and
interim dean of undergraduate education JoAnne Malatesta to discuss our plans
for academic continuity. But first let me ensure you that we are working very hard
and there are many individuals who are actively engaged in this decision-making
process and who are forming the decisions that we make and they are part
of our core team. So today with us we have Dean Bob Griffin of the College of
Emergency Preparedness Homeland Security and Cyber Security we also have Dean
David Holtgrave, Dean of the School of Public Health, we have our vice
president for student affairs Mike Christakis, we have our vice president for
finance and administration Todd Forman, we have our associate vice
president for enterprise risk management and compliance and co-chair of the COVID
19 task force Kevin Wilcox, and we also have other folks who are not
here with us today but that have been informing our decisions, Graciela Desemone,
medical director of our health and counseling services and also Steven
Canard our emergency management coordinator who as we speak should be on
the phone with Albany County Department of Health. All these experts will be
available to answer your specific questions after the presentations and
we'll be taking your questions which can be emailed later but we will provide
more details after Provost Kim and JoAnn Malatesta finalized their presentations.
So once again thank you for joining us this afternoon and I will pass this
on to Provost Kim. Thank you all for joining us for this afternoon's update on the COVID 19
situation. In the next slide just to give everyone some background since last
January or late January we have been tracking the students, faculty, and staff
and any visitors coming and going to and from China. And of course this is from
the outbreak in Wuhan Province in China. And so travel to and from China since
January we have not had any faculty or staff returning from China and we had
two students returning from China from our study abroad program. Because of the
the way things have been unfolding with this very dynamic situation we decided
to be strategic and start up a work group for COVID 19 in order to collect
data and have information available to the President and to the campus at large.
As the situation started to really become much more, becoming more fluid and
more dynamic we needed to then move up to a structure where we had the task
force and this is the original work group that now has under it five sub
groups. And I'll just go through those subgroups quickly so the first sub group
or first overarching is the COVID 19 task force which is on the next slide and
this task force is responsible for overall coordination
of the task force, all communications are coming to the task force and flowing
back down to the subgroups as well as up to the president's office, and our group
is liaison with the Department of Health the County Health Office as well as SUNY
and CDC. Of the subgroups, the first is the campus campus incident management
team and this group is actually a standing committee of the campus and has
representatives from divisions across the campus. They meet quarterly. Currently
they are now focusing on COVID 19 and they are responsible for a detailed
pandemic and campus closure plans for these divisions that are listed here. The
next group is the study abroad academic support workgroup and they are tasked
with finding ways for returning student, study abroad students, to complete the
semester and complete their academic programs assist with withdrawal and
reentry issues and any kind of financial impacts for these students. The next
group is the impacted campus student support work group and they are
responsible for identifying ways to support the current on-campus students
who may be impacted by COVID 19, and this includes emotional and counseling
support for the students and other supports for these students. The next
group is the academic work group and they are working with faculty to move
courses to remote learning platforms and you will hear after my presentation much
more in-depth presentation from Dean Malatesta. And they are also developing
resources for the faculty to support this transfer from in classroom to
remote instruction. Advising will also be going online.
And then the next group is the residential facilities workgroup and
they are responsible for identifying or how to continue to operate during an
outbreak and this is from the residential and facilities vantage
points. The communications to date we've had multiple communications to students,
faculty, staff, and their parents all of these communications are now archived on
the information page which you can find on our front page of the website for the
UAlbany website and just to show you what this looks like on the next slide.
So at the very top you the front page is familiar to all of you but that gold bar
there that says information on coronavirus COVID 19, learn more and from
there you can jump from by clicking to learn more and go directly to the
information page. On the next page is that slide no I'm sorry go back one, I'm
sorry. Yes, University Health Services they have
their own web page as well with many links, many pages, for information more on
COVID 19 and to answer any health questions or any questions that students
may have as well as faculty. The risk management team is now fielding
questions around COVID-19, the director of our campus medical services, she is in
daily contact with Albany County Department of Health. Many of you joined
us on the March 4th town hall meeting and we had excellent participation, great
turnout, and we're actually considering having another Town Hall later in the
coming weeks so but virtually. And this would probably be after Spring Break has
is over. And we are currently having daily phone meetings with SUNY central
administration.
So far what we've found is that communication is key and making sure
that communication is consistent. What we really need, love to have your help with
this, is to encourage your faculty, staff, and students to read their emails.
We have most of our messaging through email, we also are using social media but
because of the nature of social media it's not really providing, it's not a
platform to provide, so much information and details. So really the best place to
get information is through the emails. Those emails again are archived on the
information page, so if you feel like you might have missed an email, please go to
the information page. Because of growing concerns over students returning after
the spring break, we are we are moving now to teaching and learning remotely as
President Rodríguez mentioned, and will be detailed further by dean Malatesta.
Our campus really has very limited facilities to isolate students during
the academic semester. Isolation requires a single bedroom with a private bath and
we just don't have those type of facilities for housing students and so
again limited facilities for isolation. And also transportation for students who
may be affected, or are in isolation it'll be very difficult to transport
them unless they are using private transportation so car, but not public
transportation, train, plane, bus. Also the primary campus functions
are finalizing their plans to address severe staffing shortages if staff
become ill and primary campus functions including food services, animal services,
the UPD, and really they're dropping all of their
non-essential functions and just going to their primary campus functions.
SED and DOE have really relaxed their regulations so this allows us to move
our current courses to remote learning and teaching and we have some reprieve
for the financial aid implications and that we could help our students during
this time. For social gatherings of more than 50 people, local health departments
really need to be consulted and help to guide you for any of these
decisions about cancelling but also my office and the COVID 19 task force can
help with guiding you. No work-related travel is allowed it in CDC level two or
three countries, and also there is recommendation by the local health
department for international non-CDC level two and three country travel to
those countries. But everyone should really take note that earlier this week
many of the countries in Europe did not even have a level, they were not level
one, two, or three. But now, Thursday most of Europe is level two or three. So again
the situation is really dynamic and changing quickly. We're trying to
identify students, faculty, and staff who have traveled to restricted areas
because they have to be self isolating for 14 days upon return to the
country. And another challenge is the shortage of masks, hand sanitizer, and
other supplies that are really needed. There are challenges in terms of the
impact of COVID 19 on summer and fall enrollments, where there are concerns
about this and we are keeping an eye on enrollments. And one of the the
big challenges in the coming weeks is getting the faculty, staff, and the
students up and running in terms of learning and teaching remotely. And
that's a perfect way to transition now to Dean Malatesta's presentation and
I'll hold questions until after Dean Malatesta's presentation.
We are getting the slides up now. I have been asked to work with the campus community on
Academic Continuity as we begin this unique challenge in bringing our courses into a
new environment. So on the next slide you start talking a little bit about the
scope of this project. One of the first things we looked at is how many
courses are we talking about, what do you need to do, we noted right away that
there are about 2,500 courses that are enrolled at this point and we know that
there are about 58,000 seats in those in those courses. Heavily lecture courses.
This is one of the things that we needed to know as we started to think about how
we were going to go after working with courses remotely, what requirements
that we needed. So about fifty eight thousand courses and we have
just about just over a thousand faculty that are impacted, this is our entire
campus community that we're looking at. It's a huge number of courses, huge
numbers seats, so again for faculty and students we wanted to take into account
what we needed to look at as we began to tackle the problem how we're going to
move these things forward. So on the next slide we talk about the leadership
component, and the Provost office, as Provost Kim said, it will be leading and
coordinating the academic continuity component of what we're doing and I've
been charged to work very closely with the schools and the colleges. The schools
and the colleges are developing academic continuity implementation plans.
They are already moving forward, they've done a wonderful job setting up
leadership teams, a number of courses have already been rolled into remote
teaching options. They're coordinating communications both within school and
college and then of course with with the University as well. We're trying to
maintain a consistent message to our students and to our faculty about how
we're going to be moving forward. So one of the things we want to talk about is
the temporary remote learning experience. Not everything we do is going to be nor
does it need to be in an online environment. There will be options for
some courses where faculty are working with students in conference call
situations. We can have students working independent study capacities, working
via email, things like that. The vast majority of faculty will likely move
into Blackboard and into Zoom. So we would like to encourage you to use the
learning management system that is supported by the University. That way ITS
can best support what it is that we need to do going forward. So we are
focusing on using our learning tools. Blackboard is a basic area where you can,
everyone has access to it, every course has a Blackboard shell
already attached to it. So we're building instruction manuals now about how to open
them and access them so that you can upload Powerpoints, lectures, assessments,
things of that nature. Zoom is an interactive, web-based medium
where you can use video to connect with students and connect with different
aspects of your course in a live and synchronous manner. We do ask when you're
offering courses in a synchronous manner so live online streaming materials for
lectures, please utilize your current time zones, so if you're currently
teaching at 10:15 on Tuesdays and Thursdays
offer your synchronous lecture at 10:15 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You can
imagine it could get a little crazy if we all started picking new times.
As we're thinking about the different ways that you're going to move into alternate
delivery of your courses, please remember that flexibility and accommodation for
both faculty and students needs to be paramount at
this point. There are students we understand that willl have some
accessibility issues, we're working hard to make sure that we're accounting
students to the best of our ability. Again both for students and faculty and
so we just want remind everybody that now is the best time to remain as
flexible as possible in completing the semester. To get us moving forward with
tools and resources to convert your courses into a distance delivery format
we have created a keep teaching page which is very much in line with a number
of other universities across the country. And we have different ways to
access that, so we have a planning tool through ITLAL, so the Institute for
Teaching and Learning. It's the instructional continuity
preparing to adapt, this is an in-depth pedagogically based information for our
faculty. It is up and running on their website we will get you that link as
well. ITS has developed keep teaching support page. This gives you access to
all of the technology that we have available for you to use at this time.
So this is where you would go to get Zoom, you can get Blackboard training through
this medium as well. Both of those are exceptional websites for you to
utilize. The libraries, we spoke with the Dean of libraries this morning, she
indicated their presentation rooms, computers, there's access and
availability in the libraries for any faculty that would like to go in and
utilize that space for instructional purposes. All of all of these are
developing as resources have become available we're going to make sure that
we push them out onto these websites for you. And to do that there are a number of
faculty supports that we are also working very closely with, ITS and ITLAL
to put forward. They've asked that you email directly. These are the the emails
that they would like you to use if you need technical support please email
askit@albany.edu, pedagogical support, how do I convert something online, how do I
think strategically about finishing one week, two weeks in a row, what
does it look like how do I convert what I have remaining, ITLAL is the place to go.
SUNY did a webinar last night we'll get that information up for you as well
but they have offered open SUNY resources so
link is there so that you can utilize those resources as well. ITLAL is
offering a number of sessions that will be available to faculty, there are
webinars, these will be happening tomorrow on Friday and then they are
hoping to get one later this afternoon so as soon as that comes out
we're gonna get that information out to you as well. And they're gonna be
offering walk-in hours and additional webinars into next week. We know that
there are a number of questions about lab and hands-on courses. So Blackboard
and Zoom work really well for lecture and discussion courses which are the
vast majority of the courses that we're looking to move in this direction.
However, for these courses we need to take a little bit of a different
approach. Some labs can be moved completely online. JoVE is a really
wonderful medium that we have through our libraries that offers video and
other avenues for seeing labs. We would also encourage faculty to think
about providing datasets to your students so that they can at least
conduct the data analysis from home even if they can't collect it themselves at
this time. We are working extremely closely with the deans and faculty about
how best to accommodate lab and hands-on courses. A lot of really fantastic ideas
have come up out of the schools and colleges so we will continue to update
this information and push that at you as we learn more about how best to work
with these courses. This is just a screenshot of JoVE which we would
encourage certainly any of our faculty who are interested in video, using video
in Blackboard for their distance education please, feel free to use this.
So the distance delivery plan, our teaching faculty and face-to-face
teaching courses have received a Qualtrics survey. Really pleased, about
sixty six percent response rate so far, I would encourage those of you that have
not yet responded to please do so. It's incredibly important for us to
understand your needs as what the survey is really about understanding your
ability to move quickly into this medium, how we can help you get there, and how we
can make it as painless as possible to get you up and running. We're going to
have those all submitted by tomorrow including
what your plan looks like and we should be ready to operationalize by next
Monday March 23rd. When I say operationalize I'm gonna be really clear
it's not necessary that your entire class be ready. We have six weeks from
March 23rd until we reach finals week. We understand that this is going to take
time so we're looking for one week at a time, take your time, develop your course,
use the resources that are available to you and of course I think you know just
to reiterate, this is not how we build online courses, it's an
emergent situation, we do we have to do at this point to make sure we have the
materials and the information accessible to our students. So we're not
as concerned that we have the full array that we typically would before semester
begins. This is a screenshot of that survey, so again if you haven't taken it
please do, I think it's about four or five questions. It's been extremely
valuable in helping us figure out the resources that are necessary for faculty
and getting that up and available to you. There are a number of concerns I'm sure
we've not yet covered today and number of questions that will be coming in. We
use this to illustrate that we are aware of them we are asking faculty to be
flexible and allowing for independent study for students. To provide
alternative testing methods if you have multiple choice exams but you're not
comfortable administering that online, perhaps you can have open-ended questions
using discussion boards things of that nature. Consider different ways of
assessing the the information that you need from students going forward for the
rest of the semester. There's lots of conversations about the graduate level
doctoral defenses, master's defenses, what do we have to do, and there's a lot of
conversation about field placements at this point and what we need to do going
forward. As those answers become available we will get them out to you.
But again the deans are heavily involved in these conversations, the Provost
office is leading leading the charge, everything is coming up through there so
we'll get it out as soon as we possibly can.
So we're we're now free to take any
questions that you may have, if you have any questions, please email them to bszelest@albany.edu.
and we will be taking your questions.
So thank you Mr. president as those questions come in we do have a
couple questions from a recent Rockefeller College and criminal justice
faculty meeting, as well as from a chairs council meeting. I'm not sure who to
direct this first question to so I'll throw it out to the panel. There is a
strong strong preference for not resuming classes until March 30th if we
decide to go fully online. There is great angst about being prepared to do
anything by March 23rd. The faculty have pointed out that there's been precedent
set by several other institutions to take two weeks off to prepare for online
delivery. Thoughts on that? I think Dean Malatesta? So we understand the anxiety
around trying to move from in classroom teaching and the the types of materials
you currently have for teaching and moving to a remote type of teaching mode.
But one thing to consider is that, for example, one of the the tools that was
presented today was Zoom and in that in that platform
you're basically videotaping your lecture. So you could proceed essentially
the way you would have proceeded for your teaching, but it would be
captured, recorded, your powerpoints, if you had powerpoints, or you would be
discussing with your students. And in that platform this can be done and
it would not be as huge a lift. I don't know if you have anything to add JoAnne.
The Zoom account is available to all faculty and you could do it in the same
time zone that you're doing now. It would be much like we're doing, it would be you
speaking into a camera and you could do it live with your students
record it for those students that might not have access to it at that time
and we could get you ready to do that. We can do one-on-one consultations with
with faculty members to get them up and running on that on that technology
within the next couple of days. And let me just highlight that we
certainly understand the issues and the concerns of our faculty but we're
also asking you to think about this course of preparation and delivery in a
piecemeal fashion. You don't have to think about, I have to prepare my next
six weeks of classes by March 23rd. But as Dr. JoAnne Malatesta indicated, we need
to think about this piecemeal so think about preparing your first couple of
days first then the next couple of days and then the following week and so
rather than trying to get everything done at the same time let's do this
piecemeal and of course if you use Zoom, as has already been stated, you just
deliver your class that you typically deliver but now in a Zoom format that
will require not much preparation. So sticking to the online theme, Elliot
Rich from the School of Business asks, can TAS have access to create zoom sessions please?
Yes. Yes.
Sarah Cohen from Arts and Sciences in art and art history, as a student in my
department asks whether all students are advised to self quarantine during the
next two weeks due to the discovery of a case within the UAlbany community?
I think that question perhaps to Dean Holtgrave. Sure I'll start, others may want to
add to this. I think that the Albany County Health Department makes the final
determination of looking into who the student who the person knows student,
faculty, staff member, on campus may have been in contact with and deciding what
communications need to be made. The number of contacts that would need to be
contacted is very limited and I think that's really important to emphasize for
the campus overall there would be no need for everyone on campus to self
quarantine. That would be very consistent with CDC and New York State Department
of Health recommendation and Albany County Health Department recommendations.
So there's no need for everyone to self quarantine at this time. The Albany
County Health Department would be in touch with anyone who did need to
think about such self quarantine measures. But I don't know if others might
want to comment.
And as Bruce goes to the next question, let me just emphasize that we are
working pretty closely with the Albany County Department of Health. We're
calling them on a regular basis, we're getting guidance in terms of what are
the next steps that the institutions follow, and so we are following clear
guidance from the Albany County Department of Health, and when changes
are warranted we will certainly let our university community know about any potential changes.
Zúcar Bercovich of Rockefeller College asks can you please
comment on the recommendations to give to students in internship sites in
Albany and outside of Albany specifically students in the New York
State Assembly New York State Senate, and also will students be restricted from
coming back to school?
Internships. We are working on that now a number of emails
have come in just this morning about the New York State Assembly and
Senate internships so we're exploring the options what might be available.
The internships themselves are separate from the University in terms of their
physical location but we are working with Rockefeller and with the state
and assembly internships to come up with a resolution.
It's also my understanding that Noah Simon our director of career & professional development is convening a
meeting of all the career directors for campus tomorrow morning to discuss this.
It is as much about our students as it is about employers as well who are
seeking for looking for guidance so we'll have more more forthcoming.
And just yesterday I was in the State Capitol meeting with legislators and
Senators regarding funding for the University and let me just highlight
that one of the major things that made me very proud as a president of this
university was the their recognition of the outstanding work that our students
are doing in the Capitol and in other areas and so the Capitol as well they're
following the guidance of the Department of Health, CDC, they're taking all the
health care precautionary measures. So if any of that changes we will also
notify the campus community.
Great. Pivoting a little bit from experiential
learning. Danny Goodwin of the art department
mentions that some activities at studio art courses are not able to be
delivered remotely. For example welding and casting, whereas we are scrambling to
move as much instruction online as possible, he and his colleagues are
wondering what we should or could do in the case of small courses that require
specialized facilities and safety equipment and we might even bring
research into this as well.
In the governor's address yesterday, unless
anything has changed since then which I'm unaware of. Small courses there is an
opportunity for small courses to continue meeting and we were talking
about that and thinking about that with labs, studio art, just came up this morning
was on our radar we will be reaching out to those those faculty, the deans will be
reaching right out to the faculty to talk about how they can best either
continue their courses or do a hybrid. One of the things we want to be careful
of and be cognizant of is that a number of our students may or may not
return to campus so we want to be able to offer all of our courses in some sort
of hybrid mode so that those students who are not able to rejoin us on campus
are still able to participate in the course to the extent possible.
Yeah Danny it's a great question I think one of the things I heard everybody to be flexible
and understand that as this situation continues to evolve that there will be
additional guidance coming out from from both the not only the president, but the
Chancellor, the governor's office, and state ed, so stand by but at the same time
be as flexible as you can and be empathetic to the students and their
needs as well.
So a nice tag on to this comes from Paul Stacy of the English
department who asks, has questions about what is exactly meant by remote
learning and will the university be sensitive to the distinct ways faculty
in different disciplines teach? And he also has that many faculty who
have never, or indeed preferred not to, teach online are concerned that they have
to develop their courses into an online format. Paul understands from what you
said that we can simply continue to engage with our students via Blackboard
or email so long as we are responsible to the course's objectives. Can you
expand on this please?
Sure, each faculty member should be working with their
chair the chair should all be working with the deans it's understood that
there will be variation in the way that the courses are delivered, there by
necessity there has to be. And we're being I think as flexible as possible
and allowing faculty to continue to offer their course in the way that best
fits the information that they're trying to share with their students, the learning
objectives and the assessment that they need to make for their students. So I
would say the faculty members should be discussing this with their chairs the
chair, if there are any concerns at that point, the chair should be discussing it
with the Dean and so on. But every flexibility is being provided and
offered to faculty. This is not an opportunity or or a concern to move
everything into Blackboard or get everybody into an online. As I said
earlier, this is not the way you launch online courses. And for that reason, in
fact, a lot of the material that's being created, the videos, the the help tools
that are being created, are specific to this situation. Having a general "how to
get started on Blackboard" is not nearly as helpful is how do you get started on
Blackboard when you've got five weeks or five days right and six weeks of content
left to do. We're going to be very specific, very targeted, about how we're
bringing folks into these mediums if they haven't been there already, and
certainly if there are unique ways that faculty are interested in completing
their courses all of that is open and available. I think it's useful to
separate what we mean by permanent online teaching versus what I would call
a temporary remote learning experiences. And what we're really talking about here
a temporary remote learning experience is not permanently moving everything online.
Shifting to some questions about finances which we knew would be coming.
Several from Maritza Merritt Martinez in the EOP program. Several students and
parents are asking us if their room and board will be returned given the campus
move to instruct remotely. How should we respond? Perhaps Todd Foreman vice
president for finance and administration.
Sure, my initial response to that is that
the campus remains open. Our residence halls are open, we know of at least 700
students and climbing that have indicated that they plan to stay on
campus. Our resident dining halls will remain open. In fact we're opening more
facilities over the spring break than we would traditionally do. So we're
continuing to provide services for those students in need, so I think it's
very premature to talk about refunds for services that we continue to provide.
However there is SUNY wide conversations about what the implications would be.
Right after this conversation today I'll be on a conference call with some
representatives from SUNY to discuss that further.
Shifting back to graduate
instruction and education, Leslie Halperin of the department chair of
Psychology asks, are dissertation and masters defenses able to go on as planned?
That's a question for Provost Kim.
So those dissertation defenses,
thesis defenses, are generally small type of meetings and so I would say yes that
you should proceed as usual.
Very good. Morgen Salmons asks, of the Biological Sciences, the university does not appear to
subscribe to JoVE, as recommended for lab courses. Access to the university library
is limited to only neuroscience content. Could you comment on the possibility of subscribing?
I had talked with the Dean of libraries
two days ago and I was able to log into the science education piece so it may be
that the mechanism for getting in needs to be updated or I'm not sure where
where that person was logging in from but we will absolutely make sure that
the Dean of libraries has that up and running and that we're ready to go. But I
have confirmed with her that we do have the subscriptions.
We also have a follow-up question from Danny Goodwin on this same topic, and Danny mentions that
in art classes their students need access toanother software program Adobe Creative Cloud and is only
available in three labs and wondering if there's a way to pursue temporary software licenses for
this, and this may be a common theme in other departments as well and will the
university be able to accommodate these types of things going forward?
This is really important for developing the supports for the the faculty and the
units we need more information and so if we can gather that information
and the needs that you have for teaching for remote teaching then take that
information and please bring it to your department chair, your Dean, then we can
get this information and try to help support the faculty so that they can
teach remotely. I think we we still need information first before we can say
definitively what we're able to to support and what we what we need extra
finances for.
And one more question that I think is germane from
the department of music and theatre by Esther Scalzarr, are is they have a number
of small lab based classes such as acting or movement. Many students in
these classes are wondering if it will be possible for such classes to keep
meeting on campus or is that not a matter of choice.
So I think that that depends also on what small is I am not really sure how
many do you know about how many students but at I think that the possibility is
that they could continue to be be delivered and and Kevin Wilcox may be
able to add something.
Yeah and one of the things that will be developed and
already is being developed by SUNY and by the Governor's Office had mentioned
and during the his press conferences, when we if we do small classes and that
kind of thing we'll be putting into place social distancing prerequisites to
keep people safe and that will be done in labs where there's you know maybe
research going on and you can do that a number of ways you can move different
shifts so people in lab at one time, other people in lab another time in with
small classes like that as long as we move it to a bigger room, that you can
put social distancing in place to keep everybody even safer to for those that
have to be on campus for those kind of classes.
Keith Earl of the Department of
Physics has a couple of questions about connectivity and online access which
might be applicable to VP Forman and to Dean Malatesta so I'll rattle off a few
of these questions and you can address them as you see fit. Will Zoom have
sufficient bandwidth to be able to handle qualitative qualitatively larger
load? Not all students will have broadband or Internet connectivity, how are we
thinking about addressing those needs? Not all students will have a laptop,
how will we accommodate them? And students with an iPhone, or a limited
data plan may have yet other challenges. And there may be other challenges out
there as well, but could you give us some sense of how we're at least thinking
about these things and what steps are being taken to date?
Sure, ITS is moving
to an enterprise wide Zoom license and it's my understanding that that should
be available certainly by next week but I think that they think even by the end
of the weekend, I'm hoping. We'll follow up with them and see where that is. They
have, they are confident that it can in fact handle the additional load, they're
confident that Blackboard can handle the additional load as well. In terms of
students and having access. We understand that there will be some students who
don't live in an area with Wi-Fi or with access, but as Todd mentioned earlier we
are open campus still so we were providing
those services the libraries will be open they will have access, again I
spoke with the Dean of libraries this morning and she was very clear you know
that there will be access to computers and to Wi-Fi for any of our students
that might need it. That being said, we're also asking
faculty to be flexible and to recognize if they have a court you know however
works best for their course but if they have some segment of students that don't
have access to technology, and if you're choosing to move your technology into an
entirely online format are there alternative options for those particular
students? Perhaps instead of engagement and online discussions could they do
thought papers or something of that nature. But how can we work best with all
of our students to make sure that we we accommodate all of them?
You know the only other thing I think I would add is that there is a
work group looking at computer ownership, Mike is exploring that, is there anything you want to add?
We articulated in a message that we sent to students today that if they encounter hardship
and you're attempting to signal that through that
financial to outreach to the Dean of Students office.
There's limited funds available through the emergency fund that we have, and those
will be sort of done on a case-by-case basis. But I think important to echo
JoAnne's point about faculty trying to work with the student as sort of the
primary on this before we go that route because the fund is not robust and we're
not be able to buy every student needs a laptop a laptop that's what it comes
down to. But that's been communicated to students broadly this afternoon, earlier today.
Yeah we wish we could say with you know a 100 percent degree of
certainty that we will be able to provide services to all of our students
but this is uncharted water for certain and and we just hope that we're going to
be able to be as nimble as possible and agile and flexible with with with our
students and be able to support them the best we can.
So shifting to faculty. A pragmatic question from Glenn Dean, chair of sociology asks:
Will the administration discourage conference travel within the US during the next month or two?
So one of the... go ahead Kevin please yes. Well I think that's something that we'll
probably get more direction on in the future, I would say right now the United
States is probably equal to a CDC level three country in the eyes. The CDC does
not put a travel advisory out for the United States, its own country, however as
other countries are probably looking at us, and if you look at our numbers on this
situation we were probably a level three country, especially certain parts of the
country. So I would be very wise about where I traveled, but I would be also be
very wise about going into large gatherings at conferences. The first
cases in the capital district came from a conference. The first case in the
Washington DC area that's affecting national legislators came from a
conference. So I would be very cautious about going into large crowds with and
remember it's not just one participation in a panel you're shifting all the time,
so you're interacting with literally thousands of people. That's something I
keep in mind. I don't know if the president or Dean Holtgrave was to add anything to that.
I agree with Kevin, I think we
all need to use careful judgment in terms of traveling and going into large
gatherings. This issue is also being addressed by the associations. For
example I know of many associations that have already cancelled their
professional meetings and so there's this extensive conversation about across
the country among many professional organizations, athletic associations, etc.
about potentially suspending cancelling events etc. We urge you to consider this
with care, and we urge you to stay safe and stay healthy and as we're
recommending to everybody else and so is CDC and the health
department, avoid large gatherings when at all possible
There are a number of questions in my queue regarding planned events on campus and particular
questions about whether there is a certain size or threshold that we, or as
organizers, should be aware of and how might they respond to that?
Currently there's a group that is actually meeting today, as we speak, to we've gone loaded
all upcoming events on the campus for the next anywhere from thirty to forty
five days we're starting with 30 and we'll start to expand out from there and
we will be categorizing those in, by the very question that was asked, by size by
and something to consider is where does your audience come from? All off campus,
mostly on campus, that makes a difference who the population is, whether there may
be folks that are more that are older and more come with health issues.
An importance obviously it's as well, maybe the biggest thing is can it be moved to
Zoom, can it be moved to up to an online format to just remove all risk at that
time. We will be then coming back with the recommendations that are covered 19
task force to make those recommendations. I would also add, as the
President said, a lot of these decisions will be made for us. In that various
external entities will be making decisions on whether they're going to be
cancelling various events, whether they're participating and potentially
with sports without without fans, we're not there yet, but you know will that
take place? We're seeing that in other conferences, other schools etc. And the
last thing is, if you have an event that's immediate like you need an answer
before we get this to you, call the office of risk management, I will
work through that with you, going down through the things that we should talk
about and look at and come to a very rational decision.
Kevin, if I could just jump in too. For people who are thinking about traveling in the United States,
just remember also
that we're starting to see some degradation in the transportation system.
So if you if you think about the number of flights that are being canceled by
American, United, Delta, Southwest, I think one of the one of the parts of the
equations that you need to think about is, will I be able to get back if I go?
So so think hard about that and always have a plan B
and C in your mind about if a flight, if I do have to travel and a flight is
canceled what's my what's my fallback position?
So just go back to the events if you're having an event and that event has some
contractual obligations that have a financial component to it, I think you
should look very seriously at getting out of that financial commitment before
any deadlines pass by which you couldn't get your deposit back, before you would
have to pay somebody a certain percentage of their fee to visit. I think
that that should weigh in to your decision, that and we can't wait for a
committee to tell us exactly what to do, I would definitely be thinking about
that if you have external or on-campus events happening.
I think, too, if you have an event and it does go on and you're responsible
for organizing it, it's really a best practice now to convey to the
participants what you expect in terms of trying to prevent a spread of COVID 19.
So reminding all the people who would be there about hand-washing, not touching
your face, coughing into your sleeve, and then also asking people if they feel ill
not to come to the event, and to try and set that expectation as well, and also
for the people who are staffing that to set that expectation not to come to the
event if they're not feeling well.
Thank you, so we've touched on the health and safety of our
employees traveling, we've touched on the health and safety of visitors to our
campus, and folks in large events. Aaron Major of sociology department asked for
clarification about which of the working groups might be tasked with dealing with
the health and safety of employees. So for example, how to staff offices and
facilities to reduce contact, possible staggering of work schedules, that's
something the governor mentioned in his announcement the other day, or
telecommuting options and the protocols and procedures for employees who feel
that they are especially at risk of the virus?
So I'll answer and Todd may pick up
some of the HR pieces on that. So as far as what committee that is the incident
management team, Environmental Health and Safety is represented there along with
facilities, these are questions we're actually talking about,
we had a meeting this morning on this, and and with good productivity out of
the meeting. These folks are also there we see these
in smaller episodes from time to time anyways around the campus this is just
campus wide at this point in beyond us, and therefore they're very experienced
in that and they will be taking steps. We're absolutely thinking about the
employees, but that is the, that is the group that is thinking about the
employees from that perspective and their safety as well. And we will err on
the side of safety there. Then as far as work from home or whatever I'll turn to Todd.
Yeah I could follow up and echo some of those thoughts. First I want to
say how impressed I have been with our faculty and our staff and the
extraordinary response that we've seen on campus. There's just this overwhelming
outpouring of employees at the University who are concerned about our
students and are supporting our faculty, and our researchers and and you know
keeping things going, but at the same time people have naturally valid
concerns about their own safety and what this means to them. So that is at the
forefront of what we've been talking about what we've been doing. We've been
working with our maintenance staff to help them understand the necessary steps
that they need to take and the precautions that they should be taking
to protect themselves as they go about cleaning the campus and as we ramp up
those cleaning activities. We currently don't have a lot of discretion
as a university for a work-from-home policy, to do something in mass, we are
continuing to have those conversations with SUNY for those that may be and have
special circumstances or may be predisposed to certain types of lung
conditions, on a case by case basis, we can work on that supervisors should work
with Human Resources to work out a plan for those individuals because we do not
want to put anybody you know intentionally in in harm's way so to
speak. So we're working through that, very good question Aaron thank you.
We'd just like to remind folks viewing remotely that you're asked to send questions to
my email address, bselezest@albany.edu, not to the Zoom button
that you might have available on your screen.
Keeping with the the visits to campus theme for a moment Corinna Rips
Shamming of the University Art Museum asks that or notes that they were
beginning to plan for IMF MFA thesis exhibitions for the rest of the semester
and and going forward. Are there any guidelines in place for public
presentations and community access to the campus going forward?
Well I I think, and I'll actually ask Dean Holtgrave to speak about that as well,
the more I will say outside or off-campus people you bring in you
you've broadened your audience beyond our campus and there's greater risk with
that. And those are the first events, to be frank, that other universities, other
entities that we're seeing right now are terminating and looking to cancel given
that additional risk. Cornell is a good example of that, they're still holding on-campus
events but anything that brings in an off campus audience is
at this point they're not they're not holding those. Size would be obviously
of how many people, ability again to keep social distancing, are all things that are
taken in consideration. But it does increase the risk when you have an
off-campus group coming on to campus, it increases the risk for our students, and
faculty, and staff that are here.
And I would just add too, and we've touched on this before
but if the event does go on, thinking about all the time kind of what can we
do in three areas, individual behavior change the kind of hand washing don't
participate in the event if you're ill call ahead if you're if you're sick and
don't just show up, the second area is making sure that the environmental
cleaning that Todd Foreman talked about earlier is happening in that area in
that event that surfaces are being disinfected, and then a lot of things
with social distancing the kind of things like classes being canceled today
is a kind of social distancing but there are smaller things we can do like
not shaking hands at the event, setting a social norm that we're gonna bump elbows
rather than doing that, making sure that you're not crowding a lot of people into
a tight area, that you've got a little bit of space so I think all of us as
leaders in the university are always thinking about what what can we do at
our event deals with individual behavior change,
environmental cleaning, and social distancing and there's a lot we can do
in each of those categories.
And I'd like to add one more thing to that that the
event organizers need to think about is will you have an audience? As more and
more people, right now departments of health are advising older people or
people who are have compromised immune systems that they do not go to events at
all at this point, so you need to look at your event not just from your
perspective of holding but also at this point is it worth holding, will you have
an audience there and is this if this goes to get worse will that just get
worse? That's something else to think about given the effort that you put into
these. Will it be worthwhile at that point to be better to postpone and
do it hopefully when we're in a better time and more people can come to it?
And before you write an email to Bruce, we recognize that this table is not the social distancing that
we were just talking about so we recognize that this is a little different case right now.
So speaking of events, there are two large-scale
events and with captive audiences that I have some emails in my inbox regarding,
final exams and the the observation by some faculty that for
some large lecture classes giving legitimate exams to a large group of
students through Blackboard is going to be a substantial challenge. So has there,
or will there be, some thought given to how we if we could potentially bring
students back to campus for final exams or how that might work. And the second
question which we can pivot to after this is what what are we thinking about
as a university with regard to commencement? And so I would turn to the
large exam questions to Dean Malatesta first.
So we are we are seven weeks away
from final exams which in the way that this is unfolding is a lifetime so we're
we've got a little time to think about that. We are looking into things like
ProctorU and some other software that allow us to Proctor remotely. So if
people did put coursework online, put exams online. For some, you know, large
courses, if you're doing multiple choice exams or different types of
exams, there's actually a lot of self grading within Blackboard so there might
be an ability there to actually not make it as difficult or cumbersome, but we
are looking into a number of options that would be available but it is early
on and we do have a little bit of time to think about how all final exams will
be accommodated.
Before we jump to the commencement question I'd like to
actually read the question from Christie Doyle who makes some salient points
about commencement, and she would like to remind everybody that all students who
are eligible to graduate will do so at the close of the semester as usual and
per the Registrar in graduate studies all students will receive their diplomas
via mail as usual. As for commencement ceremonies this is being discussed at
the highest levels here at the University, within SUNY, and New York
State and around the nation. Christie also notes that the North American
Association of commencement officers has scheduled a brainstorming call for next
week to actually brainstorm about how to solve this. So that is a question I
think we should throw out to the panel, President Rodriguez or Provost Kim.
I think Christie just indicated quite nicely in her summary where we are as an
institution. This will require close coordination with the state, this will
require close coordination with SUNY, close coordination with our Department
of Health and other officials. I think that at this time, given that
commencement is still a distance away from where we are today, we are not ready
to make a final determination on commencement ceremonies. Commencement
ceremonies, although as Christie indicated students will still graduate,
students will still receive their degrees from the University at Albany,
but these are celebrations that are near and dear to the hearts of our students
our faculty in our community members and so we're going to delay a decision until
we've had conversations institutionally, with system, with SUNY system, and with
the state to determine what are the best steps moving forward. But we will take
action so that we are able to inform all our community as quickly as possible
in terms of the final determination regarding our commencement ceremonies.
Go ahead Kevin please.
One thing to add to that to what Todd brought up earlier in the important thing on that is as we do our
planning, because I know Christie's right now very nervous about this, is that
there are you know you when you look at any event another thing about having an
event and we will have to do this with commencement is Todd has said, when do you,
or when should you, make your decision? And that doesn't necessarily mean the
day before. You need to look at your event and decide what kind of you know
damages, financial or reputation, would happen if I cancel that the day before?
And if there is though are those you need to back up your decision point of
when that decision and be made and we would have to do the same the
commencement, because people have reservations, you know and they're making
reservations, travel plans, and all that and we don't want to inconvenience and
we also have obviously contractual obligations that we would have to commit
to. So again that commencements like every other event take those into
account of when you make your decision and don't wait that you think
you can always wait the day before kind of thing.
And I think it's really
important that faculty remember, and I think students understand that a lot of these
decisions are going to be based on on direction and guidance from a lot of
other players. So CDC is gonna play a big role in this, I think the federal
government is gonna start to step to propagate more regulations, certainly the
state's gonna play a role. So this isn't just a decision that's made up here by
the President, Provost or the vice president's of the deans. There there is
an awful lot of direction that that is going to be put in place between now and
and commencement that is going to drive what a final decision will be on on
commencement and even beyond.
So a question for VP Christakis, because this is one of his staff who has
raised this question. But it also transcends across vice presidential and
academic areas. Is, our office is run by Student
staff or largely staffed by students. Should student staff be instructed to
come back to campus March 23rd in order to work and run our various offices or
play the strong roles that they do?
We're open for business and I'm not going say it's
business as usual, this comment came up yesterday when Todd Forman and I were at
the Student Association meeting by a student who's a student employee.
A number of our students, as I think our family and staff know, need to work to
attend school. So there's there's the element of how comfortable are you
returning? I encountered a student, Todd encountered a student who in
effect said I'm going home my parents want me home. They're not coming back, at
least not in the near future. There was a student last night who in effect said that
I'll be back on the 23rd to work. You know in my mind and I'd certainly defer
to others. I think it's a case-by-case situation. The challenge that we have in
several of our student facing units is that the vast majority of our frontline
staff are students. And so in Student Affairs in particular and I think maybe
some other areas we are giving consideration to how we can leverage our professional
staff, who are coming in those in those spaces accordingly.
It may have an impact on service delivery and we're cognizant of that
but we've asked units to try to give consideration to where they can place
essential sort of functions in the event that as I think the Provost or JoAnne
indicated, staffing levels become, sort of for lack of a better word, volatile.
So both with regard to staffing and kind of back to our theme of large events the,
kind of unanswered question or unasked questions so far is particularly with
regards to enrollment and recruitment. What are the university's plans around
our planned open house, upcoming open houses, other visitations, and
particularly since we are now attempting to involve our schools and colleges and
our faculty in these events more, so it's much more broadly encompassing than previously.
So there's three elements to this at least in my mind
I'll certainly defer to others Kevin included on this. As much as we can right
now and as JoAnne said you know some of this
is a lifetime away, we're looking at the option of possible postponement is as
the first option. So as some of you know, if you don't know,
April 4th is our accepted student open house. That is not unique to us, there are
other competitor institutions who also have open house
scheduled for that weekend. We don't know what April 4th will look like for us. We
have engaged our enrollment management team Ed Englebride, Mike McCune our
undergraduate admissions director are looking at what a postponement option
that may modify the program a bit for that delivery.
We're also concurrently looking at a virtual delivery of open house that
showcases our academics, our faculty, our cutting-edge research areas. You know the
visitation experience is one of the primary elements that drive a student's
decision. So it does put us at a disadvantage if we're not able to
provide that. We're also trying as much as possible to monitor what other
competitor institutions are doing. And so we have been in communication as best as
we can around that. As we know information we will certainly relay it
to to the deans and to their faculty who have been terrific partners as we stand
up a more robust engagement of our prospective students.
If I could just jump in though for for faculty and staff, I think there needs to be an expectation
that we're gonna ask them to do some different things. So we may be doing more
personal outreach than we have in the past, that we may have more call trees
that we're asking people to participate in. You know listen, the admissions
process is our lifeblood and it's all of our lifeblood so so we need to we need
to work around this current situation to make sure that we're strong in the future.
One final question and turn it over to the president for concluding
remarks and this ties back to something that was just asked but which was noted
earlier and this is worth perhaps finishing on. Has there been any
consideration about what would lead to a closure of campus? Not
business as usual? Is this something that would be decided at the SUNY or
governor's office level?
And the answer to that is yes. As was stated earlier
the the only person entity that can order the campus to be closed or
authorize the campus to be completely closed is the governor. That would be
based upon a lot of different advice a lot of it coming from Department of
Health, New York State Department Health, CDC, etc. but that's where that decision
would be made. It could come from the campus knowing what's happening on the
campus reaching up through SUNY to the governor's office to ask you know we
have these situations can this be considered? But that's really where that
would generally come from that isn't a unilateral decision that the campus can make.
Before we turn it over to the president to conclude, we just like to note that all of your
questions have been received in my inbox. I know there are a number of questions
in the Zoom platform. We will consolidate and group these questions
and make them available along with responses on our FAQ page in the very
near future. So thank you all who did write in and at this moment I would turn
it back to president Rodríguez for some concluding remarks.
Thank you Bruce.
First of all and thank you to my colleagues who are here to my left and to my right
and who have been engaging enhancing these have very very important questions.
Also colleagues thanks to all of you who are joining us via Zoom and paying
attention to these critical and important issues for our institution, and
for our University. We sincerely appreciate and thank you for your active
leadership and engagement. Colleagues, emergencies, crises, and disasters happen
almost on a daily basis worldwide. And they're not necessary due to our making.
But nevertheless we are responsible to deal with them. Leadership, strong
leadership is shown in the times of crises. And so we appreciate
your leadership in allowing us to continue to move forward as an
institution. You have heard on many occasions flexibility and empathy.
We encourage you, we ask you, flexibility and empathy. I can tell you that I am
very proud of our team who's been proactive, who's been actively engaged in
working with our campus community. Our COVID 19 task force who is working very hard
to deal with these issues, our incident management team, other individuals that
do not form part of these teams but are actively engaged and working very hard to
ensure that we continue to move forward. All of you, and all the members of our
campus community who are vital and critical and important component of what
we do as an institution and how we move forward. Let me assure you that you have
people that care, people that are working incredibly hard to ensure the health the
safety and the well-being of our campus community. Again leadership is more
important now than ever. And we are very fortunate to have tremendous expertise
in our midst on the topics that are most important at
this moment and you have heard from many of them. Colleagues, coordination,
communication is critical and so let's communicate, let's coordinate if you have
questions if you have concerns please let us know. And again I want to
emphasize that we must be flexible and we must show empathy as the situation
warrants to work with our faculty, our staff, our students, and our community
members as well. Again communicate on questions and
issues of importance and as always please consider what you decide to share
via email or who you are copying in your emails. When in doubt
pick up the phone, walk across the campus walk down the hallway and speak with
someone, but be mindful what you say and what you put on email and who you're
forwarding it to. Finally let's all make sure that we continue to treat the
members of our campus community with the care the dignity and that the respect
that we all deserve. Please remember, your words, your actions, they matter and
people are listening and people are looking. Your words, your actions matter
even more now in a time as we are confronting. So again thank you for
everything that you do day in and day out in support of our students, of our
colleagues and of this community as a whole. Again I want to give special
recognition to the many individuals who have been working literally 24/7 for the
past several weeks on the COVID 19 task force and it's working groups. This is a
monumental task that is being carried out with great leadership, competency, and
grace. I want to remind you that the three campuses remain open. Once again I
ask you that you remind your faculty, your staff, your students to check their
emails on a regular basis and to visit our COVID 19 webpage on the
UAlbany website. Colleagues, today more than ever we're going to need to be here
for each other. We're going to need to dig in deep to be patient, to be kind, to
be compassionate, to be considerate, in times of increased stress and
uncertainty. This is absolutely important and it is our responsibility as leaders
of this great institution. I am absolutely confident that we will
succeed in this and I know that even in these uncertain waters, we will each grab
an oar that we can row in the same direction to the safety and the
well-being of our community. So I ask you all to please be safe, be well, stay
healthy, and again please watch for your emails, texts, and the official UAlbany
social media channels for ongoing updates. As the great Bing family we will
get through this together. Again it is during these challenging times that we
must together unleash UAlbany's greatness. Thank you so very much for
being with us today, take care and we look forward to further
updates and communications with the campus community.
Muchisimas gracias.