Thursday... time for an update!

[Bill Maurer]

Dear staff, faculty, lecturers and grad students,

Only a handful of items for your perusal today!

1) Remote Teaching Workshops: Thank you again to all who participated
in today and yesterday's remote teaching workshops. Between yesterday
and today we had around 150 attendees (plus some repeat offenders). The
recordings and slides are available at remote.socsci.uci.edu, our home
for all things remote in the School of Social Sciences from here on out,
under "Events." Please also note that there is an archive of material
too--all of these emails, plus some sample online course syllabi to give
those who are teaching next term some ideas on how to restructure their
class, if needed, and presentation slides including a presentation on Zoom
(and soon a presentation on YuJa). A huge thank you to our panelists,
Janet DiVincenzo, Bill Branch, Ian Straughn, Simone Chambers, Angela
Jenks, and Louis DeSipio for sharing their expertise and insights.

Starting this afternoon, we are beginning to use a new email list
to communicate about instruction exclusively with those faculty and
lecturers who are scheduled to teach in the Spring. Watch for messages
addressed to TeachingNow@socsci.uci.edu. I'll keep teaching-related news
off these updates unless relevant to grad students and staff.

2) Additional teaching resources were shared by Michael Dennin's office
today via zotmail, as well. We are also awaiting a promised Canvas
template for instructors to use.

3) Research continuity, and research contributions to the pandemic:
Associate Dean McBride and Dr. Holly Hapke are working with chairs
to assess both the impact of the disruptions on research activity and
trajectories, as well as the potential of social and behavioral science
research in the School to address and mitigate the impact of COVID-19. To
that end, Holly emailed the faculty today to survey existing or planned
research related to the pandemic. Thank you very much to those who have
replied already. As I said early on (it feels like a hundred years ago
but it was really just last week!): First, let's get through finals;
then let's get going on the teaching prep; and then let's get back to
the task of ramping back up our research powerhouse, in the face of--and
to address--the pandemic. More to come.

4) I'll be holding an open office hour tomorrow, 3pm, via Zoom at
https://ucisocsci.zoom.us/j/838269946 Feel free to stop in and say
hello. If no one shows up it'll be an office half-hour or an office-45
minutes! Or hey maybe quiet time with a Friday afternoon highball...

5) And finally a big thank you to all of our dedicated staff who have
handled the transition to telecommuting with aplomb, who are carrying on
all the normal operations and planning required of a large organization
such as ours, are retooling their workflow given the current situation,
devising creative and collaborative strategies to address our new reality,
and responding to huge numbers of consequential questions from inside the
School and units across campus--all under suboptimal conditions. Thanks,
too, to all those who are working to ensure continuity of operations
and continuity of our good cheer!

That's all for Thursday!

Bill