a couple of updates

[Bill Maurer]

  Dear social sciences faculty, lecturers, staff, grad students and researchers,

  Greetings! I am writing with just a few updates about some of the things
  happening behind the scenes here to support our grad students, to begin
  slowly re-starting research activities, and to prepare for fall quarter.

  First, though, we had a wonderful retirement celebration via Zoom for
  four of our long-serving, dedicated staff members: Pat Frazier, Justine
  Sarashid, Gregory Gallardo and Carolynn Bramlett. Dave Leinen made a
  special appearance, and our communications team produced a fantastic
  video celebrating everyone's careers. There were tears! There was
  laughter! It was a terrific way to honor our colleagues and celebrate
  our community. Happy trails, Pat, Justine, Gregory and Carolynn! Thank
  you so much for your combined 116 years of service!

  Next: By now 52 grad students in the School will have received offers of
  DTEI fellowships or Social Sciences Instructional Fellowships, and another
  group will have received offers of employment to be trained as contact
  tracers. This is on top of an unprecedented number of summer GSR and TA
  appointments. By the end of this week or the beginning of the next, all
  of the School's PhD students will have some form of summer support. This
  has been a herculean effort, from securing the funding, arguing for
  additional summer TAs, determining how best to allocate various sources
  of funding given every student's very different circumstances, and then
  actually onboarding everyone and making sure they get paid. I want to take
  a moment to thank Associate Deans Mike McBride and Jeanett Castellanos,
  Jennifer Gerson, Pat Frazier, Gianna Virgilio, Matt Arias, Rachel Neer,
  Allison Marks, and all the chairs and grad program directors for making
  this all possible.

  DTEI and SSIF fellows will be providing support to faculty and lecturers
  in developing summer and fall courses for remote instruction. The goal
  is to up our game. We transitioned to remote instruction in 2 weeks time
  over spring break, but now we have a little bit more time to make sure
  we are doing the best we can under these difficult circumstances for
  our students. Thank you all, again, for your efforts.

  Senate faculty were emailed another opportunity for instructional
  support this morning. With funding from the Provost's Office, we will
  be able to provide a limited number of Faculty Summer Instructional
  Fellowships. Please see my email from this morning, or email Allison Marks
  (marksa@uci.edu) if you can't find the message.

  Meanwhile, Mike McBride, Holly Hapke, Emily Grossman and Evan Schofer have
  been busily reviewing proposals for Phase 2 research resumption. Thank
  you all very much. Please remember that if you can continue to conduct
  your activities at home, please do so--Orange County is still deemed
  at high risk of a serious outbreak, and the more we can continue to
  maintain social distancing, the better. Those who are returning to campus
  are again reminded to inform their department manager of their planned
  on-campus schedule so we can minimize density as much as possible.

  Finally, congrats to Profs. Alana Lebron, Graeme Boushey and Laura
  Enriquez for winning new grants from the Office of Inclusive Excellence's
  Confronting Extremism, Advancing Equity program! Well done!

  Wishing everyone the very best,

  Bill