Dear Colleagues,

The situation regarding COVID-19 has been developing rapidly. The World Health Organization today declared it a pandemic. It is no surprise, then, that information changes rapidly, and that we all must be ready to deal with emerging realities.

However, all of us on campus must also make sure to include the wisdom and experience of faculty in evaluating facts and making decisions. AAUP’s president Rudy Fichtenbaum has issued a statement on the matter. Dr. Fichtenbaum writes:

“In order to ensure full participation, administrations should share information with faculty and seek input from the appropriate faculty bodies.”

He goes on to write about the need for administration to provide the software and training we will need as classes suddenly shift to online modalities, reflecting a dicussion that recently took place in our campus email system.

We trust that the administration has already consulted with our elected faculty leaders during this situation, and that they will continue to do so. Further, we expect that both administration and our elected faculty leaders will continue to notify the campus as soon as is practical as things change.