Thursday, March 11, 2021
Dear DFPA Community:
In light of the Provost’s recent announcement, certainly good news for us and our desires to return swiftly and safely to the classroom, I’m sure there are myriad questions and concerns arising that are unique to our operations in the DFPA. Luckily, we were in the earliest stages of planning to accommodate safe re-occupancy of our specialized spaces, and with our already low course caps and recent attempts to standardize our course lengths into a manageable number of options, hopefully the transition will be smooth.
Let me re-assure you that we’re doing our best to keep all communication transparent—and that you’ll know answers when we know answers. There are countless questions tied to our public programming—and certainly much ongoing adaptation will be necessary as the city and state relax restrictions on public gatherings. In the meantime, we will continue to cautiously plan for multiple contingencies until we have solid information that would indicate we should do otherwise.
Per usual, I ask your patience while the College of Arts and Sciences processes this decision and communicates with us any germane operational direction. We are being proactive to engage in dialogue with university leaders around issues that are specific to our department, and are awaiting response to know the next steps. I would like to thank the many faculty and staff that have invested energies in educating themselves on the unique issues that affect our disciplines. This new knowledge will certainly be employed in the coming weeks and months. Please be on the lookout for further information as it becomes available to us.
Thanks for all your hard work under these uncertain though promising conditions.
Fondly,
