Fall 2020 Scheduling Update
Posted July 27, 2020
July 27, 2020
Dear Colleagues,
As we prepare for the Fall semester, I want to update you regarding the conversion of the Fall 2020 schedule. On Friday, 24 July, the Registrar completed the process of updating the Fall 2020 course schedule.
For faculty, please check your courses on Cougarnet to see that they are correct in modality of delivery, room, dates, and times. If you see any errors, please contact your chair to seek appropriate corrections. Please do not email or call the Registrar’s Office to notify them. At this stage, we will rely on our normal processes and approval chains to make further modifications to the Fall 2020 schedule approval (i.e., AB forms routed through chairs and associate deans).
For those of you teaching courses or sections in traditional, face-to-face or hybrid modalities, please keep in mind that room assignments are directly related to newly established COVID-19 room capacities that reflect appropriate physical distancing parameters. Each room has been assessed and our utilization possibilities have been redrawn under this guidance. For that reason, it is essential that faculty avoid adding students to on-ground classes without approval from their chairs and associate deans. (Please know that I am grateful for your willingness to help students, but we must make sure that we adhere to the new room capacities.)
As faculty members continue to prepare for the Fall, please continue to monitor your email and watch for additional guidance. In collaboration with the FA and NTTFA, we are developing a COVID-19 syllabus statement that should be included in all syllabi. It will be ready shortly.
Our COVID Core Planning Team continues to meet Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. The Chancellor and I continue to remain in close contact with the system president, the Madison County Health Department, our colleagues at the SIU School of Medicine, and IBHE. We are carefully monitoring the situation, and we are prepared to act in support of the safety of our community if necessary. To be resilient, we must also be adaptable. I ask for your continued trust, patience, and flexibility in the coming weeks and months.
I want to give special thanks to Laura Strom, Maureen Bell-Werner, everyone in the Office of the Registrar and their ITS support team. They accomplished in a few weeks what is normally done over many months. Their careful precision, hard work, thoughtfulness, and persistence cannot be overstated. While they make their work seem simple, these tasks were enormously complex. I am grateful for their dedication to our students, our academic mission, and our institution. When you have the opportunity, please thank them. I also remain grateful for the continuing work of the ACTF’s Scheduling Group, and the academic advisors as we prepare for Fall 2020. Staff members throughout Academic Affairs and the University have truly been doing extraordinary work, and I am deeply grateful.
Finally, I want to thank our faculty for their patience as we have navigated this difficult time, their dedication to the teaching mission of the university, and their creativity in reinventing, in short order, their pedagogical practices. I am honored to be part of this community.
Thank you,
Denise Cobb, Ph.D.Provost & Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
