Dear Colleagues,
We hope that the end of the Fall Quarter went smoothly for you, and that you have been able to start spending time with friends and family as 2021 draws to a close.
As Chancellor Khosla explained to the campus today, UC San Diego will return with remote instruction for the first two weeks of the Winter Quarter. This decision was made out of an abundance of caution. The latest data and scientific analysis suggest this move will promote the safety of students, instructors and staff during a heightened post-holiday COVID-19 spike. While classroom instruction remains one of the safest activities on campus, moving the students back into their residences after the break will require extensive testing and a gradual move-in period spread out over two weeks.
We recognize the significant time and effort you have already invested into ensuring students will have the best learning experience possible this year, and we sincerely and deeply appreciate your dedication to this work. We also understand that changes to instructional plans, right before the start or in the middle of a quarter, are stressful and can impact not only your work life, but also your personal life. We are empathetic to these impacts and will do what we can to minimize them.
Here is some further guidance about remote instruction during the start of Winter Quarter. Please note that the term “instructor” here applies to faculty in all appointment series as well as to teaching and instructional assistants.
- When scheduling any live course sessions that will be conducted remotely (synchronous remote instruction), please match the schedule the Registrar has established for your Winter 2022 courses. This avoids creating conflicts with students’ other courses and will smooth the transition back to the in-person portion of Winter Quarter.
- Students greatly appreciate podcasting of lectures, when it is feasible for the instructor. This remains at the instructor’s discretion.
- Instructors are reminded that up to 50 percent of a course may be delivered remotely without requiring the R-course designation as outlined in the Senate Policy on Distance Education Courses.
- If instructors have emergent caregiving or health concerns in light of recent COVID-19 developments, they should work with their department chair to submit an exception request: https://aps.ucsd.edu/faculty-resources/covid-19/index.html#Winter-2022-Course-Modality-Cha. Please address questions to AVC-EI Carlos Jensen (avcei@ucsd.edu).
- As before, we recognize that there will likely be instructors who may not merit a standard workplace adjustment, but are still encountering very challenging personal situations as we proceed. Both the Administration and the Academic Senate encourage instructors to continue to communicate with chairs and deans about pandemic-related stressors that are not directly covered by these guidelines, and encourage everyone to remember that we are not yet through this, and must continue to support instructors beyond the specific procedures outlined here.
We encourage you to make full use of the Resilient Teaching and the Remote Instruction resources on the Teaching and Learning Commons’ website. Additionally, we want you to be aware that some campus spaces will be made available for student use to log onto Zoom for classes, to mitigate challenges some students experience with WiFi in their living quarters.
It is our hope that by following this campus plan for remote instruction for these first two weeks that we will be able to more quickly return to the in-person learning and instruction that you had planned for Winter Quarter. As always, we will continue to be guided by the science and our experts as we navigate this continuing pandemic. Thank you so very much for your flexibility and commitment to collaboration.
Warm regards and best wishes for a peaceful new year,
