Discussion: All UConn staff who are not...

All UConn staff who are not student-facing (finaid, admission, dining etc) are also WFH until Dec 31st. And at least one faculty member I run with who is 60% research/40% teaching still has not gotten approval to come on campus to retrieve any materials from her lab. And since all her sensitive clinical data is on an air-gapped PC with no network connection, she can't access anything (useful) remotely. Strange times..

Interesting. UMass has no restrictions on faculty or staff coming to campus to use their offices. But there are so few people around, it's probably one of the safest places to be. I can go in to work and never see one person in my building (though I have one other colleague who uses his office down the hall).

This will all change Aug 24 when students come back. It seems inevitable that cases will spike in Amherst and surrounding area. And I'll probably come to campus rarely if at all.

I hear Smith is doing freshmen/sophomores for fall semester, and juniors/seniors in the spring.

Oberlin is also doing freshman/sophomores on campus, upper class online. At CCSU all classes are online, with some few having a limited in person option.

I've also heard that some faculty (not our department) were directed to halt work on cell lines & related organisms and dispose of them if they were lines that could conceivably be replaced when restrictions are lifted, but they were procured using grant funding, so if the grant funding dissipates, then they're not really replaceable, are they?

And I think offices for folks in the humanities and such are probably accessible - its buildings that have research labs etc that are locked down and inaccessible as there is no significant life safety, EH&S, building systems monitoring etc presence on campus to watch such activity. But this is all hearsay as I haven't been in direct contact with anyone there since March.

UNH is already gearing up for daily massive COVID testing. Starting next week, faculty staff who want to enter buildings need to have a negative test result.

Here's the lengthy agreement all UMass students need to sign in order to return to campus.