Letter from Mark Largent

 

Deans, Directors, and Chairs:

Yesterday, President Stanley suspended all in-person instruction in classroom settings until April 20, 2020 and asked that faculty use remote methods to teach these classes for the next several weeks. This was done in order to protect the health and safety of the entire campus community. What follows is the additional guidance that Interim Provost Sullivan promised regarding labs, performances, clinics, internships, and other educational activities.

We are now asking deans, chairs, and directors to quickly ask their faculty members to look at the learning objectives for their labs and other such educational activities to determine if the objectives can be reached in ways that could help reduce the transmission of the virus. There is no mandate to move all labs, performances, clinics, internships, and other educational activities online. However, we would like to reduce or eliminate the in-person meeting of these activities as much as is possible without jeopardizing their learning objectives.

We strongly encourage faculty to make modifications that will increase students’ social distancing. Options could include moving some in-person activities online, by increasing the amount of physical space available in a room by adding sections (such as in the evenings, or on weekends), or by alternating in-person meetings with online activities to halve the numbers of students attending each in-person meeting. Deans, directors, and chairs who learn of opportunities to increase social distancing and that require additional resources of any kind should send specific requests to Thomas Jeitschko jeitschko@msu.edu as quickly as possible with the subject line “Resource Request: Labs, etc.”

We recognize that this entire situation is unprecedented, and we appreciate the dedication everyone has shown in supporting MSU’s commitment to health, wellness, and student success.

Mark A. Largent, Ph.D.

Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education
& Dean of Undergraduate Studies