From: EVPAS Subject: Teaching Modality, International Students, and Speaking to Faculty about their Choices Date: July 24, 2020 at 4:50:04 PM AST To: undisclosed-recipients: ; Reply-To: rc32@columbia.edu Dear chairs, Thank you for superintending the submission of course information and modalities this week. We have now had the chance to review the curriculum as a whole, and we have reported on the modality picture to the provost. That submission bears out what was informally noted last week in the chairs’ meeting—that the vast majority of faculty and instructors have elected to teach online only. There are some notable exceptions—in Economics, and in some introductory languages. We are heartened by this. Around the university, there are also other strong examples—Business is looking at about 60% hybrid courses. Even the Dental School and CUIMC generally, where risk is greatest, have returned safely to in-person clinical education. The provost and many deans had expected that faculty would be eager to return to the classroom if they did not have health or childcare considerations. The policy of voluntary return assumed a level of consideration for personal circumstance that embodied our respect for faculty choice and judgment about their particular situations. But that policy also assumed a level of consideration for the needs of our undergraduate and graduate students. It is with the latter that we now write to you. We have invited back 60% of our undergraduate residential students, and have let graduate students know that they are welcome to campus whenever they are able to arrive or return. This decision has been enthusiastically received by both groups. The fact that first and second year undergraduates, in particular, will be here in the fall means that Core seminars—a key Columbia experience—have every opportunity to convene in person. We have also worked diligently to establish public health protocols for the reopening to provide the safest campus experience possible for all. Indeed, after attending some of the online webinars on public health preparations for the fall, several of you have commented on how your sense of confidence about the reopening of the campus has been buoyed up. As detailed in the provost’s message yesterday, the campus aims to be safer than its surroundings. Our public health experts have affirmed that given weekly testing of students in dormitories, among the many other protocols in place for the fall term—which include new van service being planned for the 5 boroughs and the suburbs—we will be safer in class than at the grocery store. But foremost in the minds of our students who will be on the campus is the desire to have some proportion of their academic experience be in person. Furthermore, it is now clear that some proportion of in-person instruction continues to be critical to the visa status of international students. Despite the reversal of the ICE decision last week, the latest SEVP guidelines from today specify that “Nonimmigrant students in New or Initial status after March 9 will not be able to enter the United States to enroll in a U.S. school as a nonimmigrant student for the fall term to pursue a full course of study that is 100 percent online.” In other words, new visa holders must not only be enrolled in a hybrid degree program (that is, a program with at least some in-person offerings); they must individually be able to enroll in at least one course with an in-person component. To invite students back to a prepared campus only to offer them mostly Zoom classes in their dorm rooms and apartments will be a great disappointment to them; and in the case of international students, may jeopardize their capacity to either begin or continue their academic experience. We discussed in our meeting the question of persuading faculty to consider multiple modes of instruction, and many of you were uncomfortable about taking on that role. Given this discomfort, and the provost’s clear directive now to encourage faculty to come back to the classroom, we will be writing soon to all faculty and graduate instructors requesting that they reconsider the teaching modalities of their courses. But we must request again your leadership in delivering a curriculum that meets the needs and expectations of all our students. This effort can best succeed with your partnership in arranging for sustained conversations with your faculty about the obvious tensions between personal wishes and the demands of our pedagogical and professional responsibilities to our students. Finally, a side note—not unrelated—on the matter of research use of campus, Bob Mawhinney and I will be writing to faculty in each division with more information about increasing the use of offices for research. In that communication we are asking faculty to submit requests to their chairs to use offices and ask you to aggregate these at the departmental level, sharing them with Bob and Rose Razaghian so that we can track building density and ensure compliance with health protocols as people return. These are difficult matters that nonetheless go to the core of our mission. We are encouraged that there is slow yet sure movement in the direction of using our campus as it was intended—for our teaching and research work—even if under changed conditions. Yours, Amy Amy E. Hungerford Executive Vice President for Arts and Sciences Dean of the Faculty Professor of English and Comparative Literature