On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 11:33 PM Ira I. Katznelson <iik1@columbia.edu> wrote:

Dear Jim,

Two questions and a puzzle::

For the Core, what has been your approach for categorizing courses with no known instructor yet? As I look at the numbers (just 6 percent in-person//hybrid), they must have been listed as virtual. If so, why?

Following a note from Lee and me about the mode of teaching in the Core and the decision you had reported to the Trustees to go all virtual, you wrote, on July 14: "I have conveyed your message to the Committee on the Core and convened a meeting of that Committee. They accept the University policy as you describe it. Following that, I called a meeting of the faculty Committee on Instruction and asked them to consider the decision of the Committee on the Core. They have endorsed it." How does the 6 percent outcome reflect that acceptance and endorsement?

And the puzzle: More than half the courses at SEAS and in Business will have faculty teach in a classroom, and just over a third in GSAS. But for the College teaching is presently scheduled to be 80 percent virtual, and 94 percent in that mode in the Core. Please help me understand this distribution notwithstanding the consistent voluntary policy across the University?

Best,
Ira

Ira Katznelson
Interim Provost
Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History