[Mathregionals] Prepping for Fall

[Eisworth, Todd]

Hi all,

I wanted to follow up on the President's message today about Fall semester because things are still very uncertain.    There is always a chance that things are back to normal by August, but the reality is we are probably looking at one of the following scenarios:


  *   Online-in this scenario, the university offers a fully online fall term with no in-person instruction
  *   Shift-in this scenario, the university begins with in-person instruction and then shifts to remote/online at some point in the term by plan or by necessity or the university begins with remote/online and shifts to some in-person later in the term
  *   Modified FTF-in this scenario, the university permits in-person instruction with some restrictions like social distancing requirements in educational spaces and/or density reductions for education spaces at the room, building or campus levels

The university has a working group that is gathering data on what is feasible to offer in each scenario, and we need to look at our Fall courses and see what might work in which format.   Associate Dean Sarah Poggione and VP of Research Joe Shields are co-chairing the group.

I'll be working with Martin and the rest of you over the next month to set up a coherent departmental plan for these scenarios.   I think the best case scenario is that our service courses will need to move to a hybrid model, but it's not clear what that would look like.   I had already asked my leadership team to start thinking about ideas for how we can pull this off, but it will take a collective effort

What I need from you now is to take a look at your fall courses and think about the potential obstacles to offering them in each of the three scenarios above.  Right now, the university needs to know if there are required courses that would be impossible to handle.  I will contact you over the next week about your particular courses, as the college is asking me for data.

More information about the university's preparation for the Falls semester can be found at  https://www.ohio.edu/news/2020/05/preparing-fall-semester

Best,

Todd


PS:  Despite the freshman class running several hundred students below last Fall,  the number of incoming mathematics majors has more than doubled from F19.  It's up to 21, but that's a bumper crop for us.


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