>> Good evening. My name is Annmarie Cano. I'm the associate provost for faculty development and faculty success at Wayne State University. I'm the moderator with Provost Keith Whitfield. Provost Whitfield isin his fourth year and during this time he has led the way in growing stature in the local community and the world. He's overseen growth and enrollments, and curricular activities and he's fostered collaborations across units to promote a more inclusive experience for faculty, staff and students. And he'll be here today to present some information to you about how the campus community is coming together during this, and talk about how things are evolving with the academic mission. You'll have an opportunity to post questions or comments for the provost in the chat area and he will be able to address them after his brief presentation. We're also going to be introduce Laurie Clabo about public health on campus. So welcome. Provost Whitfield, take it away. >> PROVOST WHITFIELD: Thank you so much, Annmarie. So, we're living in a time where there's so much uncertainty. Things change on a weekly basis, if not daily. Now, if we think about it, I guess there's one thing that's for certain, and that is uncertainty. The coming fall semester will be different than it's been in years past. The other thing that's certain is that Wayne State University will be welcoming new and returning undergrad and graduate students this fall into academic offerings that remain excellent, in terms of their content, and providing a pathway to a degree that can change students' lives. But how will we welcome them will be different. We have already begun doing virtual orientations for students, something we've never done before, and that seems to be going well. In this evolving new normal, there are likely to be some realities for academic institutions like ours, but we are still at a point where we can plan only uncertainty. But if we plan but if we fail to plan, we plan to fail. This is a time when we have to discuss the possibilities, all the possibilities, that might come our way this fall. So that we can be prepared for whatever comes our way. Today I want to share with you some thinking of the academic restart committee has been doing over the last couple of weeks. This is one of nine committees that was charged by the president to think about how we can move forward for the fall. I'm going to state at the outset that this is not a meeting with preconceived notions and fixed, typical, one way answers for exactly our path going forward. Rather, this meeting is meant to share with you some of the thinking that our committee has been doing over the last couple of weeks, to hear from you thoughts and concerns and perhaps even suggestions for solutions you might want to share. So forgive all of the thousands of bullets that you're going see shortly. But I thought that it would be good for you to see all of the hard work that this committee has been doing, and where we're at now. And then get some feedback from you about where we should go in the future. I did want to put up this link. This is on our coronavirus website on the main web page. And under campus restart you will find our committee, its charge, and the membership of that committee. I'll give you just a second. This presentation will be is being recorded, so you can come back and get this information if need be. So let's start with our goal. Our goal is to be open and to do face to face instruction in the fall. There are teams across the university working to consider the challenges that we face and trying to do face to face. There are some who believe that the likelihood is high that we will have to do remote instruction. We'll be monitoring the situation and the safety and for the safety of our students, faculty and staff, will be given the priority in any decision making that we do. We would like to make sure that we offer the faculty and staff suggestions for how to consider in the case we do go face to face, or if we have some hybrid version, or if we do remote, or in whatever case, thinking about some of the possible differences. I think part of this is because I know that from this past spring, our faculty had just a little more than a week for some, even less for some in some colleges. To be able to switch from doing in person to doing it remotely. And so I wanted to make sure, and I think our committee is committed to trying to make sure that we think about the different possibilities that one might think, and to be prepared in any eventuality, whether it be face to face, or whether it be remote. So we want faculty and staff to be prepared for both possibilities. Please have your course syllabus, your course and your syllabus designed to address either of these eventualities. The academic restart committee will be working over the summer to develop plans for how to maximize safety, coordinate variations in delivery, schedules and classroom management as just the starting point. Your chairs and school and college leadership will be informed on a regular basis of the things that we come up with that are new. We'll have decisions that will be guided by health science. It's not going to be guided by anything more than that. You have heard that from President Wilson a number of times. The decision will be based on also synergies that happen between multiple restart committees. For example, if you go online and see that particular website, you'll see there's one on research, there's one on public health, there's one on housing, there's one on finance. I can't remember all of the rest of them. There's one for athletics. At different points in times we'll be coming together to make sure that any plans, as they become more formalized, are actually coordinated across these very different points. So today we're really focusing on just the academic piece. On the instruction piece that happens. Now, before we get to some of the things that we've come to and discussed as a committee, I did want to go over just some certainty of uncertainty. For example, that the duration of this pandemic remains unclear, and the situation continues to evolve. We can anticipate restrictions will be in place for some estimate the next 12 18 months, if not longer. Resumption of activities should be gradual and phased in on local public health conditions as well as institutional capacity. Returning to an active, on campus environment will depend on widespread testing, contact tracing and isolation quarantine of ill and exposed individuals both on campus and in our community. We need to be prepared for the likelihood of a local rebound of infections that may result if a return to a more restrictive mitigation measures and physical distancing for periods of time. Protecting our most valuable populations, individuals who are medically susceptible, undocumented students, students of color, uninsured and underinsured, none traditional students, older students, international students, DACA, homeless students and faculty and staff members, is an obligation that we have that has both moral and ethical implications to it. Some vulnerable individuals may need to observe ongoing physical distancing for more prolonged periods of time. We need to think about that when we think about our academic plans. We plan to widely communicate to students, employees and all campus visitors that meticulous adherence to practices including hand hygiene, physical distancing, proper cough and sneeze etiquette, frequent disinfection of common and high traffic areas, symptom assessment, temperature checks and face covering in public should be something considered the new normal. That is across the period of time we're talking about that again, will be driven and informed by the science of our public health experts. So some safety considerations. I mentioned before about hand washing, wearing masks and face coverings in all public spaces. I know if you're like me, I've got a couple of shabby masks that I wear when I go out, and I have a nicer one, actually a couple of nicer ones on order. But it takes a couple of weeks to be able to get some of these. So think about ordering one, if you haven't already. We'll want to maintain physical distance, staying 6 feet apart at all times. Know the signs and symptoms of COVID 19, and what to do if symptomatic. Stay at home if you're sick, and notify your supervisor. Call your healthcare provider's office in advance of any visit. Limit movement in the community and wear a face mask covering in public. Call your healthcare providers for instructions for returning to work, is one good general practice. And also make sure that you stay at home and notify your supervisor if symptoms develop. Those are things that are just good public health practices and Laurie Clabo is going to be available at the very end for questions that have more to do with the public health, than have to do with our academic restart. But now let's talk about some of the parameters that the academic restart committee has been considering. First is in terms of different kinds of instructional modes that we might offer. Chairs are encouraged to begin now, having discussions with your faculty, about the mode of delivery that they think that they might want to do in the fall. This will be able to provide us with a catalog or a library, as it were, of how many folks are really thinking that because of different issues around their class, they prefer to be on campus, and ones that are opting to be off campus. I hope that the chairs would encourage a wide variety, because one size does not fit all. Contact scheduling offices if you plan to change the mode of delivery. And that's going to be something that as we get closer to the fall, something to definitely consider. I want to take a moment to talk about possible options for delivery methods. One of the things that I just got off a call with provosts, about 20 provosts from around the country and we were trying to make a distinction between remote and online and hybrid. I think sometimes we mix and match some of these things. Remote is when it's synchronous and it's done on the scheduled times that we have for courses. We did this over the springtime. Online, when we are saying online, we are usually talking about asynchronous. And we've had over 400 sections of any one semester of online courses and those might be ones we may need to utilize more in the coming future. Hybrid can take two different fashions. One in terms of asynchronous and having face to face meetings for small labs or maybe small working groups, and synchronous is ones where we meet at a certain time, but the course is augmented by online materials that are supplemented to be able to make sure that we provide the best quality of instruction A. Group work expectation should be clear and consider student capabilities. This is something we're going to come back to a number of times. Because we've seen that some of our students may have trouble getting Internet or may not even have a computer to be able to use and we'll be trying to address some of those issues in the near future. Other issues of consideration when thinking about possible delivery methods include accreditation requirements. For example, some of our healthcare profession schools actually are facing a great deal of difficulty, because they can't have the kinds of clinical placement hours that they need for their accreditation. It's my hope that all of our accrediting bodies will start to become as flexible as possible about those face to face, high touch hours that are typically needed and typically done, so we can adjust to the new normal that we have. Coordination of scheduling courses, if needed to adjust meeting times, needs to be another consideration. Okay. So classroom types. We've been talking a lot about this in our group, and working a little bit with one of the other restart committees, which is one on facilities. The limitations and considerations for class size, if we were face to face instruction, have a lot of different facets to them. The latest suggestion that actually came out is to have classes of no more than 30. So we're not really sure how big in person might be by the time we hit fall. 30 is a current estimate and the suggestion being made. We'll see how that changes or doesn't change as we move into the future. But one of the limits that we have is the facilities that we have available to us. And so that facilities group has been working very hard at trying to be able to sketch out and enumerate the kinds of classrooms that we have that will allow us to be able to maintain the 6 feet, what kinds of things that a professor might need. Will there be able to be a shield or a guard for them in that classroom. The computer, the technology group is working and thinking about those sorts of things. In our group we talked about large lectures should be streamed. If there's a lab associated with the course, maybe that is done in person, but done maintaining social distancing, maybe there needs to be some ways in which there are staggered times when students would come on campus for those labs. But we want to also make sure that students and instructors might have masks. And I want to reemphasize that these are some of the beginning of our thinking and not the end. For medium sized lectures, and for the most part when we think about Wayne State, these are classes somewhere between 21 and let's say 75. We're having discussions under way about the optimal size, but if we were going to do in person, we would need to think very hard and be very strategic about how we select classrooms that accommodate for social distancing with interdepartmental college offerings, there may need to consider different variety of delivery modes so they can be able to work with the limitation and space they may have. If you think about it, if we have a class that usually holds, I don't know, let's say 250, we might only be able to put 75 people at the very most in that. So if we had multiple classes at the same time, we would need to be able to shift around and move around. As you can imagine, there are some logistical issues we're going to have to struggle with and overcome in trying to offer in person, for even medium sized lectures. And seminars, they could be remote or be in person. Those tends to be smaller. And they may be ones that lend themselves more to being on campus. Those could also be ones in which we think about some of our dance or performing arts that tend to be smaller classes, tend to be, that we think about the kinds of environments and classrooms that we need to be able to conduct those courses. Some other design suggestions, faculty who are at risk should be able to opt out and do remote construction in consultation with their department chairs. There should be courses that shifting courses that requiring face to face maybe into the winter semester. One course builds on another. But that's one thing to consider to be able to maybe move some of the courses that are scheduled for the fall into the spring if they really require face to face. Considering making a temporary adjustments, so students aren't adversely affected. Consider requests for student accommodations. This should be done in consultation with your advisor and we have a wonderful way I think it's assist anywhere where students can contact and be in connection with their advisors and for faculty and staff that work for students, we need to be considering the mental health issues our students may be having. Both in terms of the isolation they may feel, the loss of family members, which there have been a lot of students who have lost family members in this situation. So we need to make sure that we're thoughtful of those. And also make sure, as we have the capability to electronically be able to assist students, that we still might suggest that they go to our caps and there's some assistants that's available from there. There also could be some within course sequence changes. Perhaps in the fall we're not doing as well, but we know we'll do better later in the fall. Small group or in person course assignments might be scheduled later in the semester to be done if needed to be done in person. Now I wanted to interrupt because I've only got a couple more slides. But we have a questionnaire that we would like you to fill out. It will give us a little bit of information. The committee will be looking forward to just a few questions on how you're feeling right now about coming back and what might be impediments so you're better informed. Go to www.menti.com and enter the code 59 88 72. I do open I can't see it on my screen but I do hope that's being shared in the chat as well. >> ANNMARIE can you say how long this survey will be available for people to complete? >> PROVOST WHITFIELD: Until Friday, I think we're going to leave it up. And then we'll start pulling the data down so we can know a little bit more about people's thoughts about some of the issues that we're talking about now and some of the you know. It's just three very basic questions, but we wanted to get a sampling of some questions and some comments from your perspective about what you think is going on and how you're feeling about it. So we'll give you until Friday. So we've also in the committee talked about some academic operation suggestions. Suggest for example things that have been going on, which is to have faculty meetings virtually. Consider staggering shifts to reduce the number of people in the workplace at any one time. I'm very proud that the college of education has already started thinking about how they might do that, how they might provide some protective environment for their staff, that work and deal with students a lot. But that's just one of the better practices to be thinking about now. Because logistically it will take some time to think about how we might best be able to make sure we cover and have people there at desks that are there to help people, but to be able to make sure we're maintaining safely. We need to be gauge employee willing in to volunteer to be the first to return and prioritize those with the greatest ability and desire return while paying attention to individual risk factors. You've seen the risk factors being talked about repeatedly. People over 60, people that have preexisting health conditions. Those are people that tend to be at greatest risk. Prioritization of in person instruction for courses with academic outcomes that cannot be measured or achieved virtually, such as performance, laboratory, and clinical experiences need to be ones in our plan need to prioritize and allow to them use the space over courses that can be delivered remotely. We also need the development of specialized plans for students who are at increased risk due to the occupational nature of their studies. These include people like health professional students that we've been talking about. We're looking in different ways in which we could provide PPE, personal protective equipment, and that needs to be both for students and for their supervisors. And we're working on those and I think the public health group will have something to suggest about that as well and you'll be hearing about that in the near future. So then we also have the expansion of simulation experiences to create clinical scenarios for health professional students to practice technical and diagnostic things as well as exam skills. I am encouraging all of our deans of the colleges of that are health sciences colleges to consider content they might be able to get that's already prepared that we could do through virtual reality, for example. There's a lot of content that could be used. So this is asking for our faculty to be as innovative as possible and use technology to be able to full in for some of the ways in which we weren't able to do because we may not be in person. The development of specialized plans for courses and instruction that do not permit physical distancing involve activity of higher risk, like dance and theater and performing arts, the college of fine performing and communication have been doing a fantastic job of trying to do innovative ways to be able to work with students that need to do presentations of a dance or to be able to do auditions for music or things. But I think it's going to require us to continue to be innovative and thoughtful about ways in which we can do that. Just in case we are not able to be back in person fully, or that we need to have limits on those. Development of attendance and excuse policies that acknowledge that students that support our students who might become ill without creating barriers and requiring unnecessary visits to health facilities for documentation of illness needs to be part of what our plan is. Establish mechanisms to faculty student communication regarding health status and any changes in their ability to complete course work. This is something that the academic restart committee and the public health committee will be working together on, to be able to provide. And so you'll be seeing that. We'll make that available in the coming months. Identification of resources for students with learning disabilities or difficulties with learning platforms is something that our technology committee is thinking about as well as our student success members of the academic committee. So those were all of the presentations or all the slides that I had to share. And it took me just about as long as I thought it was going to take. I think that now I will turn it over to our moderator, Annmarie, and see if you have some questions for me and if they are public health ones I'm going to defer to Laurie Clabo the chair of the public health committee and we can go from there. Annmarie? >> ANNMARIE: We had a lot of questions coming in, as we would expect. One of the first set of questions has to do with student participation and student opinions and attitudes about restarting. A student on the committee and two, what are students being asked about reopening classrooms, virtual hybrid instruction and so on? >> PROVOST WHITFIELD: Well, that's so interesting. I guess we were thinking like you all, because that's part of the questionnaire that's available. So please take a moment and try to fill that out. Back to the first part of the question about students being involved, yes they are. We have representatives that were facilitated, their collection was facilitated by the student senate and we have both a represent of the graduate students as well as undergraduates who are really giving us some interesting insights about what's important and the kinds of issues and even when we just talk about some of these issues. Because we haven't gotten to making any sorts of policies. We just wanted to think about all the things we need to consider. And they're really helping us think through that. So I'm hoping that we have some other ways, maybe in the summertime, just pay attention to the COVID website. If we might have another one of these or another way we can get some student input. When things become a little bit more formalized. I do want to make the point of saying if you think about time, we've got three months, relatively speaking, until the beginning of class in the fall. As it's scheduled. If you think about it, let's go back three months, back three months we weren't even on lockdown yet. So we're in an interesting time and there still is time to be able to make some adjustments. I think some of what you saw today was particularly important. Because we want to make sure that our professors have as much time as possible to be able to prepare for whatever eventuality we may get to. >> ANNMARIE: So you had just mentioned quickly things are moving. And there is a question about articles in the Chronicle and in the New York Times about Wayne State being fully online. These were articles that appeared I think a few weeks ago. I was wondering if you could say anything about what is being broadcasted to these other entities or publications. >> PROVOST WHITFIELD: Sure. I'll tell you that there's two things that I struggle with that. I did read the New York Times piece and what it says, it says something like smaller schools like Wayne State, okay. Error in reporting. We're not one of the smaller schools, we're one of the larger schools. We're not part of a system because they were talking about the California state system that's decided already they're going to go completely remotely. And so and I do struggle a bit again with that language about online versus remote. I think when some of that came out in the Chronicle, that was at least two weeks ago, and I think at that time we were thinking about we were going to go remote. But that decision is not being made. It's being made based on what the science is going to look like. The president has shared with me that he really does think there's a great likelihood that we'll need to do a lot of our instruction remotely. Laurie, were you going to add something like that? >> LAURIE: I was. Thanks, Provost Whitfield. It's important for us to make sure that the campus community is aware that President Wilson has charged us to be certain that the decisions that we make about how broadly the campus is open and when are fully based in the best science. And we know that the science around COVID 19 is not existing science. It's emerging science. And that is why there is a public health subcommittee which consists of many of the infectious disease experts on campus, as well as representatives from the campus health center, who will be a hub for healthcare for our campus community. And we are following that recommendations of a variety of bodies, including and starting with the CDC, but also the American college health organization, and Provost Whitfield mentioned the number about on campus classes in the initial phase, no larger than 30 people with social distancing. So I think that one of the frustrations for all of us, and one of the great things in the provost title was is this is an era of uncertainty. That decisions that would be articulated today may not be applicable in the fall. That we're going to have to be a nimble campus community that responds to emerging evidence. >> ANNMARIE: Dean Clabo, there's a few questions about the public health issues. I think this is a great time to ask those. One question has to do with the staff that does deep cleans the buildings, has there been discussion about the kinds of training that would go into that and the practice of that? >> Dean CLABO. . I can address that group specifically and a plan for campus wide education. There is as the provost mentioned a facilities restart committee that is working with the needs around cleaning and supplies that buildings will need to be able to open safely, including hand sanitizer stations and wipes and all of the things that we know are going to be an important part of the infrastructure to support restart of any size. And that that education is ongoing. The public health committee is working with the facilities committee to make sure that folks are properly prepared to do that very important work. And the other thing that public health committee is doing is gathering a series of educational resources that will be available for a variety of different groups, as the time for them to return to campus emerges. So for staff, for faculty. For students and specifically at some point, for students in residential life. All of whom have a rit of different educational needs. Things like simply how to wear a mask, how to care for a mask. Those are things that many of us in health professions world take for granted. But there is an important way to Don and doff a mask safely and to be able to care for that mask over time so that it can be used safely. And we see educational modules that with the provost's support will be available online for folks to complete prior to returning to campus. A. >> ANNMARIE you make it sound so fun. Donning and doffing a mask. >> PROVOST WHITFIELD: If I can jump in too. I like what Dean Clabo has been saying and there's an important piece I want us to start thinking about it now. When we're socially distant from one another we've for gotten what it means to be warrior strong and what it means to be a community. It means that all of us are going to take responsibility that means our environment is actually clean. There's going to be some resources for people to be able to wipe down desks in between classes. That's a logistical piece that faculty and students will be able to participate to help make our environment one that's actually safe. I want to put that out there that that could be something you'll see in the future as well. I encourage everyone to want to be a part of making our community safe. >> ANNMARIE: We have another public health related question which is from an out of state student. If they're currently quarantining at home and they would like to return back to Michigan to be here, if classes are at any point in person, how do they approach that? When will they learn about how they should do that properly? >> PROVOST WHITFIELD: I knew we were getting those tough questions. There is no fixed timeline. But I can tell you that several of the chairs and I have been talking and saying that we think there's a couple of guidepost dates. One of them is June 1st, so I hope we can have a pretty significant update on where we stand on June 1st, and July 1st, I think going into the fall, we'll have hopefully a pretty good view of what it looks like. If you're an out of state student and you live in the dorms, I would suggest you put down your deposit just in case. We will make sure that students can get them back if we change that policy. For those of you who may be out of state and thinking that you might want to stay out of state, really look at some of the online offerings. We offer some good content online. And that might be an option for you in addition to remote classes that you fill in to make sure that you are continuing to progress towards a degree. I think that's one of the things that the academic committee has been very concerned about in all of our conversation, is that we have made such great strides in terms of student success, and that we want to make sure that we have all of the structures to be able to support you, continuing your pathway to a degree. So think about those as options. And whether you're out of of state or in state. Stay tuned because we don't want to make any decisions too early and make it so we have to flip flop and go back and forth. We're still three months out, but we're already considering these things and making sure that our faculty and instructional staff are considering the possibilities of what might be best so we can put together logistically something that allows if we're going to have some on campus, to be safe on campus and for things to be able to work well that way. So. >> ANNMARIE: You mentioned earlier that there are many different committees as part of the large restart. And we're here having the town hall about academic affairs. Can you say something about what the facilities committee, their scope of work? Because we are getting some questions about ventilation and plumbing and those kinds of things, which are related to the academic mission, but really being taken care of in some of these other committees. >> PROVOST WHITFIELD: Laurie may be able to add to this point. But that's what's being looked at. And actually being those there are some staff members that are already looking at those buildings and making sure that when we bring them back online fully that they're going to be safe. There's lots of different things that happen to buildings when they just sit. So we want to make sure they are safe. So that is that facilities group that's looking at that. But I believe that they've already been having some cross conversations with the public health group, just to make sure that whatever testing of I think I saw something about ventilation and about water which has been an issue in the past, that we're going to start gearing up on looking at those things in the short run so that if we get to the possibility of needing to have them up and online in the fall, that they'll be ready to go. Because sometimes it can take a little bit of time. >> LAURIE: And I think what's important for people is to be able to look at the Wayne.edu/coronavirus website. Click on restart. And on restart it lists each of the nine subcommittees, along with each committee's charge so people have an understanding of the role of each of the subcommittees and list the members of each of the subcommittees as well. >> ANNMARIE: Great, thank you. There appears to be a lot of conversation within Wayne State, lots of different people involved. We have a question here about whether we are talking to other schools who are planning to go in person in the fall, and what are we learning from other institutions. >> PROVOST WHITFIELD: Yes. That's one of the strengths of being in the state of Michigan is there are a number of different associations that interconnect our communities. The Michigan Association of State Universities. We have a couple of different people on a couple of different communities that are talking about practices that go on trying to find out when a governor has different orders, trying to interpret those trying to make sure we're doing them. Even in terms of some of the I'm trying to think of the money that we got because I didn't get any of it so I don't know what the name of it is. >> CARES. >> PROVOST WHITFIELD: Thank you, the CARES money. And how to do that and make sure we're doing it in a way that was intended. So yes, we do talk to them. There's even for our research enterprise, there's the urban research council, the URC, where we're talking about some of the best practices for getting research up and started again and how to do it in a phased way that's safe. How do we think about maintaining our vivariums and our animal facilities. Yes, we do coordinate. Let me not say coordinate. We do communicate. We are a different school. And for many good reasons and actually beneficial reasons, we're a different kind of school. So we may make decisions that you'll see are different from the decisions that are made by other schools. If you look at the University of Michigan, they have a significant out of state population. I think it's half their students, maybe a bit higher than this. When they think about how they're going to bring students back and how they're going to make decisions about enrolling students. It's different from ours because we tend to have about 3500 beds in terms of having an on campus presence. How we manage, how we might have them, people safely in terms of our dorms is going to be very different from how they think about things. But I can tell you, our president is a physician, as you've heard from Laurie, there's an incredible committee of public health experts. We use health science to drive what our decisions are. And if people don't if you don't see complete overlap between the two, I don't know anything about what they're doing, but I know what we're doing. We're basing it on the health science. >> LAURIE: And I would say that in terms of coordination, remember that the CDC has recommendations for colleges and universities nationally in terms of reopening. And the American College Health Organization has issued a series of recommendations. And then as Provost Whitfield mentioned, the president has charged us with monitoring not just national data on prevalence and incidence in our community, but also a plan for monitoring campus wide data. So we have access to state data, to Detroit data, to zip code data, and we will build a base of campus related data as we return to campus so that we can also make wise decisions about when or if the time comes to become more restrictive again, in terms of our campus activity. No one is suggesting that there will be a day when they flip a switch and everybody, 30,000 wide returns to campus en mass. That this is a much more reasoned, science informed decision, that will happen over time and as the provost has mentioned we may need to titrate back and forth between the larger campus presence and a smaller campus presence but we'll do it in a way that is first and foremost based on the safety of our campus community. >> ANNMARIE: Great. We have a few questions about tuition. And so there have been questions and actually newspaper articles about the same kind of question. If learning continues to be remote, will there be any discussion about reducing tuition, or if it all became online. And for students who are out of state but doing everything online, is there will there be some discussion about charging them a different rate rather than out of state rates. >> PROVOST WHITFIELD: I want that student to write me about the out of state write. You can contact me at provost@Wayne.edu. My assumption is because if you are out of state, you are basically staying in place, we should be charging you the in state rate. Please write me and I'll try and see if we can get some clarity on that. As for the difference in charging tuition, you know, tuition gets paid because of the instruction that we provide. So we're still providing that instruction. I mentioned earlier that I was on a call with about 20 other provosts nationally and I thought it was interesting for many schools, online courses actually are charged a premium. One school was saying they charge about an extra $100 a credit hour because of the additional support that online courses actually need. So in some ways we actually give a benefit of that. We're not charging extra, because of online courses. And with the remote you can talk to your faculty. That wasn't an easy lift for them to be able to do that. So you know, I know that people are think about tuition and are price conscious, but for the tuition that you pay, our faculty and staff are committed to making sure that you get a really good quality education and instruction. And I think that it's worth every penny. So to that point, I would just say that our plans right now are to stay at the rate that we're at. And let me be clear about that. To not charge any different for the different types of instruction that we give. >> ANNMARIE: We have questions about faculty and staff. We've talked about students and student facing sorts of things. But what kinds of provisions will be made for faculty and staff returning to campus? Will that be a similar process where it will be a phased in process? As Dean Clabo talked about, it's not like everyone is going to rush the campus all at once. Is that also true for faculty and staff? >> PROVOST WHITFIELD: And I really want Laurie to add to whatever I have to contribute to this point. You know, we are governed by regulations that come from the state. And so as you know, I want to say it's still the 15th, isn't it? She didn't extend it to the 28 it is to the 28th. So until the 28th, we're still on our isolation piece of it. And when we get closer to that date, if it looks like it's going to be lifted, because usually we get some preliminary sorts of indications. One of the things that is I think it is indicative of the leader that our president is, he's on one of the governor's health task forces that makes decisions about returning to work and when safety is and interpreting data as Laurie was mentioning. Hopefully we'll get an indication of that, and we'll have a plan of how to phase back in people to the campus. It's one of the things that all of the deans have been talking about and thinking about. Is how they'll bring people back, who they would want to bring back first and try to bring them back slowly and make sure we don't have to bring back somebody who doesn't have to be there to be able to keep our operations running. >> LAURIE: And I would just add to the provost's comments that there is a campus safety strategy that is being proposed that's based in a number of things. And I see some questions about contact tracing, for example. So the essential infrastructure for us to be able to return to campus at any scale is that we have a widespread and well defined testing strategy; that we have daily symptom monitoring for everyone who's on campus; that we have a system of contact tracing, and we have the advantage of having a campus health center. And there is a national model for the number of contact tracers that you need per a certain population. And our current plan is to train three times the recommended number of contact tracers so we can do really careful surveillance of the campus community of symptoms or incidents of disease. We'll also test for seroprevalence so we know that in a smaller sample about how much exposure exists on campus. And all of that information will allow us to, as a campus, make the best decisions. Again, about becoming less restrictive or more restrictive, but based not in any of our individual opinions, but in the science with the safety of the campus community as our really driving goal. >> PROVOST WHITFIELD: A piece in addition to that, Laurie, that I saw in the comments was about training. And it was raised a little earlier. And I think that we've been working on a platform that would help our faculty, in terms of developing courses. And be able to kind of pull our online, not remote but our online together, and that some of the training videos that we create might go well there. There's going to be this, what I intend is that we'll have kind of a one stop shop to be able to get the training to know where things are for the faculty to be able to get helpful hints from our office for teaching and learning. Sara has been doing an incredible job helping faculty move to remote. Keeping one of our goals which is as always provide a high quality of instructional education. That may be where we've put it and this is the first time I think we've ever said it publicly because we're still working on it, but it's going to be called knowledge on demand. I think it fits it so well, that we'll want to have that knowledge about how to interact and work in our environment safely. That's the kind of knowledge that we need, and that we'll be encouraging everybody to know those things so that we can, as a community, best be able to protect ourselves. >> ANNMARIE: I see we also have a question about study abroad. So we know this is not a local epidemic. It's a global pandemic. And how are decisions going to be made about those kinds of experiences? >> PROVOST WHITFIELD: Let me take that question and even expand it just a little bit to not only study abroad but for our international students. One of the hopes that the academic committee has been talking about, we've just started talking about it, is the idea that we would be able to find some way to help our students who are international and won't be able to come for the fall, partly because they can't get visas. China might be one of the challenging places to be able to get a visa in time to come for the fall. We're working on those sorts of things to have the content online or be offered at a time when you think of China maybe 8, 9, 10 hours' difference of where they can participate remotely but at a time if it's 12:00 noon, 12:00 at night is not going to work for them. But having it in the evening may be a time that works a little bit better. Those considerations are being made. In terms of study abroad, for right now, we're not going to be doing study abroad. I think because, as you mentioned, this is a global pandemic. And there are some countries that are seeing a resurgence. And even though maybe a week ago they were safe, now they're not as safe so we don't want to put our students at risk. We really do want to find some other ways to do it and Ahmed in the office for international studies has been working. It's so kind of fascinating. I guess he was ahead of the curve. He's been thinking about ways we can do virtual study abroads. It's going to be a piece that we will consider in the academic restart committee of encouraging programs to have a some kind of virtual connection abroad. Because there is value in that study abroad and learning about other cultures that we may be able to do better now than we were ever able to do because lots of people are online and I think that it will be kind of a normal situation that we can then be able to provide students who maybe before couldn't afford to go abroad, couldn't afford to stop working and have this fantastic opportunity. Maybe now is the time in which we try to find ways in which we can do it virtually. So that will be something under consideration as well. >> ANNMARIE: We have one more question about faculty staff experience, and then I see also that we're coming to we're almost at 6:00. So I want to give the provost and Dean Clabo an opportunity to say any final thoughts at this point. But the questions are: Whether faculty and staff, has it been discussed providing them with cleaning supplies so they can sanitize their offices and spaces after meeting with students or will they have to provide that themselves? And then another question that may be it's not the public health question, but all the extra time that people are putting into their work that they hadn't planned on before, to adapt to this new normal, and that seems like it's going to continue on for the next few months, are leaders taking into account that that's a lot of extra work that people have been putting in, both students and faculty, and what are the thoughts around that? >> LAURIE: I can address the cleaning question and I'll leave the hard workload question to the provost. But in terms of what's required in our normal sanitation on campus, we recognize that in these times there is an enhanced need, and I know that Rob Davenport in the facilities group have been working very carefully and are following to the letter the CDC recommendations about frequency of cleaning and what that might look like. But I think this person asked a really good question, and that is what's our shared responsibility in terms of if I'm going to sit at a surface, I probably want to make certain that it's clean. And there will be some shared level of responsibility among all of us. We expect that the university will be able to provide additional hand sanitizer stations and some wipes and those things. But for me, I know that I'm also going to choose to carry my own hand sanitizer and wipes for my office when it's time for me to come back. And I recognize that it's shared among all of us. >> PROVOST WHITFIELD: So thanks for leaving the other question for me, Laurie. Please, please, please understand. We do understand the extra effort that it's taking to be able to adjust to this pandemic. This is something that no one planned for. This is something that too is costing our university. Again, we're not in the same situation as Michigan or a Michigan State, even though we are one of the three research university, we are different in a sort of way. But all of us are going to be hit hard in terms of finances. If I I'll tell you, I play it occasionally, if I could win the lottery, I would make it so we could pay the extra time that faculty are making, sure, that they provide the best education for our students. It's thought of. We have some tough economic times coming ahead. And I think if we can do something, we will. But I would not think that that's going to be something that's on the top of our list. I think on the top of our list when we think about the financial capabilities that we go into after trying to survive what we've already been through, is to just make sure that we can try to keep as much staff as we have. That we can try to make sure that we have all the facilities that we have. We're going to have some tough economic times. A couple of people have talked about the other Michigan universities and did we talk to them. Well, when we talked to them, I think you saw the big thing in the newspaper that the University of Michigan under this situation is probably going to lose $1 billion. We're not in the same circumstances, but these are going to be continue tough times. When you think about wipes and things, those are costs we've never experienced before. Start with my personal appreciation for the work that you do and understand that if we can find a way, we'll find a way to be able to recognize the additional effort that's being done. I just don't think it's something we can expect. I think what we have to do is to think about how we can work hard to be able to try to live through this pandemic, and to do it in the best way possible. >> ANNMARIE: So one last question, which I think is the one on everybody's minds. Is there a deadline by which leadership and the campus will make a decision about being face to face or remote in the fall. Is it July 1st? What's the date? >> PROVOST WHITFIELD: We have not picked a date. I think that what we want to try to do is provide as much flexibility. But there's going to come a point in time when we have to make a decision one way or the other. I want to just encourage people to stay tuned. We will try to be as communicative as possible about that. Even as our stay in place order until the 28th of May, I would like to see us be able to have some decision points by June 1st. But it may be we'll know for sure by July 1st. Now is the time to stay connected and make sure you're following the feeds like Today at Wayne and being able to know what's going on with the university and the decisions that we're making. Just understand that we're making those decisions based on what the science is telling us at that time. Even if July 1st, think about it, that is still six weeks away. We don't want to do something premature. I think our president has repeatedly tried to make sure that we're just thoughtful and actually that we really err on the side of safety first. But we know that people need to make decisions and we'll try our best to be able to have the decision about how we're going to go forward in the fall, as soon as possible. Know the academic restart committee. We have meetings at least twice a week. We may have to increase them because there are so many issues to talk about. And as time moves on we'll have some more formal policies we'll be sharing but we'll be communicating with the campus committee all along the way to get feedback and suggestions that are helpful. I want to bring back up again the idea of filling out that questionnaire that we shared with you. We really do want to know what you're thinking about. There it is on the bottom of your screen. And I know that you're going to try to close us out here, Annmarie. But I want to give a very special thank you to Laurie Clabo who, at the last minute when we thought about the kinds of questions we would get, offered to join. And the incredible leadership that she's giving and the incredible knowledge and expertise of her committee, that informs all of us about some of the decisions that we're trying to make and trying to move forward on. So I thank her. I thank all of you all for attending. Please make sure that you just keep in touch and keep watchful for the information that we're sharing for you as the decisions roll out as we're following the changes that go along with this pandemic. Thank you all very much.