My University just closed to undergraduate students, but is allowing graduate and professional students to remain on campus and do reasearch and small group work.

My group has to help an entire nursing program go from 100% in person to 100% online by Monday.

My group has to help an entire nursing program go from 100% in person to 100% online by Monday.

My U has not announced anything (the committee met yesterday, so I have been hitting refresh expecting to get a message) and students are on spring break but I have been meeting with faculty in every way possible to get them ready for online classes.

I had lunch with my counterpart at a much bigger, much more highly ranked school in town, and she told me their presumption is on a snow day that people will teach online, and it pretty much works. Of course, we are a mostly lecture based discipline.

My community college has had two all-campus emails today that confirm that we are on a regular schedule. Fortunately, the virus hasn't spread to our part of Eastern Washington yet, although people are losing their damn minds anyway.

I don't have any idea how I would run online microbiology labs. I sure as hell am not sending them home with more microbes than they already have! Sophia, nursing education that has no hands-on also fills me with dread. Best of luck to you!

It should be very interesting to see how WebEx and Zoom handle the load once everyone comes back from Spring Break. To say nothing of local internet services.

Fortunately, the virus hasn't spread to our part of Eastern Washington yet, although people are losing their damn minds anyway.

I actually know someone from the chorus I sang in when I lived there who's presumptively got it. Went to the ER, tested negative for flu. He is very responsible about not exposing other people, though.

It should be very interesting to see how WebEx and Zoom handle the load once everyone comes back from Spring Break. To say nothing of local internet services.

Yeah, I am wondering about this as well.

I did some research on built environments and sensory stuff a couple years ago and open plan offices, it will surprise no one, are AWFUL. All the time, to everyone. But they are also like 10x cheaper to build so fuck everyone's mental and physical wellbeing.

Oh I can testify to this.

The good thing about being in a small, somewhat remote corner of the continent is that we've had no cases yet. But school spring break in next week and lots of people have travel plans, so only time will tell.

My coworker was supposed to go to China (further South than the most-effected provinces) for Chinese New Year, but her trip was cancelled because of immigration issues the day before she was supposed to leave. It may have been lucky in retrospect.

That said, I am SO READY to work from home.

I think we just got jeans approved for the duration??

I did some research on built environments and sensory stuff a couple years ago and open plan offices, it will surprise no one, are AWFUL. All the time, to everyone. But they are also like 10x cheaper to build so fuck everyone's mental and physical wellbeing.

Oh yeah. Mental is bad enough (unfortunately not easily quantifiable), but can we talk about the cold that hit LITERALLY EVERYONE in my dept in December? I jokingly call the monitors of the guy who sits behind me a sneezeguard, but jokey sneezeguards don't prevent you getting the cold that's going around when the guy on the other side of it is coughing his head off (but is contract, so can't really afford to take sick time).

Jeans are definitely a safer option in a pandemic!