Message to the Physics Community, Monday, March 30, 2020

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Dear Physics Community,

Remote teaching got off to a good start, at least according to my first-year advisees.

Physics Department Events

  • Thursday, April 2, 2020, 4-5 pm – Colloquium – Prof. Alan Guth, MIT, “Inflation”
  • April 1-3, Admitted Graduate Studnet Open House, details to come.
  • Thursday, April 2, 2020, 12-1:30 pm – Faculty-Staff-Student lunch, “How we are doing with Remote Teaching So Far?”
  • Thursday, April 9, 2020, 12-1:30 pm – Faculty-Staff-Student lunch, “Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing”, David Kaiser and Julie Shah
  • Thursday, April 16, 2020, 12-1:30 pm – “Grading and Exam Guidelines for the Spring Term”, Nergis Mavalvala
  • Thursday, April 23, 2020, 12-1:30 pm – Nikta Fakhri

All events are open to the entire Physics Community.  The zoom link for all lunches is https://mit.zoom.us/j/514440037.

Physics Department

DOE Office of Science  – “Dancing electrons solve a longstanding puzzle in the oldest magnetic material headlined” on University Research News from Nuh Gedik, Carina Belvin and Eduardo Baldini.

Academic Continuity Meeting

Zoom security – MIT’s approach is different than other places:

  • By default, restrict the meeting to members of the MIT community with Touchstone
  • Otherwise leave zoom mostly open
  • Miscreants will be dealt with by COD or HR processes, as appropriate.

Despite the optionality expressed in the security instructions here, the Administration has asked Department  Head to tell their communities that they MUST either,

  • Restrict zoom access using Touchstone, or,
  • Using password access for people outside the MIT community to join zoom sessions.

Student events – are restarting: I did not get all of them, but two are:

  • Career Fair – April 8
  • Nick Roy from the Quest is getting Minecraft servers for each Department for community building (literally, I guess) but each Department needs a moderator.  If you are interested in serving as the moderator for Physics, please mail me.

Cambridge – MIT and Cambridge are working on how to help each other as the crisis persists.  Several agreements are in the works.

Access – here is a note about the idea behind the access plan.

  • If you want to reserve a quiet space in E17 to prepare or record a lecture, details are here.
  • If you need one-time access and are not on the list, please go here and fill out the request.

Advisories – for graduate students – how to submit your thesis – yay!

Please do not try things like this.  (Thanks to Scott Hughes).

 

Peter