Dear Physics Community,

For the first time in two weeks, there was no Academic Continuity phone meeting today.  They will resume tomorrow.

MIT alerts has five new documents today and I’ll highlight three:

1. Framework for managing campus access – this is important for PI’s and anyone planning to enter MIT buildings for the foreseeable future and those living in MIT housing
2. Tips for supporting and working with students – see comment below
3. Career Advising & Professional Development (CAPD) resources available 

Following on Item 2, a large part of our responsibilities is the well-being of our students.  In this unusual time, we must take care of how we interact with each other, particularly our staff.  The change in the way we have to work is a huge change in the way things we do not usually see have to take place.  These are things like purchasing, reimbursements, visa processing, course support, and so on.  The burden for these changes falls on our staff and they have to work out many, many details each day.  Changing to remote teaching is a very visible, worrisome about endeavor, as it should be, but please keep in mind our staff is, in real-time, carrying out tasks of comparable complexity and confusion at the same time, in some cases without the same level of support as what we have forof our remote teaching effort.

My experience in the last week was that I could accomplish about half the things each day that I could before COVID-19.  Maybe in the coming week that will rise to 60% or 70%.  This is the same for all of us, but the staff’s work is also highly interconnected with each other and rebuilding that connection in the remote world further reduces what the staff can carry out, especially as new policies happen in real-time.  I’d like to suggest a few things in the spirit of Item #2:

• Take time to talk to the people you interact with each and reach out to those you may not normally talk to.  Ask how things are going and if you can help in some way.
• Keep in mind the 50% rule for the next few weeks.
• Some students, faculty, and staff are alone much of the time.  Some contact will help them.
• Others have children at home that need care and attention.  Children sense their parents’ fear and react to it in all kinds of ways.  A parent working at home will put in the time, but it will be fragmented and over a longer portion of the day. Understanding is needed.
• Similarly, some may be caring for a relative who may be ill or fearful and this will be a distraction. Understanding is needed.

Knowing the Department over the last seven years, I know we will get the important stuff done.  How we get it done is what is important now.

Upcoming Departmental Events

All these events are virtual, via remote connection, and open to all the community.  As time passes and we add events, they will be more targeted to specific groups as they were before.

•  Thursday, March 26, 2020 – Faculty-Staff lunch, our biophysicists will tell us about viruses, how they are transmitted, and how to limit epidemics
•  Thursday, March 26, 2020 – Colloquium – Prof. Scott Gaudi, Ohio State, “The Demographics of Exoplanets”
•  Thursday, April 2, 2020 – Colloquium – Prof. Alan Guth, MIT, “Inflation”

Student focussed talks – Anna Frebel is organizing a weekly department-wide zoom style talk series for grad students and postdocs (and really anyone who wants to listen).

Anyone can sign up to speak! Consider presenting, if you

• Were you scheduled to give a science talk at a conference this spring but it was canceled
• Have some new and exciting science to share
• Have something else interesting to share, or a topic to discuss (can be non-science!)
• Sign up here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lvDdzVSPpPK1FoKG36QgWCFu3lwnpQmOoQSkn-xBXlc/edit
• We need two people per week (plus two backups), for <30 min each. Please consider a non-specialist audience, as this is a department-wide effort! So you may need to add or take out a slide to make it widely accessible!

Thank you Anna!

Tomorrow is Monday and we begin our second week of remote work.  We are slowly getting to something like a new normal, but we are not there yet.  For this week, keep your goals modest and attainable, take extra time for yourself and those around you, and focus on the now, which is easy to overlook.

Peter

P.S. I am posting these messages in my blog roll here and I have been accumulating useful links that have gone by here. In particular, I am trying to keep a list of MIT policy communications.

Thanks to Physics Council, Cathy Modica, Vicky Metternich and Christina Andujar for input and comments on these messages.