Message to the Physics Community, Tuesday March 24, 2020

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Dear Physics Community,

I was writing to someone today and recounted the past two weeks.  On March 9, I think, I was looking into tickets to go down to Florida and see Andy, Sarah and Philipe if the timing worked.  Then, my assistant, Christina told me I had to be on a phone call at 8:30 am, no excuses.  The Administration decided to cancel all classes of over 150 students, just as a precaution.

The timeline from for me is then is:

  • March 10 – Decision to continue class until March 13, send all students home by March 17 and resume March 30 online
  • March 12 – Decision to cancel classes and send all students home by March 15
  • March 13 – As many staff are to work from home as possible
  • March 16 – I start working from home
  • March 17 – Everyone non-essential works from home, all research to shut down, Governor closes all bars and restaurants
  • March 19 – All graduate students in MIT housing strongly urged to vacate
  • March 23 – MIT buildings secure, 1,500 of 10,000 students remain, Governor closes all non-essential businesses (liquor stores considered essential)
  • March 24 – Commencement canceled, Harvard President tests positive for COVID-19, first MIT positive test

Everyone will remember their own timeline.  what I realized, maybe on March 15, was that we were running ahead of an exponential.  The first stage of an epidemic is exponential and the rate of doubling of COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts is 3.1 days.  When the severity of the threat doubles every three days, the plan you make in the morning is irrelevant by the afternoon.

Physics Department

Leadership course – half-semester leadership course starts March 31  and is taught Profs. Anna Freberl and Angeliki Diane Rigos.  Details here LEAPS.

Physics Department Events

  • Wednesday, March 25, 2020, 4-5 pm EST – Graduate student office hours.  Nergis, Cathy, Syd, and I will be on hand to answer questions and see how the graduate community is doing. https://mit.zoom.us/j/436143398
  • Thursday, March 26, 2020 ,12-1 pm – Faculty-Staff lunch, our biophysicists will tell us about viruses, how they are transmitted, and how to limit epidemics
  •  Thursday, March 26, 2020, 4-5 pm – Colloquium – Prof. Scott Gaudi, Ohio State, “The Demographics of Exoplanets”
  •  Thursday, April 2, 2020, 4-5pm – Colloquium – Prof. Alan Guth, MIT, “Inflation”
  • April 1-3, Admitted Graduate Studnet Open House, details to come.

Academic Continuity Meeting

Advisories and other documents –

MIT Medical Director Cecilia Stoupis had some interesting advice on how to talk about COVID-19 when we start to hear of cases in the MIT community.  For many, it is still remote and we speak of “cases”, “victims”, and “spreading”.  In the coming weeks, people we know and perhaps ourselves will have COVID-19 and we should change to more empathic language: cases and victims have names and are not threats, but friends in need.  Using alienating language will make those with COVID-19 less likely to report symptoms and reach out for help.  I will ask more about this in tomorrow’s phone call.

PPE – Elezar Edelman and Joe Higgins, reported substantial donations of PPE to local hospitals with the hope of bridging the gap (now 7-10 days) before industrial supply can meet the needs.  Along with Marty Culpepper, they are working with 3M to ensure as supply N95 masks that meet specifications. There are also manufacturing efforts on campus to make faceshields for use by doctors and nurses.
Transition to remote teaching – lots of resources at teachremote.mit.edu, including for TA’s and other instructors.  Krishna had three pieces of advice for teaching remotely:
  1. If you are teaching synchronously from home, tell your student that you are inviting them into your home, there may be family distractions and that is just part of where we find ourselves.
  2. Practice, practice, practice
  3. Make clear your intents surrounding midterms and other exams if you plan to have them.  Explain the mechanics in detail – these will be very different and could be vexing if everyone is not on the same page.
Campus – limited access plan goes into effect tomorrow.  See the advisory above for how to get aecess if you are not critical or have not signed up to us a room for recording your lecture.  There are plans for quiet spaces for lecture preparation and record in E17/18, details to come.
At the end of the phone call, Ian Waitz made an oracular comment about how we might innovate for this year’s virtual commencement the way MIT did 50 years ago.  I looked up the 1970 commencement here and found,
Perhaps the most notable event in MIT’s Commencement history occurred when there was no speaker. In 1970, during the peak of the United States’ conflict in Vietnam, the graduating class requested that then-MIT President Howard Wesley Johnson HM ’66 refrain from speaking in lieu of two minutes of silence to consider what can be done “to help resolve the conflicts which divide mankind in this country and around the world.”
I’ll also note the last time commencement was canceled with 1918 during WWI, also a pandemic year.
Quanta has a cool article here from Ron Rivest about reducing voter fraud.  Worth reading.  In fact, everything in Quanta is worth reading. Thank you, Jim Simons!

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.