Dear Physics Community,

Today is our first day back at work and most of us are working at home – an eerie experience.  I’ve spent all day connected to zoom and my feeling is that this new way of working means we will get about half as much done as usual, at least at the start.  I think this will pick-up as we get used to it, but we should all adjust our expectations to what we can accomplish.  Please look for articles on how to work at home and share them with me.

Important: please read what to do if you think you have been exposed to COVID-19 here. MIT Medical said, “Call first, call first, call first.”  This document fleshes this out.

Also important: the Departmental guidance for everyone to work from home if you possibly can.  I do not want anyone sitting on campus at their desk because they think it is part of their job – you are safer at home than coming and going from MIT.  If you would like to email or phone me or Matt to discuss your specific circumstance, please feel free.

This week, we will try to restart a few things and learn how to connect with the community in this new way.  Please do what you can for each other – we are all separated and that is hard.  The Department will have some community events soon and I encourage SPS, UWIP, GWIP, and PGSC to organize whatever you can.  Suggestions for the Department are welcome.

Academic Continuity Meeting

The top-level focus is moving away from the student departures and toward the research scale-down and settling those who remain on campus.

Housing – Undergraduates are 82% moved out as of last night.  DSL is working on funding bridges to keep fraternities, sororities and ILG’s in business and secure as they will be closed for the coming weeks.  Dining plans may need to be adjusted after Gov. Baker’s announcement yesterday evening.  Graduate students in MIT housing will be consolidated into as few buildings as possible while keeping the density low.  No cost bridge program food is available in Baker and Maseeh Halls, whether you have a meal plan or not.

Research – Maria Zuber and Marty Schmidt sent guidance on scale-back of research on campus you can read here.  The idea is to minimize trips to campus and keep the density on campus as low as possible, around 10%.  This morning, Marty and Maria asked he Deans to collect scale-down implementation plans from the Departments via the Deans so they can determine the level of on-campus support needed.

During the research scale-down, some will need to come on campus to service critical equipment.  I’m asking PI’s to be sure not to ask people in their group to do something the group member is not comfortable with.  The group member may not feel they can express their concerns, so PI’s will need to read between the lines.  Please contact me if you need mediation in either direction.

There is lots of stuff going on behind the scenes to secure buildings that will be largely empty in the coming weeks and increase security without closing campus.

COVID-19 – Testing will or has started.  Urgent tests go through the state lab and have 24-hour turnaround, less urgent go through a commercial lab and have 2-3 days turn around.  We can expect the first MIT COVID-19 case in the next few days.

Physics Department

Other things – with the research scale-down underway and set to be largely done by the end of the week, we are starting to work on the longer-term thing, such as:

• Career disruption – tenure clocks, thesis defenses, promotions, job offers are all being worked on and discussed at several levels.
• Oral exams – we hope to have uniform Departmental guidance next week
• UROPs – we plan to continue UROPs during the term.  If you have a UROP, there is a form you should have filled out
• Student-workers – we plan to continue those already employed, we will certainly need the help
• Graduate student support – the first-year graduate students will need help finding support for the summer and fall and we are starting to figure out how to do this
• Regular contact – we need to establish regular contact with everyone in the community so we know where everyone is and how they are doing
• Connecting with emeritus faculty
• Community events – faculty lunch, colloquium, other things
• Remote teaching

These are certainly other things – please let me or your Division Head or Lab Director know. MIT and the Department leadership meets daily with the sole object of keeping the community together and well during this very difficult time. I think it is safe to say many of us feel we are trying to do something harder than we have ever done before.

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.