Dear Physics Community,

The Harvard Business Review is more useful than you might think.  Over the weekend, I read an article on “Leading through Anxiety” and realized I have a pretty bad case.  Anxiety does not feel bad for me – it is more this bad thing that is there.  I decided to slow everything down through June – a good time since the Department needs to concentrate on basics – getting grades in, make sure our graduates get on degree lists, getting various things to the Dean, etc.  With finals over for many of you and research s-l-o-w-l-y restarting, this is a good time to give yourself a checkup from the neck up.

Academic Continuity Meeting

Fall – Pres. Reif outlined in his letter last week the engagement process for input to the decision of how to return to campus next Fall.  A more detailed letter should come out tomorrow or the next day.  Whatever you think, please make your voice heard.

Much of the meeting was a meandering discussion of the Fall restart options.

Physics Department

Italian – Paola Rebusco was featured in the WaPo’s “Distance learning isn’t just for kids: 12 online classes to nurture the mind, body, and soul” for her class “Speak Italian with Your Mouth Full”, here.  Italian language, culture, and diet.  What could be better?

Office hours on hiatus – in keeping with making some whitespace on the calendar, our weekly student office hours will take a hiatus and resume first week in June.

Community lunches – ditto above for weekly lunches.  If there is anyone who would like to help organize, please let me know. “helping” consists of making suggestions of people or topics and perhaps hosting.

GlueX – Mike Williams built a cool detector for the GlueX experiment at JLab with parts of an old detector from SLAC.  Story here.

Los Endos

What we need to do – Arup Chakraborty and John Gruber have an Op-Ed in Newsweek about what we need to do.

Peter

P.S. I am posting these messages in my blog roll here. Thanks to Physics Council, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, Cathy Modica, Vicky Metternich, and Christina Andujar for input and comments on these messages.