Dear Physics Community,
I was really heartened by the lunch talk today and the high level of interest and excitement in the community as we go online. We have a deep bench for online and I think we will do well.
The Physics Department
Lunch Talk – Today we had an excellent faculty-staff lunch talk from Iain Stewart. You can see his talk here. 93 people attended and I learned some things:
- For a remote talk, you should multiply the time needed by a factor of 1.3
- 4-5 people who tried to connect ended up in a “limbo room”, a known bug of zoom. A restart was needed, but the talk was already 20 min by the time we knew. Ideally, should start zoom 10 min early with everyone connected to make sure there is no one limboed. The reality will be different.
- Zoom glitched every 10 min for 4-5 sec. Just have to live with it. Crashed once but restarted in 15 s.
- The students did not get the zoom invite owing to miscommunication on our end. I apologize and will fix this – students are most welcome.
Iain’s talk was great and I learned a lot. The “office hours” after were pretty useful as well. I do not know if they were recorded. Thank you Iain!
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!
Piazza – Iain hs set up a piazza page for online teaching in Physics here. The name of the class is 8.ONLINE-EDU.
Carol has sent some more gems:
Academic Continuity Meeting
Campus – the buildings group is in the process of securing limited access (formally called “mothballed” – term changed because nobody under 60 knows what a mothball is). Buildings currently designated limits access will be secure (i.e. closed) by Sunday. Assessment of candidate buildings will be complete and those buildings closed by Wednesday. Physics does not use any such buildings, so we should not have a problem but if you find you need access somewhere, contact me.
Teaching and technology resources – MIT now has site licenses for Grade Scope, Slack Enterprise, and Zoom. Janet Rankin’s group has resources for teaching online here. Please contact Janet if there is something specific you would like to see a workshop on.
Graduate Student Housing – as promised I brought this up at the 8 am meeting. The response (I forgot from who) was that graduate students were being strongly encouraged to leave if they can, but there was no plan to evict anyone. As the day progressed, I heard the encouragement was causing great stress, so I have asked Ian Waitz to make a clear statement about graduate student housing. This evening, he said he would say something soon.
Advisories – MIT has put out a number of new advisories here. Some highlights:
- Financial aid and support update for students – March 19
- Financial aid FAQ for students – March 19
- Updated graduate housing policies and guidelines – March 19
- Social distancing, self-monitoring, and self-quarantine: A how-to guide – March 19
- Updated guidance on meetings – March 19
- MIT Human Resources FAQ for employees – March 19
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) – MIT is donating all of its PPE to local hospitals and other local universities are making similar moves. PPE is in critically short supply and essential to the well being of those caring for the infected. If you have access to PPE you could donate (sealed in packaging), contact me.
Many have written to thank me for doing this, but I have to say it is the effort of a group and a privilege for me to be able to do this.
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.