Dear Physics Community,

Today I reading Science about planting sentinel trees to identify insect invaders and it reminded me of a great book I just read called The Overstory.  A good thing to curl up with in these difficult times.  One of the very best book I have ever read.

In the last week’s, things have been frantic and everyone has faced the mortality of ourselves and those we love and care about.  At the same time, we have had to shop, some have had to move, prepare lectures, care for kids and so on.  And, the banal has not stopped – robo-calls, spam, and other demands on our time.

Some of these come from people just like us who, just like us, are doing their (new) jobs in adverse circumstances.  They make work for a professional society and have a deadline for a statistical story on the field, so they send us a survey to fill out.  Others are responsible for property management and need to know what lab something is in, so they ask by email.  And so on.

At this time of maximum stress, these demands can the focus of our fury – unable to control big parts of our lives all of the sudden, we may be tempted to lash out over some small thing.  These come from people just like you trying to do their job, just like you.  With this in mind, consider both sides of the equation:

• Is now really the best time to ask someone to do something?  Could it wait a day, a week, or a month?
• If you are a recipient of a request that you do not feel appropriate, could you just reply, “My life is unsettled right now and I cannot do what you ask.  Please try again in a day, a week, or a month.”

Things need to get done, but we are all uncertain and operating at about 50% capacity, so it is good to recognize and respond with that in mind no matter which side of the request you may find yourself on.

Physics Department Events

• Thursday, April 2, 2020, 4-5 pm – Colloquium – Prof. Alan Guth, MIT, “Inflation”
• April 1-3, Admitted Graduate Studnet Open House, details to come.
• Thursday, April 2, 2020, 12-1:30 pm – Faculty-Staff-Student lunch, “How we are doing with Remote Teaching So Far?”
• Thursday, April 9, 2020, 12-1:30 pm – Faculty-Staff-Student lunch, “Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing”, David Kaiser and Julie Shah
• Thursday, April 16, 2020, 12-1:30 pm – “Grading and Exam Guidelines for the Spring Term”, Nergis Mavalvala
• Thursday, April 23, 2020, 12-1:30 pm – Nikta Fakhri

All events are open to the entire Physics Community.  The zoom link for all lunches is https://mit.zoom.us/j/514440037.

Physics Department

Guidelines for doctoral requirements for the Spring 2020 semester – Many thanks to Nergis, Cathy, and the Education Committee for working these out.

Some remarks about remote instruction – We launch into this new world on Monday.  I am not an expert, but I have two thoughts.

1. I’d suggest thinking about having the first week or two of lectures be asynchronous (i.e. posted recording that students can download and what when they wish) rather than synchronous.  Get used to using zoom for recitations, help sessions, and office hours.  If that goes well, try synchronous lectures in a week or two.
2. My Daughter Olympia started online learning Monday.  She is working very long hours – everything takes twice as long for her.  She is used to working a lot with classmates, as I expect MIT students do.  Group projects seem especially tricky.  I would keep this in mind when considering assignments.

Zoom – I took their webinar and learned a lot.  Part of the deal is the video, which is here. It is about an hour and well worth it, even if you have used zoom a lot.

Academic Continuity Meeting

Campus – the first day of limited access mostly worked but had some problems with people not being on access lists.  Krystyn and Joe are working to sort it out.  If you have problems getting on campus for a critical task, please let me or your PI know.

Advisory messages – came out today.  Of interest:

• For students, support for online learning: learnremote.mit.edu
• Ian Waitz has reached out to other Ivy+ leadership about developing a statement for our websites regarding graduate admission next year.  Different universities chose different grading policies in response to the COVID-19 crisis and the statement says that will be taken into account in next year’s admissions decisions.  Stay tuned.

Community Continuity Working Group – a new group working on establishing an MIT wide community in the virtual world.  Led by John Dozier and Maryanne Kirkbride

Gifts for COVID-19 – MIT has established three gift funds to support MIT COVID-19 related activities

1. Fund for immediate institutional needs, such as supporting PPE donations to local hospitals.
2. COVID-19 related research
3. Student life and wellness support fund

We had a great talk at lunch today from Arup, Jeff, and Ibrahim, moderated by Mehran.  We will post a link to the video when it is ready.  Our first colloquium from Scott Gaudi also went well – a good talk and questions after.  Well done!

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.