The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in faculty, staff, and graduate and undergraduate students needing to immediately rethink much of their work. Universities canceling invited talks, moving courses online with short notice, and redirecting work in myriad ways to limit how the health emergency locally presents us all with considerable emotional, mental, and practical challenges. AAUP-Purdue stands with the Purdue community as we collectively take on this unprecedented challenge.
This is an uncertain time for all of us, and many faculty (tenured, tenure-track, and contingent), research staff, and graduate students naturally have concerns about what the restrictions in place might mean for our future as teachers and researchers. To help guide us through this time, over the coming weeks, as we transition to our new (temporary) reality, AAUP-Purdue invites faculty to share their concerns or ideas about the transition to online teaching. We are especially interested in questions and concerns relating to our mission, like shared governance in a time of organizational crisis, implications of system-wide conference cancelations or reduced research productivity for promotion and tenure, implications of the shift on performance evaluations and teaching evaluations, and instructional intellectual property of online course materials, as well as your assessment of how the transition has been conducted as it relates to your teaching experience and the experience of your students. The AAUP Executive Committee is committed to providing a way for faculty, grad students, and other folks who do faculty work to let us know their concerns and challenges and experiences by submitting comments – a link is being distributed to AAUP members (through email) and then the broader faculty. We will maintain the link at least until March 27. Our hope is that we can provide a positive contribution to our collective efforts by being a voice for faculty and graduate students.
Passed by the Executive Committee on behalf of the chapter, 3/15/20.