Dear Pitt Public Health Community,
It has been truly wonderful to see all the ways that our faculty, staff, and students are supporting each other with consideration, flexibility, collaborative spirit, and increasingly creative jokes about toilet paper and/or online teaching. Please keep it up. Everyone is facing significant personal stress and logistical challenges, and the more we can acknowledge and accommodate these issues, the healthier we will all be.
Without further preamble, here are the latest updates.
Remote Committee Meetings and Defenses
For all educational activities, we want to strongly encourage you to participate remotely. This includes moving thesis and dissertation defenses from in-person to online. The University has waived any requirements for defenses to be conducted in-person, encouraged us to be very flexible and to focus on supporting students so they are able to successfully meet program milestones. Please allow for the defending students and the defense committee members all to participate remotely. Skype for Business and Zoom Video Conferencing are both good platforms for hosting remote defenses – they allow for screen sharing and for a copy of the meeting/defense link to be shared publicly so that we can meet the public defense component. The University Center for Teaching & Learning has a dedicated webpage with resources, a list of virtual drop-in sessions and virtual workshops. There is also help available at the school. Our Pitt Public Health help desk sessions are now available remotely between 9 a.m.-4 p.m. and include help from an education specialist or IT specialist (Visit https://pitt.zoom.us/j/6849180655). Please contact Robin Leaf (ral9@pitt.edu) if you need additional help setting up a remote thesis or dissertation defense.
Dean’s Day
The Pitt Public Health Dean’s Day poster showcase will not be held this spring, either live or virtually. We made the difficult decision not to put on a virtual event in recognition of the significant burden that students, staff, and faculty are currently under. We hope that everyone’s energy will go into adapting to online learning and all of our other life challenges right now. Future opportunities for students to present work to virtual audiences will be announced in this space and elsewhere.
Graduation Paperwork
For students who have applied for April 2020 graduation, please review/read the information on our Pitt Public Health Graduation page and the school’s Academic Handbook which provides detailed essay, thesis and dissertation rule and template examples. In addition, a University Library system video explains how to use the ETD templates.
All paperwork typically needed for graduation is now available online and should be submitted remotely. This includes the Essay Approval Form, the ETD Approval Form, and report on requirements for Master’s Degree, Doctoral Degree and Certificate forms that are typically completed by department student services. Please see the Pitt Public Health Forms page for additional specifics about the process for documenting faculty approval of and formatting requirements related to the essay and thesis/dissertation documents. Please contact Joanne Pegher (jpegher@pitt.edu) if you need additional help with the graduation paperwork.
Important Information About Recording Classes
We just received guidance from the Center for Teaching and Learning indicating that if a faculty member intends to record their lecture with student participation, they must advise the students, via e-mail and at the beginning of the lecture, that the lecture, including their participation, is being recorded. Students should not be required to participate in the recorded conversation and should be encouraged to ask questions off-line. Further, the recorded lecture may be used by the faculty member and the registered students only for internal class purposes and only during the term in which the course is being offered. Faculty who have questions should contact faculty@pitt.edu. Consult the University policies for additional information on copyright.
Remote Work Resources
The school's COVID-19 web page has a work from home “how to” sheet with instructions on tech solutions for working remotely. It also has several instruction sheets on valuable tools like Skype for Business in the Teaching Resources section.
Working in the Building
For those still working in our offices and labs, social distancing is critical. Workspaces should be at least six feet apart, and everyone working in a space should be personally comfortable with the numbers and the density. If you have any concerns about density in your work area, please contact the Dean’s Office (Eleanor Feingold, Renae Brinza, Jessie Burke) immediately.
Self-isolation
If you are at all ill, if you have recently traveled to an area with a high number of COVID-19 cases, or if you know yourself to be a contact of a case, please self-isolate and do not come to the workplace or interact with others.
Information for International Students
OIS has developed a series of FAQs (based on a student webinar we hosted on Friday) to assist international students’ decision-making in the coming weeks. The links are posted on the OIS website (ois.pitt.edu), on Pitt’s emergency services website, and below.
Graduation & Convocation Ceremonies
The University has decided to postpone all of this spring’s commencement ceremonies and activities. New dates for in-person graduation and convocation ceremonies will be scheduled and announced once circumstances allow and with enough notice for graduates and their families to return to campus for the celebration.
Words of Wisdom for Online Instructors
From Charlie Blaich and Kathy Wise, directors of the Center of Inquiry and the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium:
"What matters most is whether students sense the good intentions of their instructors, not whether there are glitches in the technology or if the new setting feels awkward. Based on the research we've done, including hundreds of student interviews and other qualitative work, students in both face-to-face and online settings are looking for signals that their instructors are trying to do their best to help their students learn. That's independent of how smoothly things go in a class or in a new classroom environment. Instructors should tell their students what they are trying to do, why they are doing it, and show by their efforts and kindness that they care. That's 90% of the battle."
Eleanor Feingold, Executive Associate Dean
feingold@pitt.edu
Jessie Burke, Associate Dean for Education
jgburke@pitt.edu
Renae Brinza, Associate Dean for Administration and Finance
brinza@pitt.edu
3/18/2020