Dean’s Update: Preparing for Fall

TO: BUSSW staff, managers, administrators, researchers, faculty

FROM: Jorge Delva, dean BUSSW

DATE: 4/26/202

Re: Preparing for Fall Education, Creating New Paths in Challenging Times

Dear colleagues,

I hope that your weekend has been as pleasant and safe as it can possibly be during these difficult times. Once again, I would like to thank you for your perseverance, resourcefulness, and patience as we finish the spring semester and prepare for the summer.

Work is now underway to lay the groundwork for the fall semester.  Due to all the uncertainties in the world at the moment, it is difficult to foretell the exact form and timing for a return to on-campus operations, but we remain hopeful for Fall 2020.  As President Brown announced a week ago, a number of University-level working groups are now mapping out how we, as a community, can gradually and safely phase-in a resumption of on-campus research and teaching in time for Fall 2020.

Today, I write to share news about plans that are emerging for BU’s preparations for various fall teaching scenarios.  Please note that plans for Fall 2020 instruction are still being discussed and developed and can expect more news as consultations continue and plans develop.

As we plan for fall, we want to ensure that our BUSSW students are able to continue to engage in high-quality educational programs, even as we continue to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic together. The university will share news this week about Phase 1 of this plan with current and admitted students in certain programs. Phase 1 includes programs with significant numbers of international students.  Programs without a large number of international students are part of a Phase 2 plan, a plan that to my knowledge is unlikely to significantly differ from the Phase 1 plan.  Additionally, BU Today will run a brief story notifying the University community about this initiative toward the end of the week. I wanted to share this information with you before that, so that you are aware of this important news in advance of the BU Today announcement.

The idea is as follows:

• To start, the safety and health of our full community—students, staff, faculty, alumni—is our top priority and everything we do will keep this front and center.
• The initial plan for Phase 1 schools is to develop and offer students hybrid/simultaneous courses, which would allow some students to attend remotely and others to attend courses on-campus. Hybrid/simultaneous instructional models can be implemented in a number of ways, for instance, flipped classrooms, simultaneous classrooms in BU and at a distance, live-streaming, etc. The advantage of the hybrid/simultaneous format is that it would allow any student who cannot arrive at the beginning of the fall semester, or does not feel comfortable doing so, to participate fully in their program’s courses.
• BUSSW will review if this plan is possible for our programs —  we will need to determine if we can offer in-person classes on our CRC and possibly our Off-Campus (OCP) sites, with appropriate physical distancing, while providing students with the option to engage in live class sessions remotely at the same time.  As mentioned, this proposed approach seeks to ensure that any students who cannot participate in person will still be able to engage in classes and stay on track towards meeting their educational goals. Please note that for OCP, we may need to further consider alternative options such as continuing to offer those classes remotely as we do not control when the off-campus host sites will allow us to resume in-person teaching. We will keep you informed as we learn more about these circumstances.
• To that end, as a school, we will consider whether we can prepare our classrooms with the technology required to allow any student participating from a distance to fully engage. Thankfully, we have outstanding Remote Teaching Coordinators (RTCs) and faculty with extensive experience with online and remote teaching to help us develop best practices for this hybrid/simultaneous learning model.  Over the past two months, you have displayed tremendous flexibility and ingenuity in adapting to the challenges, as you developed teaching innovations in a very short time while maintaining our commitment to excellence in teaching.  As we continue to face challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, we will continue to adapt.

If circumstances require us to offer in-person education coupled with real-time hybrid remote education, our hope is that these steps will ensure everyone can continue their educational programs safely, and that we continue to live up to our mission through the fall and into the future.

As social work educators, these challenging moments are a strong reminder that what we are doing is so vital – as we train the next generation of social workers to address the social-economic-health challenges societies experience.  As educators, and in partnership with social work practitioners, we must double our efforts to remedy the existing inequalities made so vivid by the over-representation of racial and ethnic minority communities, including the many other at-risk communities, impacted by the virus.  We are rising to that challenge by keeping our educational doors open and finding new ways of teaching and learning. We can expect more news over the next few weeks, as the working groups continue their efforts to map out a plan for returning to on-campus operations.

I want to close by extending my sincerest appreciation to all you – staff, managers, administrators, researchers, and faculty – for stepping up in magnificent ways to make these transitions successful, while also having to manage the challenges these times present within your own families and communities. Thank you all for the incredible work you are doing!

Sincerely,

Jorge