Fall 2020 First Week of Instruction

Those who don't have plans for the future are bound to have crises in the present 人無遠慮 必有近憂 --Chinese proverb
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​Dear Colleagues,
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​Congratulations on completing the challenging first week of classes. Except for the regular hustle and bustle of the opening week, SciMath and ITEC started off the semester smoothly. During the meetings with math and biology faculty on Friday, many of you told me that things were going well or at least just fine.
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​Just fine? That's an understatement of how well you handled the most turbulent opening week for the system, the state or even the nation. For our college, this week was marred by COVID-19 reopening and overshadowed by the civil unrest and multiple days of curfew in Minneapolis. But despite these challenges, everyone in SciMath and ITEC was able to focus on teaching. Many of you might not even notice anything if your classes are online.
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​As much as I was in awe with this performance, it didn't surprise me. After all, we planned and prepared well. We didn't count on the best case scenarios; we prepared for the worst ones. We didn't bet on vaccines to save our face-to-face lectures; we grow our online teaching tools and pedagogy. We didn't count on the state or the system to give us permission to reopen science labs; we converted to virtual labs and developed home lab kits. And when several advanced science classes decided to run a few face-to-face labs, we didn't just sit and wait for Public Safety and Facilities to help us; we collaborated with them and made plans for all situations imaginable.
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​Someone once said this about crisis management: ​If things are done right, a crisis will be resolved even before becoming a crisis and we will probably look like overreacting fools. ​Thanks for trusting the overreacting fool in your dean. As always, this fool works for you. Guaranteed.