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Communications | Appointment and Advancement

UCSC CAP Response to Impact of Virus and Strike


March 26, 2020


To: Academic Senate Faculty

From: Lynn Westerkamp, Chair, Committee on Academic Personnel (CAP)

RE: UCSC CAP Response to Impact of Virus and Strike

Dear Colleagues,

The Committee on Academic Personnel (CAP) recognizes that UC Santa Cruz faculty are currently facing a precarious and unprecedented challenge with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and campus efforts to prevent a viral spread, coming amid the strike by graduate students on this campus. Due to the closing of schools, daycare centers, and similar facilities, many faculty members, in addition, must care for their children and elderly family members. The overall stress and uncertainty of the situation will undoubtedly affect all domains of academic endeavor.

Research productivity, teaching, and other scholarly activities have been and will continue to be impacted. Remote teaching (in the Spring Quarter, and potentially beyond) will lead to compromised teaching evaluations due to the changed mode of instruction, and research time will be lost because of the extra time required to move courses to remote instruction. Campus closure will result in lost access to labs, curtailed access to digital equipment, reduced availability of library materials, and lost access to studio space for arts faculty. Travel restrictions will result in reduced ability to participate in workshops and conferences and necessitate curtailment of research and scholarly activities both nationally and internationally. Social distancing measures will disrupt community outreach and other service activities, lead to loss of research-related interactions in laboratories (including access to human subjects), and to curtailment of research efforts in order to minimize staff exposures.

CAP is in consultation with other Senate committees and the administration in considering possible measures that might be taken to mitigate these negative impacts. In the meantime, please be assured that CAP will take these challenges into account in its review of academic files covering the time period impacted by the strike and, particularly, COVID-19, where the duration of the disruption remains uncertain. For teaching, the strike and the coronavirus crisis might seriously lower response rates and quality of student ratings and comments. Academic units are therefore encouraged to continue to use other methods of evaluation, in addition to student evaluations, to assess teaching effectiveness–for example, by annotating syllabi to highlight the necessary changes made during the impacted period, and/or by (remote) class visits by faculty colleagues. For scholarly, creative, and professional activities, CAP would appreciate it if faculty under review would explain, in personal statements, the obstacles encountered in academic progress due to the coronavirus and campus closure. They could also note this on the biobib as well–for example, by indicating that invited talks or papers accepted for conferences were not delivered because the event was subsequently cancelled or postponed. CAP will consider these pressures when reviewing faculty, and we encourage department personnel committees, chairs, and deans to do the same.


Sincerely,

Lynn Westerkamp, Chair
Committee on Academic Personnel

cc: Cynthia Larive, Chancellor
Lori Kletzer, iCP/EVC
Kimberly Lau, Chair, Academic Senate
Herbie Lee, VPAA
Grace McClintock, AVP

Last modified: Nov 26, 2024