A Message to UVA School of Nursing Faculty and Staff from Dean Cipriano

A March 30 message from UVA Nursing Dean Pam Cipriano to the faculty and staff of the School.

Transcript

PAMELA CIPRIANO: Hi, everybody. Zeus and I would like to check in with you. It's difficult not seeing anybody day to day. And I know that you're all reacting to that as well. I wanted to just give a shout out to all our staff and faculty and the great job that you're doing. All the adjustments to providing your classes, for working remotely, for those of you that are still coming in, our small and mighty team of essential personnel, thank you for those efforts as well.

There's not a whole lot new since last week. And you should be seeing a daily communication. We're trying to make sure that all of our email addresses are on that list. We know sometimes there's been some glitches between what comes out of the health system and what comes out of the academic side. So hopefully, we're fixing that and then you'll have lots of access to information that you may wish to look at or that you may want to just ignore on a daily basis that's part of the emergency management in the area.

But on the academic issues side, as you know, we've been focusing on grading for the semester. We've been focusing on course evaluations. There'll be some new information coming out that will essentially say that those evaluations will be a brand new tool that will only look at the end of the semester, what happened with going to online classes, what were our students' experiences, and they will not be used for faculty evaluations. We also should be seeing very soon final documents on adjusting the tenure clock, as well as contract renewals for general faculty. So that's information that's in the works.

We don't have new information yet for you on summer session, or even the fall courses. A lot of deliberation going on about that. Hopefully this week, we will know more. We just don't know when the community lockdown, if you will, will cease. It is likely that we're looking at something that will extend into July. With the models, we just don't know yet which one is going to give us the right predictions.

To our staff, again, I know it's different for you working remotely as well, where you have very little contact with people. And I understand the coffee the other day went well. Thanks so many of you for checking in. And thanks to Susan and the whole idea IDEA group for that work.

So I want you to stay well. Be resilient. Keep a routine. Eat healthy foods. Get some rest. Take a walk. Make sure you're getting some exercise, too. Let us know if we can help you. Hang in there. Thanks. And hope to see you physically soon. It may be a while, but again, please know I'm thinking about everyone. Thanks.