Dean's Community Message

August 25, 2020

Dear College of Engineering Community,

I hope you all are off to a great start to the fall semester. I want to thank everyone again for your preparedness and patience as we embark on the new academic year. As President Barron said in his fall semester welcome message, “Right now, the key to Penn State staying open is the behavior of every single one of us.” Acting responsibly during this time will minimize risks and help protect the health and safety of our entire community. Let’s do this together.

Today’s quote was submitted by Christine Masters, assistant dean for academic support and global programs:

“The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.”
—Coretta Scott King

Here are today’s updates:

New College of Engineering Resources and Updates Webpage

The college has created a new, updated webpage that contains numerous resources to help students, faculty, and staff navigate the college’s available support services. Many Penn State faculty and staff continue to work remotely, and this page provides updates on how to contact our various units within the college. I encourage everyone to bookmark this page, as it will become increasingly useful throughout the semester.

Building Safety and Protocol Signage

As you may know, many aspects related to campus buildings are not controlled by the college, but when we become aware of issues, we work with OPP to address the needs and concerns of our faculty, staff, and students. If you are seeing something that concerns you in a building in which the college operates, please do not hesitate to reach out to our response team at L-COE_CORONA_CRISIS_TEAM@engr.psu.edu so that we are aware and can respond. For the things we directly control as a college, we can work to rectify. For things outside of our purview, I remain committed to representing faculty concerns with University administration so that we can arrive at a workable solution.

University COVID-19 Dashboard

The University has launched a COVID-19 dashboard that will display data from its COVID-19 surveillance testing program as well as the number of individuals in isolation and quarantine. The dashboard will be updated weekly with aggregate data on the number of symptomatic and asymptomatic tests administered, the number of positive results for each test category, the number of tests still waiting for results, and the number of individuals who are currently isolated or in quarantine, all on a campus-by-campus basis. The frequency of the updates made to the dashboard aligns with the University’s weekly reporting schedule with the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

Teaching Tip #36 – Making Zoom recordings available to students

By scheduling class recordings using the Zoom link in the Canvas navigation menu, the recordings will be automatically available to students directly in Canvas. Instructors will not need to forward a recording link to students and all class lectures will be organized in one place. For additional information, contact the Office for Digital Learning for assistance.

Be well!

Justin Schwartz
Harold and Inge Marcus Dean, College of Engineering