(COVID-19): Campus Health Updates
Section 1
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Registrar's Office FAQ Page | Official University FAQ Page
7/23/2020 - Daily COVID-19 Graduate Division Update
Dear Graduate Students and Post-Docs,
If you are reading this and live in PV, thank the network engineers who fixed the network today… or curse them, depending on how you feel about my emails. For the rest of you, hopefully your network service was uninterrupted today.
This has been a relatively quiet week as things go, which at this point, I think most of us would take as a win. There are a few things to make sure you are updated on, however.
COVID Cases on Campus:
There have been some rumors that UCI is hiding or reducing COVID cases. EVERY case on campus, whether student, staff, or faculty, is reported online and through other communications channels. Please see https://uci.edu/coronavirus/ for the listing of all cases as well as a lot of other good information.
Network in Housing:
As mentioned above, there was a network outage in the Palo Verde buildings today. At approximately 2:21pm OIT was made aware of a Residential Network (ResNet) outage and determined it was due to a loss of power to network equipment at the Anteater Recreation Center. At 2:32pm OIT arrived onsite at the ARC to confirm the loss of power and determine that it originated outside of the network closet. At 3:30pm the Facilities Management arrived to open the electrical room in order to check the circuit breakers to the building but was unable to open the door. OIT engaged building maintenance workers at the ARC who were able to access the electrical room. The main circuit breaker had tripped. Maintenance reset the circuit breaker and all but one piece of network equipment powered back on-- one network switch failed. At 4:55pm, I was notified that the failed network switch had been replaced, and the new one was functioning as normal. ResNet is up and stable. THANK YOU to those of you who reported and helped troubleshoot this. As a customer of the cable company, I can empathize with how frustrating it is when your network goes down, and also tell you I am very jealous it was fixed in less than three hours. I will definitely be using this timing on my next call to the cable company, and so can everyone else who lives off campus!
Screening for People Who Will be on Campus:
Hopefully if you are spending any time on campus, you are already signed up for regular symptom screening. If not, please talk to your PI or anyone else -faculty or staff- who you report to. If they don’t know what to do, please talk to your School’s Personnel Officer and/or Associate Dean for Research. You can download the daily symptom tracker at the same COVID page as the other information: https://uci.edu/coronavirus/
Contact Tracing:
We have more than 150 students being trained to do Contact Tracing, between contact tracing fellows and College of Health Sciences students. The goal for these students is to be deputized by the county as official Contact Tracers, a HUGE help to our public health community as well as great experience for these wonderful fellows. We also have several hundred other people who signed up to participate in the training and will likely volunteer to supplement these students in their work. Finally, we are looking to hire a Director of Contact Tracing as well who will oversee these operations.
Test-Trace-Isolate.That is how other countries have done so well, and although the US has not so far done as well, UCI is following best practices, and we hope to be a model at least in our community and change that trajectory.
ACC Housing:
I just want to celebrate for a moment what a great job our Student Affairs, Housing, and Fiscal officers did negotiating on behalf of our students regarding ACC housing. Those of you who already signed leases there should already know this, but please note you can cancel right now if you want. Puerta Del Sol has an August 1 deadline and VDC, Norte, Plaza Verde, and Camino deadlines are all August 15.
REMINDER: Course Design Certification Program Hosted by DTEI
Thursdays, August 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th from 1-3 pm via Zoom
Register here
The Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation (DTEI) is proud to offer the Course Design Certification Program during Summer 2020. This certificate program covers the foundations of successful course design. Participants will practice ‘backwards, integrated course design’ by establishing goals for student learning and aligning assignments and assessments with these goals. Participants will leave this program with a certificate in course design, a draft syllabus for a course they may teach in the future, and strategies for teaching that course. To earn the certificate, full attendance and participation is required for all four days. If you're interested, please RSVP. To find out more about how this can count towards the Certificate in Teaching Excellence.
Dean’s Office Hours:
As always, come see us in Office Hours. I or someone from my Graduate Division staff will be here to answer questions, listen to you vent, or just chat.
See the upcoming schedule below.
Upcoming Dean’s Virtual Office Hours:https://uci.zoom.us/j/7277477057
- Friday, July 24th 4:00pm – 4:30pm
- Monday, July 27th 11:00 am – 11:30 am
- Tuesday, July 28th 9:00am – 9:30am
- Wednesday, July 29th 1:00pm – 1:30pm
- Thursday, July 30th 9:00am – 9:30am
- Friday, July 31st 9:00am – 9:30am
- Monday, August 3rd 11:00am – 11:30am
- Tuesday, August 4th 9:00am – 9:30am
- Wednesday, August 5th 12:00pm – 12:30pm
- Thursday, August 6th 9:00am – 9:30am
- Friday, August 7th 4:00pm – 4:30pm
In Closing:
Today, I want to highlight one of our Graduate Division staff members, Karen Friedlander. Many of you know Karen as the coordinator of the GPSRC and manager of the writing assistants. Throughout the pandemic, every Thursday, Karen has emailed the entire Graduate Division staff for “Thankful Thursday.” She collects and shares all our anonymous things for which we are grateful. These are everything from our homes, health, families, and jobs to specific small things like someone lending a helping hand on a project. Gratitude may well make us healthier and happier. So, today, I am feeling thankful for Karen’s Thankful Thursdays.
It is hard to be grateful right now. Your lives have been ruined in many ways. Yesterday, I had the heartbreak of signing my kids up for one of three bad options for their schools this fall as so many other parents have just done. Today, I am trying to feel grateful to have had any options at all, when so many others have no choice. I know I have closed on gratitude before, and I received a delightful set of responses from you all. So, today I want to invite you again, if you want to, please share with me something for which you are thankful for. And again, I want to tell you all how grateful I am for you. Fighting for you, working with you, and serving you is what all of us in Graduate Division get up to do every day. You give our work meaning, and for that we are grateful.
On behalf of all of Graduate Division,
Dean Gillian
Gillian Hayes
Kleist Professor of Informatics
Vice Provost for Graduate Education
Dean of the Graduate Division