Provost's Update: July 27, 2021

July 27, 2021

Hi everyone,

I hope you are well and happy. As we are quickly moving towards the beginning of the fall semester, we are readying to welcome a new group of Hornets to campus and looking forward to seeing each other again soon. It is a good time to think about the coming semester.

We will not be back to operating the way we did pre-pandemic, but we are not yet post-pandemic; this is a time of transition as we move towards what we will be in the future. As we transition, we will take what we’ve learned in the last few years and improve on what we do to become an even better University supporting student success, antiracism and inclusion, and our community.

Vaccination Requirement

As you saw in the Chancellor’s and President’s Announcements, all students will be required to be vaccinated before returning to campus. It takes approximately five weeks to be considered fully vaccinated with a two-shot series (Pfizer), and two weeks with a single-dose (Johnson and Johnson) vaccine. Since some students will be getting their first vaccine in the next week or two, and since classes begin in less than five weeks, it is likely that some students will not be allowed to come to campus for class (or other activities) for the first two weeks of the semester.

As such, we ask faculty to be understanding of students who cannot attend face-to-face classes in the first two weeks if they have not reached full vaccination status. Faculty can choose how they want to be flexible; either alternative assignments, recording lectures, starting the semester virtually, or some other way. Whatever the choice, faculty should let their department chair know and communicate their plans clearly, and frequently, with their students. If a student is not fully vaccinated in the first two weeks of the semester and cannot attend face-to-face classes, it is the student’s responsibility to know how they are expected to maintain progress in the class and turn in assignments.

Academic Continuity

As we have just seen, one thing we have learned is that circumstances can change at any time. In the last six semesters since fall 2018, we have only had one semester when we didn’t experience an interruption of campus operations (either due to smoke or the pandemic). It would be foolish to think we will never have any more interruptions. I want us to be ready next time. To enhance our ability to continue meeting our mission under challenging circumstances, we must strengthen our resiliency and develop Academic Continuity Plans.

As you prepare for the coming semester (and future semesters), you can, and should, do some scenario planning. What would you do if campus were closed for a day, week, month, or the remainder of a semester? How would you communicate with your students? How would you maintain important campus operations? What equipment do you need to bring home, what files, etc.? Are you registered for the Emergency Notification System? Would you pivot to synchronous or asynchronous delivery of course materials? How will your students and/or colleagues know what you are going to do?

For any given semester, we do not know what may happen to interrupt our ability to operate, but we can expect that something could. And recent history suggests that something very well will, and we will be better prepared if we plan ahead. We have developed a website for Academic Continuity, including best practices and a checklist of questions faculty can ask themselves when planning for a semester. For staff and faculty, here is a checklist for you to be prepared to work from home and some Remote Work Resources.

The most important aspect of Academic Continuity is communication.

Be sure to be clear with our students about how you will communicate with them in the event there is an interruption to campus operations. Include in your syllabus, on your website(s), or any other resource students can get information from you how you will communicate with them so they know what to expect and are also prepared.

Welcome Back BBQ

On Friday, August 27, 2021, President Nelsen will host the Welcome Back Student BBQ at Sacramento State. To ensure the best experience for our students and their guests, we will need 50 volunteers to fill shifts on the event day.

• MPP Employees can volunteer during work hours (with admin approval) and during off-work hours
• Exempt Employees can volunteer during work hours (with admin approval) and during off-work hours
• Non-Exempt and Student Employees can volunteer during work hours (with admin approval)

No employee is required to volunteer. However, we need your help to make the event a success.

Please sign up to volunteer and designate your shift preference by Friday, July 30, 2021. tinyurl.com/hwbbq-volunteer

Good news

• I am proud that our history students will work with Sacramento’s Historic Preservation team on a grant funded project to study our region's Black history as highlighted in this Bee story.
• Biology professors Kimberly Mulligan and Kelly McDonald submitted a successful proposal for continued funding of the Professional Masters in Stem Cell Research. This program funds cohorts of 10 students through a 2-year Master's program, including an 8-month paid research internship with faculty at UC Davis Medical Center. The award is just shy of $3M from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
• The Passport Place is scheduled to reopen this fall and will begin accepting passport applications on September 1, 2021.
• A partnership between the United Way Capital Region, the City of Sacramento, SMUD, the City of Rancho Cordova, and local non-profits looks to bridge the digital divide by making internet, computers, and digital training available to those that need it through a digital equity program.
  
  
  

Provost's Update: July 12, 2021

July 12, 2021

I hope you all had a restful and not too hot weekend. As alluded to in my update a couple of weeks ago, I am pleased to announce that we have HEERF funds to hire students to help faculty members for the Fall semester.

If you can use help with class preparation, in the classroom, in the research setting, and/or in other areas, we can use these funds to hire Unit 11 (ISA, GA, TA) student employees and traditional student assistants (SA), depending on what is the most appropriate area. The main goal is to provide extra resources to help and to support our students. More information regarding logistics will go to your colleges soon.

As you saw in the announcement from the Office of Faculty Advancement, many of our colleagues now can self-attest to having been vaccinated. This means that the Voluntary Verification Program now applies to fully vaccinated CFA, CSUEU and Teamsters represented staff, MPPs, Confidentials, and all non-represented employees (including non-UAW student assistants). Those individuals not participating in the Voluntary Verification Program will need to continue to wear masks, physical distance, and follow existing safety protocols. Systemwide Labor Relations is working diligently to negotiate similar agreements with the remaining unions.

Good News

New Grant Awards Received in June 2021:

• Professors Jana Noel, Tim Fong, and Jacqueline Brooks have been awarded a five-year renewal from the U.S. Department of Education for the “Pathways Fellows: Studying Supports and Barriers To and Through Higher Education” project. The grant totals $1,371,707 and Sacramento State was one of only five institutions in the nation to a receive a grant under this Department of Education program competition.
• Kelly Linder, Library Gallery, received a $10,000 grant from Cal Humanities to support an Interpretive art exhibit entitled, “Rajkamal Kahlon: And Still I Rise."
• Professor Amy Wagner, Geology, has been award a grant from the National Science Foundation for a collaborative research project entitled, “Southeast Pacific and Southern Ocean Seawater Isotopes Determined from US GEOTRACES GP17-OCE and GP17-ANT Samples.” This is a collaborative project with faculty from Rutgers University, and the grant award totals $239,096 over 3 years.
• Professors Xiaoyan Sun and Jun Dai, Computer Science, have been awarded a National Science Foundation grant for a project entitled, “Developing Ready-to-Use Hands-on Labs with Portable Operating Environments for Digital Forensics Education.” The grant award totals $391,012 over 3 years.
• Professor Xuyu Wang, Computer Science, has been awarded two National Science Foundation grants in recent months. This includes a grant for a project entitled, “Exploiting Robust Deep Learning Framework for Wireless Localization Systems in Adversarial IoT Environments” in the amount of $174,999 over two years and a collaborative research grant to work with colleagues from Auburn University and Temple University on a project entitled, “Data Augmentation and Adaptive Learning for Next Generation Wireless Spectrum Systems.” The grant award to Sacramento State for this project totals $279,946 over 3 years.

More Good News

• The Planetarium looks to reopen in August! Also, the two large telescopes have finally been installed in the Tschannen Science Complex observatory, thanks to the hard work of Tom Scary, the Instructional Support Technician for Physics & Astronomy.
• Sacramento State is resuming study abroad activities and will be sending 25-30 students abroad this fall. A record number of study abroad students is expected for spring 2022.
• The departments of Art and Design and the College of Arts & Letters are happy to note that starting in early August, Kadema Hall will be undergoing renovation. The renovations will make our photography and studio art facilities much safer and ADA compliant and respond to issues raised by their accrediting body nearly 6 years ago. Thank you to our friends in Facilities!
• The Occupational Health and Safety program in the Department of Public Health was recently approved as a Quality Academic Program (QAP) by the Board of Certified Safety Professionals (BCSP)! This designation recognizes our program’s having met quality standards, allows our graduates to apply for the Graduate Safety Practitioner (GSP) certification, and sets the stage for full ABET accreditation within the next few years.

After such a difficult year, I was thrilled to have both of my sons home — unmasked, vaccinated, and able to hug! — this past weekend. I hope you are enjoying family and friends as the world is opening up.

As always, I offer you my thanks for continuing to work hard toward our common goals: Student success, antiracism and inclusion, and fulfilling our role as an Anchor University.

Provost's Update: July 2, 2021

July 2, 2021

Hi everyone,

I hope you have all had a great week. Things are slowly coming alive on campus as the temperature is heating up. I have had the pleasure of seeing student tours go past my window and it is great to hear student voices and their excitement. This week Governor Newsom and the California State Legislature passed a budget that, in the words of Chancellor Castro, "is a bold and visionary investment in the California State University that further elevates the university's ability to meet the current and future needs of California.” Budgetary cuts from last year were restored, and there is additional ongoing funding coming to the CSU.

The contrast of our current outlook to that of the same time last year is striking. The budget process we followed this year anticipated the restoration of the cuts, and we have already restored baseline funding to each program center (Colleges, Library, ORIED, etc.) to partially thaw the hiring chill and solidify operations. While this news is very good, new funding to the system has yet to be allocated to the campuses. We will need to work strategically to best utilize this funding to support our mission and our priorities.

This week, President Nelsen released the Antiracism and Inclusive Campus Plan. I wish to join him in thanking the many dedicated people who participated in the development of the plan; I look forward to working alongside you all as we move to its implementation, with an eye toward continually developing our campus community into an antiracist and inclusive one where we can be our authentic selves and truly support each other.

Good news

Here’s some good news from our colleagues:

• Yesterday, Interim Vice Provost Bill DeGraffenreid shared with you a program that I am very excited about. This coming fall and spring, we will be able to provide assigned time to many of our probationary faculty to restimulate their scholarship and creative activities that were negatively impacted by COVID. Bill will be reaching out to those identified as eligible in the coming days. Our faculty have done many remarkable things in the last fifteen months; the retention, tenure, and promotion files that I’ve seen and the reports I’ve gotten from the Deans have demonstrated this time and time again. Yet, I know many probationary faculty are anxious about how COVID might impact their progress in this area, so I encourage those who are eligible to take advantage of this program.
• Sacramento State was named a top-Fulbright producing institution for 2020-21 and ranks first nationally among master’s granting institutions, producing four Fulbright recipients.
• Dr. Kathy Kasic (Film) has just received word (thank you, Associate Vice President Yvonne Harris and ORIED) that NSF has granted an award for a new project, “Collaborative Research: A fossil ecosystem under the ice: deciphering the glacial and vegetation history of northwest Greenland. . .”
• Dr. Chris Boosalis collaborated with Twin Rivers Unified School District to pilot an online tutoring program for English learners who were supported by students in his EDUC170: Introduction to Bilingual Education course. Sac State students met weekly with Newcomer High School students. Thank you to Vice President Ed Mills who also supported this effort with special Sac State swag for the high school students and a presentation about going to college. The district hopes to expand this partnership in the fall.

Once again, thank you for all you do to support our students, our region, and each other, Steve

Provost's Update: June 25, 2021

June 25, 2021

Hi everyone,

I hope this email finds you well and you are getting some time to relax. This has been quite the year (plus). We have all faced personal and professional challenges. However, we have a lot to be proud of and thankful for. Collectively, we graduated 9,099 students this past academic year, we supported our students and each other through a global pandemic, and we have performed professionally in ways we could never have imagined.

Among the many things we have learned is that we can never over-communicate, and we can always get better at sharing information. We have a lot of information posted on our Return to Campus webpage. However, it will also be helpful for you to hear information directly. To that end, I plan to send out regular (perhaps weekly) messages with information regarding what is going on in Academic Affairs.

If you have been keeping up with the University’s social media accounts, you may have noticed the theme, “Hornet Family. Together Again.” That theme encompasses our forward-looking commitment to putting behind us the various constraints that have kept us apart, as soon as is safe and prudent.

Course Modality

While details regarding masks, vaccines, and physical distancing still need to be finalized via policies and conversations with the unions, all signs and science point to the reality that we will most likely return to campus in the fall with no masks and no distancing requirements for vaccinated individuals. This fills me with joy because I know that face-to-face learning is a vital component of the education we provide for our students, especially our first-time, rising second-year students, and transfer students who have been learning remotely for the past year and haven’t experienced in-person interactions with our outstanding faculty and devoted staff. Though you may worry about the hassles of making changes to the schedule right now, it’s not too late, and President Nelsen and I request that you find ways to bring students Together Again on campus. Please work with your department chair to increase face-to-face content where it is in the best interests of our students.

We know a change in course modality presents challenges to both our faculty and students. Nonetheless, it is the responsibility of the deans, associate deans, chairs, and program directors to develop course schedules with a mix of modalities that will best support our students’ success. We are a brick-and-mortar institution, and our mix of teaching and learning modalities ought to reflect that. We have all worked tremendously hard to adjust during the unique challenges of the pandemic, and it has made a difference. Let’s continue to work together to support our students. When a change in modality featuring more face-to-face interaction is the best way forward, let’s reach out to our students and help them manage the change.

Faculty and Staff Support

We also know that the pandemic has significantly affected everyone’s ability to perform day-to-day duties, not to mention maintain professional momentum. We need to find ways to support each other and provide resources to invigorate professional development and elevate our capacity to succeed. To that end, we are working to secure resources and promote opportunities to support the success and well-being of our faculty and staff. We now have the funding to support faculty to hire student assistants for helping with grading, facilitating classroom discussions, and supporting faculty research. We will share details in future updates as soon as possible.

While longer than future updates are likely to be, I hope you find this one helpful. If you are wondering about anything or think there is something potentially useful for me to include in future updates, please do not hesitate to contact me. As I’ve said many times, this has been a challenging year in many ways. However, I am heartened and extremely grateful for what you all have done to help us meet our mission. Our students, our campus community, and our entire region are better for all you do.

Thank you for all you do to support our students, each other, and our region, Steve