Email to the vice-chancellor about covid-19 response
The UCU branch committee emailed the University of Leeds vice chancellor on Tuesday 29 September 2020 in response to the message from the university “Arrangements in the new academic year – a message from the Vice-Chancellor” (opens in new tab) received Friday 25 September 2020. Dear Vice-Chancellor, On behalf of Leeds UCU, I’d like to welcome your statement to staff. We are absolutely in agreement with you that the most important priority is to protect the health and safety of the entire University community. And we are very glad that you are encouraging more use of online teaching during the COVID period. The university approach until now has been that schools must provide some face to face teaching, including those schools who had planned for fully online, and it’s good to see concerns about safety now overriding the hybrid model. However, we would encourage you to go a step further, and insist that the only activities that should take place on campus are those which are impossible to do any other way (eg some practical sessions). Tutorials, seminars and other small group teaching, supervisions, careers appointments and so on can be done very effectively online (and indeed have been done online since … continue reading