The campus has been involved in collaborative faculty/staff/administration efforts to develop re-entry plans for CSI as a whole, and a separate one specifically for research re-entry. I wanted to update you on both of these processes. The Campus Re-Entry committee is working hard on the re-entry plan, which we will submit to CUNY at the end of the week. As President Fritz has announced on several occasions, the submission of a plan does not mean that we will be returning to campus any time soon. Our fall schedule currently shows 91% of class sessions being offered online, and 6% scheduled as hybrid, which means that those sections may include a limited in-person presence when some parts of the campus are ready to open on a limited basis using CUNY, State, and CDC guidelines for safe campus operations. We are looking at options to address a few pedagogical needs dictated by accreditation and licensure. At this point, virtually all campus services will continue to be offered online as well. When we do return to campus, it will be a gradual, carefully monitored process. 

A separate committee developed a plan for research re-entry, which was submitted to AVC Tamera Schneider at CUNY for review on July 17. It was returned with requests for revisions last Thursday, and a revised version was sent back to CUNY for final approval today. The plan was approved yesterday by EVC Cruz, and is now published on the CSI Research Website​. As with campus re-entry, the process detailed in their report will be slow and measured, and dependent on the campus meeting the same health and safety benchmarks addressed in the campus report. 

A thread running through both plans is that the health and safety of our campus community will be our foremost concern. We have significant challenges to our campus infrastructure that will need to be addressed before we can return to campus for even limited classroom instruction and research. I know we are all anxious to return to a state resembling the pre-pandemic normalcy, but cautionary tales from other states and educational institutions support the notion that we need to re-open slowly, monitoring conditions as we do so.

I hope you are all safe and healthy.

J. Michael Parrish