This message was sent to all deans, regional campus directors, associate deans, and department heads. 

Dear Colleagues,

We are writing to inform you of a recent policy change regarding relocation and moving, which may have an impact on your faculty hiring initiatives.

On Wednesday, February 24, 2021, the Board of Trustees approved a new Relocation and Moving Policy. Revisions were led by a working group from Human Resources, the Office of the Provost, and the Tax & Compliance Office. Stakeholders from across the University, particularly in Schools and Colleges where the policy is regularly used, were widely consulted in order to create a policy that effectively meets the business needs of the University, minimizes administrative burden for regular hiring processes, while retaining budget controls.

Key changes include:

• Tax implications: The policy now makes clear the taxable nature of reimbursable moving expenses. Direct billing is now limited for tax purposes so that it cannot be utilized in November or December.
• University-wide scope: The policy now applies across the University, with clear language to specify applicability for most faculty hires, and the conditions under which it may now be used for other employees at the University.
• Moving distance and time limits for expenses: Clearer controls have been included on the distances that should be involved in relocation, and time limits for relocation expenses supported by the policy have been established.
• Expenses calculated by move distance: Previous baseline calculations for reimbursable expenses involving both faculty rank and distance have been replaced by a simplified base calculated only by distance of the move.
• Requests for exemption clarified: Flexibility has been built in for approvals of higher reimbursable amounts to support competitive hiring practices, and pathways for exemptions when these are accompanied by business justifications are clearly specified.

This policy applies to eligible employees with a start date of February 25, 2021 and beyond. Human Resources and the Office of the Provost are working to effectively communicate relevant changes to eligible faculty who have already received an offer letter. If this applies to your department, you will hear from these administrators shortly.

At present, the associated procedures remain unchanged. These will be updated later this year with a more streamlined process for direct billing and reimbursements and we will send out further communication at this time.

Sincerely,

Sarah Croucher
Director of Academic Policy and Faculty Affairs

Bridget Inzirillo
Director of Academic Finance and Planning

Dear Colleagues,

We invite you to nominate exceptional colleagues for the Provost’s Awards for Excellence in Community Engaged Scholarship. The awards recognize the significant efforts of faculty, students, staff, teams, and community partners who work collaboratively to address important community issues.

Public engagement is integral to the academic endeavor and the institution-wide mission of a land-grant university. It is defined as the collaborative and mutually beneficial, creative exchange of knowledge and resources between the University and the community (local, regional/state, national, or global) in order to:

• enrich scholarship, research, and creative activity;
• enhance curriculum, teaching, and learning;
• provide life-transformative educational experiences;
• prepare educated, engaged citizens;
• promote social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusivity;
• strengthen democratic values and civic responsibility;
• address critical societal issues;
• and contribute to the public good.

Nominations are due by 5 p.m. on Friday, March 26, 2021. The nomination process includes completion of an online form, a letter of support, and other supporting materials. The nomination requirements and selection criteria can be found on our website. For more information, please reach out to Amanda Pitts at amanda.pitts@uconn.edu.

Award Categories

FACULTY

• Research Category

• • Distinguished Scholar Research Award
  • Emerging Scholar Research Award

• Teaching Category

• • Distinguished Instructor Award
  • Emerging Instructor Award

• Team Category

• • Faculty Team Award

STAFF

• Individual Category

• • Distinguished Staff Award
  • Emerging Staff Award

• Team Category

• • Staff Team Award

STUDENT

• Individual Category

• • Undergraduate Student Award
  • Graduate Student Award

• Team Category

• • Student Team Award

COMMUNITY

• Community Partner Award

Each awardee will be recognized for their exemplary work in Public Engagement and will:

• Receive an appropriately inscribed plaque.
• Have their name engraved on the Plaque of Awardees, located in the Office of the Provost, Gulley Hall.
• Be featured in future special feature articles and highlights through other UConn communication platforms and external news sources.

We look forward to receiving your nominations.

Sincerely,
Jeffrey

Jeffrey Shoulson
Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs

This message was sent to Deans, Associate Deans, and Department Heads

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to share an update on two recent bias incidents on the Storrs campus.

On Friday, a swastika was found drawn on the wall of the men’s bathroom in the Biology/Physics Building. Later that day, the University was also informed of graffiti of an anti-Black racial slur discovered in the same facility. These actions are abhorrent and harmful to the diverse students, faculty, and staff who call UConn home.

We are appreciative of the individuals who reported the graffiti to the University through inform.uconn.edu. The UConn Police are investigating the incident and University administration is following bias response protocol. The graffiti has been removed, after the police were able to document it.  At this time, the individual or individuals responsible have not been identified. Although it is likely that additional investigative leads will be limited, should the individuals responsible be identified, we will share that information.

Our bias response protocol has several objectives, including raising awareness when these incidents occur, providing information about the University’s response, and offering resources to support affected communities and educate our community. Given the public location of this incident, we cannot determine all of the populations who may have encountered this graffiti, so we are reaching this broader group to ask for your help in sharing this information and resources with your faculty, staff, and students.

A list of resources to consult:

• InForm
• Office for Diversity and Inclusion
• African American Cultural Center
• Africana Studies Institute
• Dean of Students
• Faith at UConn
• Hillel
• Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Life

These incidents are troubling and show we still have work to do in building a community and culture that is inclusive of all our diverse members. We appreciate your partnership as leaders in identifying bias incidents and connecting your communities to resources to recognize and respond to acts that threaten the safety and well-being of members of our community.

If you have further questions, you are welcome to reach out to any member of the Provost’s Office leadership team, the Office for Diversity and Inclusion, and the Dean of Students.

Sincerely,
Carl

Carl Lejuez
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dear Colleagues,

As we approach the halfway mark of the semester, academic life at UConn is settling into a routine, albeit a routine that is still new to us all amid a pandemic. Although there are far fewer people on our campuses, I can still sense the changed energy when students and faculty are engaged in coursework and events across the University. All of this activity is the result of much hard work and dedication on the part of faculty, staff, and students, and I continue to be grateful for your commitment to progress in a challenging year.

The middle of the semester is always a good time to assess progress personally and for our students, and perhaps even more important this year given the different approaches we have all implemented in our courses. As we did in the fall at this time, I wanted to share a few resources for all instructors to utilize in their instructional plans, as an opportunity to review your and your students’ trajectory through the end of the semester.

Formative feedback

Mid-term formative feedback surveys can be a useful tool for instructors to hear anonymously from their students on course materials, lectures, assessments, and other elements of course design. We encourage all instructors to implement a mid-term formative feedback survey in their courses. These surveys can be valuable resources to make mid-course adjustments, as well as to broaden student engagement. The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and the Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness offer resources to develop and distribute formative feedback surveys. In all cases, these are designed to be private (for instructors’ personal use only, not to be shared with department heads or other administrators). If you are interested in utilizing formative feedback, you can begin with a resource guide prepared by CETL. I appreciate the support of the Senate Executive Committee and leaders in the undergraduate and graduate student senates in pulling these materials together.

Mid-term grades

Sharing mid-term grades with your students is another important part of reviewing student progress, which can have positive impacts on your students’ engagement in coursework. University Senate By-Laws state that by the end of the sixth week of the semester, instructors shall submit midterm grades for students in 1000- and 2000-level courses who have earned less than a C, or U, or N grade up to that point.

In these challenging times, however, I encourage all instructors to share mid-term grades with their students in all levels. Students and instructors are continuing to adapt to new modes of learning and this feedback on progress will help students make adjustments and access resources as necessary to stay on track academically, and assess their trajectory in the course to make decisions earlier on potential withdrawals or pass-fail designations in courses. This is also an opportunity to refer students of concern to academic support resources like the Academic Achievement Center (AAC).

We are sharing guides here with different options to submit grades to PeopleSoft. Informing your students of their grade or posting mid-term grades in HuskyCT is helpful, but posting grades in PeopleSoft is necessary to ensure this information regarding student progress is available to staff at the University who provide academic support. Grades can be submitted beginning on Monday, February 22, through Thursday March 18.

• Submitting via Student Admin at this link
• Via an Excel file at this link
• Via HuskyCT at this link

As always, thank you for all you are doing.

Sincerely,
Carl

Carl Lejuez
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dear colleagues,

I am pleased to announce that Jason Irizarry has accepted the role of interim dean of the University of Connecticut Neag School of Education.

Jason is a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, and currently serves as associate dean for academic affairs. The Provost’s Office sought feedback from the Neag School’s faculty, staff, and students on the interim dean appointment. In that feedback, we saw strong support for Jason to serve as interim dean, given his leadership experience in the Dean’s Office, as well as his involvement throughout the Neag School community and across UConn.

This appointment is effective starting Monday, March 1. Over the next two weeks, Dean Gladis Kersaint and Jason will work closely on the transition before she begins her new role as vice provost for strategic initiatives. Once in the role, Jason will determine how best to address the duties of his vacant associate dean position. As we shared previously, we will proceed with a national search for a new dean. I will be in touch very soon with Neag School constituents to gather input on ideal timing and approach.

Jason is an accomplished leader, scholar, and educator. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in multicultural education, culturally responsive curriculum development, urban education, and participatory action research.

His research focuses on urban teacher recruitment, preparation, and retention with an emphasis on increasing the number of teachers of color, culturally responsive pedagogy, youth participatory action research, and Latinx students in U.S. schools. A central focus of his work involves promoting the academic achievement of youth in urban schools by addressing issues associated with educator preparation. Manuscripts documenting the findings of his research have been published in a variety of journals in the field including Teachers College Record, American Educational Research Journal, Educational Leadership, Education and Urban Society, Multicultural Perspectives, Journal of Latinos and Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, and Centro Journal of Puerto Rican Studies and others appearing as chapters in various books. He is the author of the award-winning book, The Latinization of U.S. Schools: Successful Teaching and Learning in Shifting Cultural Contexts (Paradigm Publishers, 2011) and co-editor of Diaspora Studies in Education: Toward a Framework for Understanding the Educational Experiences of Transnational Communities (Peter Lang, 2014).

Please join me in congratulating Jason as he takes on this new leadership role within the Neag School.

Sincerely,
Carl

Carl Lejuez
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dear Colleagues,

We invite you to nominate exceptional colleagues for the Provost’s Outstanding Service Award. The award honors faculty whose volunteer service (i.e., not that assigned as part of one’s job description or expectations in teaching, research or assigned service) is exemplary in enhancing the University’s mission in teaching, research, service, or engagement.

By honoring such individuals, the University demonstrates its commitment to service as an activity essential to its mission and to its governance, provides incentive for faculty to pursue activities that enhance the quality of their service, and emphasizes the importance of outstanding service. We were pleased to recognize Mohamed Hussein, professor of accounting in the School of Business, and Thomas Long, professor-in-residence in the School of Nursing, as the 2020 POSA awardees.

Nominations are due to provost@uconn.edu by March 12, 2021. The nomination requirements and selection criteria can be found on our website and are also posted below. For more information, please reach out to Amanda Pitts at amanda.pitts@uconn.edu.

Nomination Materials

• One Letter of Nomination that details in what ways the faculty member has made long-term and extraordinary service contributions to the University in committees and/or University volunteer activities.
• List of the Service Contributions the nominee has made to the University, with various kinds of service distributed among categories.
• A minimum of two additional Letters of Support (in addition to the Letter of Nomination) from persons who have the ability to judge the significance of the nominee’s service contributions. We recommend at least one letter come from outside the nominee’s department or college/school to demonstrate the breadth of the nominee’s service.

Eligibility Criteria

• The nominee must be a current UConn faculty member who has been employed at UConn for at least five years
• Previous recipients are not eligible
• Self-nominations will normally not be accepted

Sincerely,
Michael

Michael Bradford
Vice Provost for Faculty, Staff, and Student Development

Dear Colleagues,

As the semester forges on, I want to bring to your attention a few new resources for instruction, as well as remind you of a few other critical items at this early point in the spring.

• Difficult dialogues: CETL has created a guide online with strategies to prepare for and manage difficult dialogues in your courses. These steps can be useful in managing challenging topics you plan to address in your courses, as well as intervening when difficult dialogues spontaneously develop.
• Tech Check: ITS partnered with CETL to develop “Tech Check” to help address at-home challenges that impede instructors’ interactions with students. Through this support service, instructors can schedule virtual one-on-one meetings with ITS staff who will assess workstations, audiovisual equipment, network speeds, and other aspects of home IT infrastructure and will make recommendations to improve performance.  More information is available on the IT Knowledge Base.
• PPE and masks: As the overall logistics situation has improved over the last six months, PPE has become more available. Review these resources for obtaining various types of PPE and masks.
  • Surgical-type paper procedure masks can be obtained from the UConn Warehouse utilizing a request form at https://warehouse.uconn.edu/face-mask-requests/.
  • Clear face shield and microphone covers can be obtained from CETL, by emailing cetl@uconn.edu.
  • PPE necessary for laboratories, research programs, and facility operations can be obtained through the normal procurement process through HuskyBuy: https://ubs.uconn.edu/
  • If you have needs beyond these types of PPE, please reach out to Amy Allen, Associate Director Supply Chain Management, at amy.allen@uconn.edu, to discuss options.
• Final exam opt-out: Instructors have the option to opt-out of a final exam and structure their final assessment in the form of final papers, final individual/group projects or presentations, portfolio reviews, or other forms of cumulative assessment. If you plan to opt out of a final exam, please make sure to notify the registrar by using their online form.
• Student authentication: We shared earlier this semester that just one method of student authentication is required, rather than two. Please consult our memo online for more detail on authentication methods and guidance.

As you’ve seen throughout this past year, we continue to develop new resources and guidance as we all learn how to best deliver instruction in the midst of a pandemic. If you have suggestions about other guidance or resources that would be helpful, please share your feedback.

Sincerely,
Carl

Carl Lejuez
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs

Questions? Email at carl.lejuez@uconn.edu, join me in my online office hours at provost.uconn.edu, or view our Provost’s Office FAQs at s.uconn.edu/ProvostFAQs.

Dear UConn Community:

I am writing to share updates on course add/drop deadlines for the spring 2021 semester.

• 10^th Day Deadline: Because of the current snowstorm, the deadline to add or drop a course has been extended from today to this Wednesday, Feb. 3. Any students who drop a course through this Wednesday, Feb. 3, will be able to do so and not have that course appear on their record. Courses dropped after this date will have a “W” for withdrawal recorded on the academic record. See Adding and Dropping Courses for Undergraduates and Graduate School Academic Regulations).
• Late Withdraw Deadline: The Senate Scholastic Standards Committee has extended the deadline for late withdrawals by undergraduates from the 9^th week of classes to the 14^th week of classes. The same extended deadline will be available to graduate students. Both undergraduates and graduate students must receive advisor approval for a late withdrawal. Students will be able to elect this option through Wednesday, April 28.

Please note that the above deadlines do not apply to students at UConn Law, Medicine, or Dental Medicine.

Students should consult with their advisor for more guidance on withdrawing from a course.

Sincerely,
Carl

Carl Lejuez
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs