On the one hand, the last few weeks went by so fast.. On the other, though the rapid response to the COVID-19 crisis at the College began about a month ago, it feels like we have been on this for several months. This is a recount of how we prepared for supporting the remote instruction at the College and supporting work from home (WFH) for the administrative staff and faculty.

Before I start, I want to thank the all the LTS staff for rising to the occasion, especially those who spent a lot of time and effort to support the faculty and students in getting ready for remote instruction. We also could not have done this without excellent collaboration with Prof Oscar Fernandez, Associate Professor of Mathematics and PLTC Faculty Director. The unwavering support from the Provost’s office and the senior leadership was critical in our ability to make swift decisions, something we needed to do a lot in a short period of time. And finally, the familiarity of Zoom as a tool for many already and the fact that one could easily learn and adopt played a major role. The faculty and students have been tremendous partners through all of this and we are fortunate that all of these came together at this critical time and I am happy to report that the first week has gone remarkably well and we are hoping that this will continue.

What I describe below is something that you will see repeated amongst many of our peer institutions. We have all been exchanging information and ideas on our discussion fora which was tremendously helpful. I have tried to distill only important information and as you can imagine, there is a lot to getting ready and execution.

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