October 21, 2020 Volume 5 Issue 6

Dining with Students

Emory College faculty are invited to help students get to know professors outside of the classroom and offer an opportunity for meaningful dialogue. If you are interested in joining a small group of students for a meal in person, on campus, complete this form and someone from the Academic Initiatives team in Residential Life will be in touch with you about next steps. Please note you must be approved to return to campus in order to participate in Community Hour. The events will be set up in accordance with health and safety guidelines.

Election 2020 Events

As we head towards Election Day, numerous events and forums before and after Nov. 3 are planned for the Emory community. Many will feature our renowned Emory College faculty sharing their expertise and analysis on all aspects of elections, democracy, social justice and voter behavior. Events include debate analysis this Friday and free shuttle rides to the polls this weekend and several pre- and post-election forums Check out the full slate of events available here.

Voting Plan

Emory now allows up to 4 hours of paid time, as needed, for voting on Election Day or advance/early voting. If you plan to use paid time to vote, let your supervisor know in advance. The following options are available for voting:

In Person Voting Reminders

If you decide to vote in person, be prepared for a wait as it is expected voter turnout will be higher than usual. Also, remember to stay safe by wearing a mask and keeping a 6-foot distance from others while waiting to cast your vote.

Reminder: Your Classroom and Election Day

The Emory College Faculty Senate passed a resolution that urges all College faculty to allow and encourage students to participate in Election Day activities without negative repercussion to their academic performance. Per the resolution, all faculty are encouraged “to either: (1) suspend mandatory synchronous class meetings or activities on November 3, 2020, or (2) provide a mechanism for students to make up for missed synchronous class meetings or activities that occurred on November 3, 2020.”

The College administration fully supports this resolution and also encourages and supports all faculty and staff to take the time to vote. All faculty and staff will be granted the time to do so per University Policy.

Online Teaching Support

Online Teaching Workshops and Sharing Your Successes

In response to your feedback, we are working to offer a series of workshops and showcases focused on video creation, student engagement, and the use of certain technologies in the online classroom. This Thursday, October 22, we will offer a workshop on Overcoming Awkwardness and Increasing Engagement via Zoom in partnership with the CFDE. Please visit the Emory College Online Faculty Hub in Canvas for Zoom links to the upcoming workshops.

We hope that these upcoming workshops will be a forum for faculty to learn from each other. To that end, we are asking for current online faculty who may be interested in sharing their experiences through these workshops to complete this form.

Tech Tip: Poll Everywhere

All Emory users now have access to the enterprise version of Poll Everywhere, a tool that many faculty have already found useful to conduct real-time surveys, understanding checks, take attendance, and to increase synchronous class engagement. Teaching and Learning Technologies (TLT) has information about using Poll Everywhere at Emory available on their website. TLT has several upcoming workshops highlighting Poll Everywhere. Check the TLT website for these and other upcoming trainings.

ECOTS Training for New Online Instructors

The next session of Emory College Online Teaching Strategies (ECOTS) training will be offered from October 26- November 15 to all faculty, visiting faculty, and graduate students who are planning to teach online courses in the fall and who have not already completed ECOTS training. Please contact emorycollegeonline@emory.edu with any questions.

Fall 2020 course evaluations

Preparations are underway for fall course evaluations. We expect to have courses ready for department or instructor customization beginning Monday, October 26 and Monday, November 2, respectively.

The default deployment window for all College courses will be November 16 through December 2 (this will be customizable via Canvas or EvaluationKIT in the usual way). Note that the Laney Graduate School has agreed that we can now offer full course evaluation support to any ECAS-taught graduate course. Inquiries on that or any course evaluation topic can be submitted to ec-courseevals@emory.edu.

Updates: Office for Undergraduate Education

A Message from the Emory College Honor Council

The Covid-19 pandemic created increased pressures and new opportunities for academic dishonesty among students nationally. Please join Jason Ciejka and Blaire Wilson from OUE at noon, Friday, November 13 as they host a session about lessons learned in academic integrity and online learning. Please RSVP for the link to the event.

One national trend has been the increase in students posting exam questions to online tutoring platforms like Chegg. The Emory College Honor Council has built a Chegg Take Down and Data Request form to combat the challenge of course content leaving the virtual classroom. If unauthorized materials from your class are posted to Chegg, please submit the form to share information about the incident and have the materials removed.

Spring 2021 Pre-Registration Advising

Students received a message from OUE regarding Spring Pre-Registration on Monday, October 19. You can view a copy of that message here.

Key Points:

  • Students will register during the week of November 16-20 based on their earned credit hours.
  • Pre-Registration Advising is scheduled to take place between November 2-13.
  • Add/Drop/Swap will open on Monday, November 30.
  • The Course Atlas Spring 2021 schedule will be available to students on Monday, November 2.
  • The new Atlas CART feature will be available for students to build multiple sample schedules directly in Course Atlas. The primary CART created in the Atlas will be automatically transferred over to OPUS where students will complete the registration process.

Box File Migration to OneDrive

Emory University has made the decision to end its contract with the Box platform and transition all file storage to Microsoft OneDrive by April 2021 with most of the migration completed by the end of 2020.

LITS has identified resources to automate most of the migration process with limited impact to the individual user. The LITS team will work with each school and unit to analyze Box use and workflows, transition files and permissions to OneDrive, and provide training for use of the OneDrive platform. Most of the migration will be completed by the end of 2020 with full migration to OneDrive completed by April 2021. Access to Box will not be available after your school/unit has migrated to OneDrive.

In the interim, faculty and staff are asked to:

  • Begin to delete unnecessary files out of Box to ease the migration process for our technical team.
  • Begin new projects within the OneDrive environment versus Box.
  • Visit the dedicated Box Migration website to learn more about this transition.
  • Watch for emails from College IT leadership, who will relay critical information and provide support for the transition.

Faculty Funding Opportunities

CFDE Teaching Fellows Program: Call for Proposals

The CFDE Teaching Fellows Program supports teaching in the undergraduate curriculum as part of a wider effort to bolster the undergraduate academic experience at Emory. This year the Teaching Fellow program will start in January 2021 and go through to June 2022. Applications are due October 28, 2020. Chairs and deans may nominate and self-nominations are also accepted. Accepted applicants will be notified by mid-November. Visit this link for more information and use this link to apply. Please direct all questions to Donna Troka (dtroka@emory.edu).

Other CFDE funding opportunities are currently open to faculty. Click below for more information:

The Chronos Faculty Fellowship

The Chronos Faculty Fellowship is a new opportunity for a tenured faculty member in the Humanities or Social Sciences that will support one academic year of leave (salary and $10,000 in research/travel funds). It aims to support ambitious scholarship in the post-tenure period when time for immersive research and writing can be difficult to secure. The Chronos Faculty Fellowship is funded through a generous grant by the Abraham J. & Phyllis Katz Foundation, and a single fellowship will be offered in each of the next five academic years.

The successful fellowship recipient will advance a bold research question and demonstrate the capacity to disseminate the results of that research through clear and compelling writing. In concert with this gift, the College will fund a Visiting Assistant Professorship (or similar instructional opportunity) in the successful Chronos Fellowship recipient’s field.

Fellowship applications should include:

  • A research/writing proposal no longer than three single-spaced pages;
  • A brief letter of endorsement from the department chair; and
  • Courses to be released during the academic year of leave.

Proposals should be submitted to Dean_of_Faculty@emory.edu no later than Monday, Nov. 2. Proposals will be judged on the creativity of the research question; the need for an extended research period; and the demonstration of a record of clear and effective writing.

Hightower Speaker Funds

Each year Emory College receives funds from the Hightower endowment, which memorializes the late Robert E. Hightower Sr. This endowment provides funds to bring outstanding visiting lecturers to Emory.

The College has typically committed funds of $75,000-$100,000 annually. These include small allocations for partial funding of a single speaker to large amounts to support conferences with several speakers. Applications for Spring and Summer events are currently being accepted.

The deadline to submit applications for Spring events is Monday, November 16.

More information about the application process can be found on the Office of Faculty website. Applications should be submitted electronically to Dean_of_Faculty@emory.edu.

Seeking Faculty Books Published This Year

The Feast of Words, the CFDE's annual celebration in honor of faculty authors and editors of books, will take place online this year. Additionally, rather than celebrating books published in the prior calendar year, it will celebrate titles published in the prior academic year.

If you published a book between January 1 and August 31, 2020, please let us know by submitting information about your book via this form. Book length projects only, please. The Feast of Words is co-hosted with Emory Libraries & Information Technology and Emory Barnes & Noble. More details coming soon.

Emory Forward

For the latest Emory University COVID-19 guidelines and information, visit the Emory Forward website.