June 2, 2021
Three hour classes are approved and require a mandatory 20-minute break at the midpoint of class. The 20- minute break is essential in order to ventilate the air in the room. All three hour in-person courses must follow this format.
Any class that meets 50% of the time is considered in-person. The remote part of the class can be synchronous or asynchronous. If you hope to offer your class in this hybrid format (50% or more in-person with remote synchronous or asynchronous meetings), please reach out to Lorraine Gutiérrez (lorraing@umich.edu) or Barb Hiltz (bshiltz@umich.edu) to discuss curricular implications and to appropriately identify the course in the catalogue for students’ registration.
As a reminder, these plans for in-person learning will be implemented only if the following key conditions are met by August 15:
Contact with any questions:
Lorraine Gutiérrez - lorraing@umich.edu
Associate Dean for Educational Programs
Barb Hiltz - bshiltz@umich.edu
MSW Program Director
The School of Social Work will begin its return to in-person education in fall 2021. Courses will be mostly in-person for foundation courses and mostly online for advanced pathway courses. For educational quality reasons, we will not offer “hyflex” classes, where some students are remote while others are in the classroom at the same time.
It is important to note that any plans for in-person or hybrid learning will be implemented only if the following key conditions are met by August 15:
If these conditions are met, we will hold in-person and hybrid classes as described in this message.
It was not easy. As a School of Social Work, we hold certain values - evidence-informed decision making, inclusive environments, and community participation are just a few that guided us here. In this case, the evidence is emerging in real-time. Because of unknowns surrounding things like disease variants and human behavior, we don’t have models that can, with strict confidence, predict what things will look like in the fall. We did think it prudent to assume there will be some level of building capacity decrease required due to social distancing, as well as mandated mask use, and health screening.
It is hard to predict how we will all feel and think about an in-person return come fall. Because we thought it was important to hear your collective voices and current thoughts we took several steps. We met with the student union, surveyed students, held two community conversations with students, and held “listening sessions” with staff and faculty.
Issues related to housing and health were significant. Housing is a particular issue for 16-month students who are graduating in December, some of whom do not have local housing. As you can imagine, finding housing for that short 4-month window is a challenge.
We know that there is not one single decision that is right for everyone. This decision, or any decision we could have made, is sure to leave some students feeling upset, unhappy, and disappointed. We do believe that in this complex environment, and given current public health guidance, this is the best decision possible.
Is there a guarantee we will not need to modify this plan again? Unfortunately, the answer is no. As information changes, it is possible that we will need to modify some or all of our fall plans. If this happens, we will try to get information to you as quickly as we can. Below are some additional next steps you might want to take:
University of Michigan
School of Social Work
1080 South University Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1106