Sunday was sunny but cold, we’re only a couple of days into Spring 2020 — and here we are… in what is really a strange new world of “work from home,” “social distancing,” and trying to adjust to a new online reality.
Thought I would pen a few thoughts after a week of quick transitions, seemingly endless conference calls, oodles of Zoom, BB Collaborate, and Teams sessions, and pushing the limits of my home Internet and cell phone plans.
- Everyone in @UofTEngineering, from students to staff to faculty, has been truly amazing in their resilience, flexibility, and dedication to their peers, friends, colleagues, and the community. It has been remarkable to see how everyone stepped up to answer the #COVID-19 call: from ECF spinning up more remote access capacity to staff quickly helping everyone adapt to the new 100% on-line experience — from the admissions and Registrar’s Office to your own departmental advisors.
- I saw how @UofTEngineering faculty moved to ensure everyone will be able to complete this semester successfully — from pivoting lectures from “chalk & talks” to online (literally in 48 hrs), to coming up with ways to interact with students who moved back home and are now on the other side of the world.
- I saw students came together to develop ideas to combat #COVID-19 and inform the public health effort.
- I heard from so many of you about how important it was to keep you up to date on what was going @UofT and @UofTEngineering. We’re working on it and we’re doing our best in what really is an ever-changing situation.
I know that this is really a crazy and unprecedented time — we are all feeling anxious because this is such a new and unknown situation. But this is a challenge that we @Skule are so well-positioned for — we are all problem solvers, we are all used to dealing with unknowns, and we are all about optimizing designs and developing creative and innovative solutions … whether we’re in @civmin, @chemeng_uoft, @eceuoft, @uoftmse, @bme_uoft, @utias, @uoftmie, @uoftistep… this is what we do as engineers.
So stay tuned, stay in touch, always happy to do a “Coffee with Chris” even if it’s a virtual one and take care of yourselves — there will still be some bumps ahead on this road but we’re going to get through this all together.
Chris
Christopher Yip
Dean
Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering
University of Toronto