Dear Faculty and Staff,
I am writing to follow up on the town hall meeting we held this past Tuesday. First and foremost, I want to acknowledge the difficult and challenging times so many of you are facing in your personal and professional lives. Through the many meetings and conversations I have had across the university this semester, including the questions shared at the town hall meeting, I have heard your stress, angst, frustrations and concerns. As your president, I care about you and your well-being. Please do what you can to take care of yourself and if you can, to reach out to colleagues who are struggling. If you need support, please utilize the different resources available to you which include your manager or supervisor, your HR partner and the?Employee Assistance Program. We are facing so many storms at the same time—COVID and the associated fatigue; altered work/home arrangements; missing colleagues who took the CERP and having to take on more work; and changing business processes that have caused frustrations to name just a few—and these storms are on top of larger national and global storms and challenges that we are also all experiencing. ?
If you were not able to watch the town hall meeting, you can find a recording of it?here. At the meeting, we shared a link to a new?SharePoint intranet site?that we hope will be a source of useful information about the changing processes that have stemmed from recent organizational changes like FAR. If you are not sure how to get something done, try this site first. We will continue to add new content to the site and if you have suggestions,?please let us know. While we were able to answer many questions during the town hall, we could not get to all of them. We will do our best to organize the questions and provide answers on the new SharePoint site. If you have any trouble accessing the site, please?contact IT.
Your commitment to and passion for this university and our students make it possible for us to work together for the greater good. Thank you.
Warmest wishes,
Jams W. Dean Jr.
President
