Happy Easter; the Lord is risen, alleluia!
I hope you had a wonderful weekend; I was glad we were able to enjoy a brief glimpse of spring.
The University has provided several updates recently about campus operations. You can find more information on the Notre Dame Covid-19 site, but here are a few highlights to answer questions I’ve received:
Returning to campus: At this time, the University plans to offer additional guidance about when the campus will resume normal operations by May 15. Note that this does not mean we will necessarily return to working on campus on that date; it means that the University will provide more information by then, as the state and federal safety and health guidelines related to Covid-19 develop.
Commencement: As was previously announced, the commencement celebration for the Class of 2020 is planned for Memorial Day weekend 2021. The University will host a virtual conferral of degrees in May 2020 for our graduates. The Provost’s Office has asked that the colleges hold off from making any individual plans to honor graduates until the full details of the University plan are announced later this month.
Summer sessions: The University will not hold in-person courses or programs through July 6. For Mendoza, we have decided that we will not be doing any in-person teaching in our main campus until the fall semester starts. This means that three of our graduate programs — MBA One-Year, MSM and Executive MNA (both new and returning students) are going to be fully online this summer, with the intention of resuming normal operations in the fall.
Annual budget planning: Last week, I emailed College budget managers reiterating EVP Shannon Cullinan’s statement about the need to curb expenses for the remainder of this fiscal year and to make provisional plans to reduce spending of unrestricted funds for fiscal year 2020-21. Doug Franson and I are working with the Provost’s Office to understand the specific directives involved. We will be providing more information to budget managers in the next week. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to think of innovative and effective ways to do your jobs that will help us trim costs. Any operational savings helps support the University’s commitment to serving students, caring for its employees and supporting our core functions of teaching and research.
Endeavor: I want to reiterate Kara Palmer’s email sent April 8 to staff asking everyone to complete their performance reviews in Endeavor. We are committed to prioritizing increases in salaries related to promotions for faculty and staff as soon as the budgetary situation has changed, and want to ensure that your hard work is recognized. At this time, all staff members should have finished their year-end comments and ratings and submitted them to their supervisors (Step 3). From now until early May, supervisors will meet with direct reports to discuss performance evaluations and final ratings. Endeavor closes on May 15 for fiscal year 2019-20.
As you start your week, I encourage you to watch the video of the Notre Dame Glee Club’s performance of Franz Biebl's “Ave Maria.” (Thanks, Chris Stevens, for sending it!) It’s a powerful and moving reminder that we can cooperate well together even during this difficult time of working remotely, and that we are still very much a strong community even while physically distant.
In Notre Dame,
Martijn