We'll leave it or not. I'm Lisa Stern, Vice Chancellor for Marketing and Communications for the Institute. And I'm here with senior vice president, Tim Cross. We're very pleased today to welcome UT Noxel Chancellor, Donbie Plaman.
And good afternoon. Whatever it is so far. Good morning. And I know you'll be sharing some valuable information with us about rehab plans for the Noxel campus.
We're also asking everyone to please stick with us to the end because we do have a new video to show you that features our UTIA family talking about how we've dealt with this coronavirus pandemic. As reminders, please keep your audio muted so that everyone can hear the conversation. You can use the chat function to post any questions you might have for Dr. Cross or Dr.
Plaman. And also you can send those to me privately. If you don't want your name associated with that, that function is working. And as a reminder to a recording of this session will be made available on our coronavirus website.
And you can find that at utia.tenacy.edu. So Tim, before we start talking about issues that are related to the coronavirus, I know you'd like to share some information about leadership changes that will be made as of June 1st. Yeah, I thought we ought to start there. And good morning, everyone.
Thanks for joining us again. And I want to say a special thanks for Donnie to carve and time out to join us this morning as well. Before we jump in and revisit coronavirus and all the things that have been happening there, I thought it would be really helpful to spend just a minute talking about the change. If you've been seeing an email this morning, you've noted that Dr.
Burns has indicated that he's hired to step down from his responsibilities as Dean and that we've got a couple of interim of climates lined up for that. I'd like to give Robert just a moment to share in his own words what that change is all about and let you hear from him personally about why he would like to make this change. So Dr. Burns, I'm going to turn it over to you for just a minute.
Mike Stanley may have to unmute you. OK, thanks, Mike. I think you've got me unmuted. Can everybody hear across?
Very good. All right, thank you so much. Well, I think as many of you have likely seen on the email that earlier today I shared that I'll be stepping down as extension dean effective June 1st. As some of you may be aware, my wife and I began caring for my mother and my father in our home about a year ago.
And after my mother's passing last year, we made a very conscious decision to continue to personally care for my father. And we know that it was a right decision. We have no second thoughts about that at all. But over the past few months, my father's illness has continued to progress.
And it's become clear that his care going forward will require greater assistance on my part than my responsibilities of dean would allow me to provide. And after a lot of reflection and prayer, I have recognized that there are many people who can serve as dean and many who are willing to do so. But I'm the only one who can fill the role of a son to my father at this time in his life. So there's a season for everything.
I served in the University of Administration for the last decade. It's the right decision for me to move into stronger service role to my family at this time. I want to personally thank Dr. Cross for the opportunity to serve as assistant dean, associate dean, and dean over the past 10 years.
I started my career as an ag engineer and had no notion that I would administer anything. So I appreciate the opportunity to serve that I've been given. On June 1st, I will return to my faculty role of biosystems engineering and soil science department. Until June 1st, I'll continue to work hard as extension dean and work as a member of the UTI leadership team as we work together on turn to our normal operations for extension across the state.
And I'd just like to share my sincere thanks with each of you for the support and friendship that you have shown to me over the years. It means more to me than I can ever express in words. And so Dr. Cross, thank you for allowing me to make this announcement as part of your fireside chat this morning.
I know you have a busy agenda. Thanks, Dr. Burns. And Robert and I have worked together since 1994.
And we're going to continue to work together. And he's got my full support, trust, and confidence throughout the next month as we start to transition his responsibilities. Any of you that have responsibilities carrying for a parent have some notion of the challenges and the stress associated with that want to support Dr. Burns in this change, certainly.
But also recognize he has accomplished many, many good things for the Institute for UT Extension. Thank you for that. His decade of service as an administrator has been invaluable. And we really want to work with him every way possible as we make this transition.
And so let me, we could spend a good long while talking about this. But let me just indicate in the interest of time we have thought this through. This wasn't something that occurred overnight, obviously. We've already asked Dr.
Scott Senseman to consider serving as interim extension dean. And he's agreed to do that. Likewise, we've been in conversation with Dr. Gary Bates, who has agreed to serve as interim department head for plant sciences.
So I think we've got a great plan in place. We've got some great leaders lined up to make sure that this is a smooth transition to make sure it's one that isn't disruptive to our faculty, our staff, our stakeholders, our students, and one that enables not only Dr. Burns to really carry out his personal commitments and responsibilities, but one that also enables our organization to continue to advance. So I know you'll join me in supporting all of those leaders as we move forward.
All right, so this morning's announcement, Lisa. Very good, and thank you. So getting to Corona virus, which has consumed so much of our lives, the state is giving us guidance on re-entering our workplace. What are some of the key points that you understand from those guidelines?
Let me just summarize very quickly, and then we'll move into other topics. But if you've read Governor Lee's Executive Order 30, basically it says this is a plan to return to work safely, but it emphasizes a gradual reopening, facing in of returning to workplaces. It emphasizes continuing to follow CDC guidance for sanitation, use of face masks, social distancing, no groups of more than 10. So in many ways, it's not a lot different than what we've been doing.
It emphasizes everyone who can work remotely, should continue to work remotely. And again, that's just as we have been. So not a lot of differences there. It also emphasizes protecting high risk populations, those who are most vulnerable, anyone more senior in years, and with particular with underlying health conditions need to be protected.
And it finally indicates that our six metro areas really should come up with their own guidance for reentry to the workplace. So that includes places like Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville. But for the rest of our 89 counties there to follow by and large the state guidance. So that's what the Executive Order says in a nutshell.
And one particular point I'll emphasize is that Governor Lee has indicated that the state's employees will not be returning to work until the end of May, May 28th, unless they're prevented from carrying out their responsibilities in person at their workplace. So largely the state's posture is not going to change significantly over the next four weeks. Well, Eugene Knoxville has also released a very comprehensive plan on re-entering the workplace for Knoxville-based faculty and staff. Can you and Dr.
Flauman obviously share some details with us? I'll set the stage and then turn it over to you, Don D. Let me just say I've been a part of the cabinet and the policy group that's developed these recommendations. But I get no credit for any of it.
Great group of people and they've done a great job. If those of you on campus have seen the detailed plans released that will guide us here on campus, I think you'll agree with me. They're very thoughtful. They're very comprehensive.
And they answer a lot of specific questions I think about, what are we doing? When are we going to do it? How are we going to do it? I won't go through every bit of that.
Thankfully, we have the person that's going to oversee all of that with us this morning. It's been a pleasure to work with Chancellor Donnie Flauman over the past year, almost, and in particular, these last several weeks. So we spend a lot more time together than probably Donnie would care to remember. But I'm not sure.
It's great to have you with us today, Donnie. And I didn't know if you might want to just touch on some of the highlights of these plans. Thank you, Tim. Lisa, thank you for inviting me to be part of this.
And Robert, I want to say to you also, thank you for your leadership. Thank you, Adam. I'm looking. He's looking at me.
Robert, thank you for your leadership. And your dad is lucky to have you as a son. And those moments you have with him right now are truly special and good for you for recognizing those. And we just applaud you.
So thank you. I want to remind you all how we have been making decisions up to this point. I tell people that my predecessor, Jimmy Cheek, had the foresight to put in to hire an emergency operations manager, which is Brian Gard. And so while we were not prepared for the pandemic, we did have a structure for making decisions that we were somewhat prepared with.
And that emergency operations center has consisted of over almost 50 people who've been meeting daily since the end of really January, not daily, but probably in starting in early February meeting almost daily. And now we're still meeting. It's made up of the 16s of people organized around logistics, planning, communication, different topics representing the whole campus. There have been a lot of UTIA folks, Rob, Tim, and his colleagues have been representing the policy group as we've made every single decision, trying to make sure we move thoughtfully.
So we found ourselves now at the point where the governor has said some businesses can start to come back. What does that mean for us? People began to ask us, what's happening at the university? So we rolled out the plan yesterday.
We want to be thoughtful about returning to campus. And so we have laid out this phased process. And I want to reiterate and ask for everyone's help and partnership in the fact that there's no script for how to do this. There's no guide.
We are making it up as we go based on the best information we have. And so we want to be careful. And we also, at the beginning of this, we said we had three principles. One was we want to help people stay healthy and hopeful.
And in the healthy part of it, we know that the health care professionals are guiding us. The hopeful part is also important. This has been a turn to everyone's world upside down, students, faculty, staff. And we've got to help each other stay hopeful and stay with each other.
And use this as a time to build people up and not tear people down. And I think we've done a terrific job of that. The second principle was to help students stay on track towards graduation. And we've done that at great expense to faculty who've had to change what they were doing at great expense to students who had to change what they were doing.
And so I think we've done that. The third principle was let's act with, let's be creative, let's be compassionate, and let's be flexible. And I just can't applaud everyone enough. Faculty, staff, and students across the board.
I've heard no complaints from anyone about what we had to just overnight do. And it's miraculous. And I'm just so proud of everyone. Now that we're thinking about the question, what does it mean to come back to campus?
We're going to do it in a gradual process. So phase one starts on May 11th. We have you saw the list of units that have limited staff on campus. A lot of them primarily, police, utilities, facilities, workers, getting the campus clean and ready.
We've got the issue of getting students things still moved out of the dorms so that we can deep clean all that space and be ready for the return of students to a new normal we hope and fall. You know we've got this reimagining task force, which I established. It's got 71 people on it. And they are doing great work at trying to look at three different scenarios.
What if we come back physically, face to face, but we know that's going to have to be adapted to probably some in the classroom, some virtual, some face to face. How do we organize classrooms where people are six feet apart? So there's good active work going on. What would happen if we had to all of a sudden go online again mid semester in the fall?
And finally, what if we had to do everything online? We are really planning for and looking towards people coming back, but it will be different. And honestly, it's probably going to be different for us until we get this vaccine. And so we're just going to all have to figure out a new normal.
So coming back this summer, gradually, if you can't work effectively at home, you should tell your supervisor you want to come back to work. But if you can, we want you to continue to work from home. It's going to be people working it out with your supervisor. So that's the part that's just going to be flexible and try to make it work.
I'll just stop right there, Tim. Great. Thank you very much, Don Dandie. And I think you can hang on with us a little while.
And if there's some specific questions, throw all the hard ones your way. Just just do it. OK. Yes, a great reminder that if you would like to ask questions, be sure to post them in our chat function.
So obviously, TIA is a statewide organization. So what about plans for College of Veterinary Medicine, which is obviously needs to run a little differently from from some other parts of our organization and our other off campus locations? Yeah. So here's sort of our approach.
And it was relatively easy to say to everyone, we're all going home. That part was was real easy and straightforward. But the reentry process is much more nuanced. And as Donnie said, it's going to be much more sort of site specific, if you will.
So for College of Veterinary Medicine, it's really working hard to develop new plans that would phase in more of their services and more of their students over time. Dr. Thompson, Dr. de novo, Dr.
Susa, and their whole group are working on those and communicating, I think, regularly with faculty and staff about those. So they'll follow a baseline set of procedures consistent with the rest of our campus. But obviously, due to their work environment and due to their educational requirements and so forth, they'll have some different procedures that they follow as well. So College of Veterinary Medicine, faculty, staff, and students will get their guidance from Dr.
Thompson and his team with regard to how they phase up their operations. Likewise, for our UT Extension off campus offices, that's really going to have to be determined through our Extension administrative team, our task course that's been working on behalf of the Institute has provided some recommendations after yesterday's meeting, Dr. Burns and his leadership team. And so we're looking to identify some specific recommendations and guidance for our extension off campus offices and hopefully make those available later today.
And they'll emphasize many of the same things that you just heard discussed. We're not announcing all hands back on deck. That is not the approach. Again, it's going to be phased.
It's going to recognize the different counties, maybe in a slightly different situation. Some counties, the county mayor may have proclaimed we're open for business. You know, effective today, other counties may not be in that posture yet. So we've got to be really cognizant of our local environment there.
It makes it a real challenge, but we're a flexible group. So we'll work with our county offices to serve local needs, but also first and foremost protect the health and safety of our employees and those we serve as well. And the same story for Ag Research, our off campus offices. We'll be getting some additional guidance from Dr.
Hongwei Sheen and his team, including Dr. Barry Samms and Dr. Dave White. He's been integral to the development of our research plans on campus, campus wide, working with the Emergency Operations Center and working with the Office of Research on campus.
So Dave's been integral to that and will scale up research following the overall campus guidance, following then again our off campus guidance that Dr. Sheen and his team will provide. And we hope to have those recommendations which came through our UTI task force later today as well. So I know many of you probably think, yeah, I'll leave.
Why don't we have all this already in place? As Donnie said, this is a shifting dynamic environment. We really wanted to make sure we were in alignment with the whole campus, with what we did. So we held off to finalize anything making sure that we were in alignment with the overall Knoxville area plan.
And then we'll share the more detailed guidance just as soon as possible. And if all goes well, you'll get a message later today that will direct you to some of those things. So for our off campus folks, you'll get that guidance. And finally, if you're in a position where you read that guidance and you say, I just don't know what I'm supposed to do, talk to your supervisor.
And that's where we've got to start. This has to be dealt with on an individual basis. If you're not comfortable with what you're hearing or supervisors, if you're not sure what guidance to provide, talk to your regional supervisor or your next next in line, if you will, or talk to Doug Bonner or one of our HR team members, let's make sure and emphasize, we got to say touch on this. We got to communicate.
You're not sure or you're uncertain or you're not feeling safe or healthy with regard to what you think is expected. Reach out and talk. Don't just assume you've got to do something that is totally countered. What you believe is in your best interest or the best interest of those you serve.
So I hope that helps a little bit. So with that, wrap up our sort of remark session, Lisa, and if we've got some questions, let's move on to those. Well, we did have one question submitted. We have our grips kind of quiet today.
And the question is, when people return to buildings on the Ag campus, and I would assume this would include the Knoxville campus as well, can employees be sure that offices and restaurants have been cleaned according to CDC guidelines? I can take that one. One of the reasons it's so important that people use that exception process, let us know where you are. If you're wanting to, that's exactly the reason.
So if you are someone who feels like you can't do your work at home and you need to come back, you and your secret resident need to put that request in. And mainly that's one of the big reasons. So we know where people are and we can make sure cleanings happen. Tim, anything you'd add to that?
That's exactly right. So again, for those on campus, you saw the announcement that basically says we expect you to continue to work at home. But if you have to come back to campus, there's a process that you can request an exception. And that's the very reason why is that we first of all know what building you're in and who you are.
And then we can take care of facilities properly based on that information. And that can be done as a group. It doesn't have to be person by person. Again, you can work with your center director, your department head, whoever your supervisor is to address those things and make sure we get everybody accounted for that does have a need to be on campus periodically or even regularly.
So somebody wanted to follow up on a few of the comments. And that was a state employee's note go back until the end of May. Wouldn't we follow that does same guidelines. But I think you were saying that that is essentially what we will be doing.
That is essentially what we'll be doing again. I think the governor's guidance is if you can't do your job from from home. Now's the time to come back. But if you can do your job from home to it from home.
So I know that's not a black and white answer. It's not a, you know, this is what employee A should do or shouldn't do. It really depends on on individual circumstances. And it depends upon how productive and successful you've been in carrying out your responsibilities.
Don't do anything you add to that. I think that's right. He's encouraging a careful and cautious approach back to. So I think that I was just looking for the exact wording, but I think it was, you know, not before May 28.
And if you can continue to work at home, productively effectively, you should do so. So we feel like we're following essentially the spirit of what he's trying to do as well. Now our goal, I will say this, we put out there at the end of it. Why do we pick August 10th is the day where we want to be full blown back operating.
I don't want to say like before, because it's not going to be like before. We still want an into next year. We want people who are vulnerable to stay home and work at home. And we want people who are caring for those who are vulnerable to be able to have a lot of flexibility with their supervisors.
But we August 10th is when Knox County Schools go back in session. And we know that people have childcare issues. So just trying to be sympathetic. Let's get our work done, but also be attentive to the fact that summer camps have gotten canceled.
There's no school. We got to help people get back to work in a way that's reasonable. And a follow up on extension employees. The question is, are extension employees considered with within the state guidance as well?
Should they expect that the May 26th would be a soft paper return unless the governor changes his order. Let's see. I'll take a stab at that. I'm not sure I'm going to get it right as it was asked.
We're, I think we'll indicate that we'll move from one phase to the next with a minimum of 14 days in between phases and make sure that we're not seeing increases at a local level in the number of active cases. And so that means it could be very different in one county versus another. And in one county, you know, after a couple of weeks after 14 days, we may see no active cases at all. That may, you know, provide a signal that that we should consider at least facing up additional services.
We may see in another county that active cases have increased and therefore we can't progress to the next phase. And in fact, it's possible we may have to back up a phase if we see spikes in cases. So I'm not sure I'm trying to rethink what that question was. And I think the question was, is this going to happen for sure every 14 days and the answer is no, and it may well be 28 days before we make a change.
We'll just have to monitor data and see as we go along. Let me make sure Robert anything you want to add to that. No, I think that was all spot on Dr. Cross as we know we extension has 102 different office locations across the state and we're going to work closely with county government to do what's right for our folks and to keep good relationships there.
And we'll do it as you've indicated the plan that the task force has developed. I think it's excellent and using a data driven approach to doing what's best to keep our employees and our clients safe. Great. Here's a question about vacation and this person asked we are about to enter a common time when staff takes a patient at one point in time if staff are going out of state and had to self quarantine for 14 days before we're before working from home.
Well, that's still something supervisors need to continue to implement. Yeah, I think that's something again we still need to be careful about that if you're planning to vacation in New York City. I think that's that's the scenario where we might say when you return we really encourage you to spend a couple weeks at home, even if it's on your personal time in terms of the vacation. So for right now remember our travel restrictions are still in place through July 31.
And I think for personal travel, it's again a conversation with your supervisor. If you've gotten in the car and driven to Lexington, Kentucky, and come back again and you don't believe you've been in contact with with any positive cases. I'm not sure it's critical to have a two week isolation period. But again, if you've been on an airplane and if you've routed through Atlanta or Seattle or whatever, that's that's probably a different conversation.
So it's really difficult to give a hard and fast answer there. But let's be on the safe side. If we are going to take a stance on that. And if we're still working remotely to the extent possible, you know, staying home for two weeks following leave shouldn't be a problem anyway.
I think you handled that exactly correctly. Thank you. So this person asked if a case of COVID-19 is confirmed on campus, how will that information be disseminated? You know, that's a great question.
I don't know. I don't have the answer that yet. That's part of. So what we've done up to this point, we announced the first case, if you remember.
And then we made it, but we were very careful not to reveal the person's identity or, you know, risk their the confidential nature of that. So we didn't say where the person worked. We then decided when we knew we'd be having more cases, we have not announced them all. We've, and I couldn't even tell you right now how many we've had.
It hasn't been that many. We, I know this summer we had two students who are isolated for symptoms tested, but didn't have it to students that are in our dorms. But that's a great question. That's part of these procedures.
We're going to have to get figured out for fall as people come back is how will we notify people and we will be doing, you know, tracing. And hopefully the testing will be the turnaround will be much quicker so that we can and we'll have to participate in the tracing early on the health department was doing that our local county health department. So that's to be more on that to come. That goes back again, having a good record of who's on campus, where are they?
And then us knowing who to contact if there is a report of a positive case. And I know everybody gets wound up. Gosh, I need to know if anyone has had a positive case, but if we know who's in what building and in the back that they're reporting to work, we will reach out and directly contact those who may have been in direct contact with any positive case. So we'll do our part to make sure everyone that needs to know does know.
So here's a question on return to work. And that is that countries in Europe and just certainly worldwide are finding that coming back to to a new normal really is based on testing. And that is really truly a key to safe return. So many companies are really looking into this idea of testing employees before they do return to work.
If should that be in the guidelines and if it isn't, why is it not? So we had this discussion this morning in the policy group about testing and particularly in return to fall as we think about all the students coming back, all of our employees being back at work. And we definitely, so we are looking right now at options for how we, I mean, we can test right now the health center has a procedure for people who need it, but we need to scale that up so we're working on that for fall. The interesting thing about the testing is if we think of just students.
So for example, we were talking this morning about the task, the subcommittee and the task force that's looking at student spaces, dorms and whatever. So if we said to students that are moving back into the dorms, you need to have been tested before you return, which we can show us the test, we could do that, we might. That doesn't mean that three or four days later they want to run into something. So how do we do frequent testing?
Those are all things that we're trying to look at. We're and talking about protocols like we're asking employees to take their if they come back to campus to take their temperature every day and report if it's up and not come. So we've got to think of those same protocols for students and testing is important. And we know right now that antibody testing is not that reliable.
So the testing for the virus is super important. Also, we're talking about encouraging people to get the flu shot so that to minimize flu with the symptoms of which are very similar in some cases to the symptoms of the COVID. So we would not be having to isolate as many people thinking they might have the symptoms when it was the flu. So those are all things.
That's why this work with this task force and the EOC is we're going to be busy all summer. Thanks for the question. So we have a lot of questions. I think what we'll do is we'll wrap up with one more and we'll get back directly to some of the other folks who have asked questions.
But this question is, and Donnie, probably most appropriate for you, but is there a date by which we can expect to hear a plan for fall semester classes? We're feeling the pressure to be clear on what we're intending to do. I can tell you, we're all saying we're making plans to be back for fall. We haven't made a public announcement about that.
The chancellors are meeting today with Randy. I'm going to drop in on the task force on Monday. So we're feeling the pressure parents are saying, I'm not going to confirm and pay the deposit until I know are you going to be back. So just stay tuned on that.
I think probably sooner than I had imagined, but stay tuned. Very good. Well, thank you both for fielding many of these questions. Tim, did you have any final thoughts you wanted to share?
Well, you know, I always do, but let me also ask if Donnie has any final thoughts she'd like to share. Thank you for asking me here today. Thank you for doing this. This is great.
This is a great thing to do. And I appreciate everyone. I'm Tim and I've had fun. We had, we were having fun before COVID.
We even had some kind of fun during it. But we've got a lot of great things we want to do. And you got to get past this and get back to some of that good work we were doing. Thank you.
Well, thanks again for joining us today, Donnie. I thought I'd like to sort of wrap up today with a quote I saw in a pharmacy Farm Bureau news magazine. It was an interview or an article actually written by our state for a Congress governor. This is a young lady named Kathy Carly Cochran from Hickman County, and I thought she had some really good thoughts in her article that she submitted.
It was about her experiences as a four H leader as a part of this COVID-19 experience as well. She said out of any bad situation comes life lessons and that is happening in the lives of four H's across the state. The Corona virus is teaching patients persistence, thoughtfulness, and maybe most importantly resilience. Resilient members of the four H program will return with new skills and a new appreciation for their clubs, their communities, their country and their world.
And you know, I thought if we all have that attitude and I believe we do, we'll be thoughtful. We'll be resilient. We'll come back from this and we'll have a new appreciation for things. So I appreciate Carly Cochran sharing those words and hope they have a little bit of meaning for you as well.
We're getting through this thanks to your hard work, your dedication. We're making progress all the time. So thank you for what you continue to do. And let me just thank also our marketing communications group for once again working with our faculty and staff and putting together a little message to wrap up our session here today.
So I'm going to sign off and say thanks for what you do. We'll turn it over to Mike Stanley. Mike, if you have our video and I wish everyone the best for a great weekend. Thanks.
Consider this time a cause. It calls for patients understanding and unity. Our lives have been disrupted. But here's something that will never change.
Our pledge, our calling, our mission. Every day, even in the middle of a global pandemic, the UT Institute of Agriculture is dedicated to providing real life solutions. The way we go about our jobs may be different for now. But we're still hard at work.
You can count on us for the information you need to get through this. UT Agrees are to still conduct its studies to have our producers grow our food and fiber. The Herbert College of Agri-Culture is still trading tomorrow's leaders who will help feed the world. UT Extension is still helping our farmers, our families, and our young people.
UT College of Veterinary Medicine is still working to improve the health of our animal friends. We will always be a team and a family. We'll be back. Life will be better.
We'll never again take anything for granted. So for now, instead of spreading this disease, we choose to spread hope. Beautiful. Great.
Thanks everyone. Thanks everyone. Have a great weekend.