Keep policy work going while working from home

Many of us are involved to varying degrees with our respective institutional responses to the current coronavirus situation. In thi­­­­­­­­s week’s blog, I’d like to describe my experiences in the past couple of weeks and then open things up to your input.

Like so many others, my work routine changed rather quickly about two weeks ago, as the coronavirus situation began to expand and affect our state and institution. My campus, Georgia Gwinnett College, is located in the Atlanta metro. Our region has seen the highest rate of virus diagnoses in the state, simply due to more population density, about 6 million in Atlanta and suburbs. Decisions to suspend in-person classes, study abroad plans, and certain travel were made quickly by our state university system but each campus is also responding according to local needs and capabilities. As of March 16, only essential staff are on campus and most institutional effort has been focused on moving all classes and needed services online and transitioning students out of residential housing. Our residence halls remained technically open until yesterday, as plans were arranged for some students. I manage the institutional policy review and approval process, but not the policies themselves or compliance, so my role has been fairly minimal in the first two weeks. Buildings are mostly locked (although campus police will let you in if necessary), and the rest of us are working remotely. I’ve used the time to work on a variety of projects, including one for a new VP that was created BC (Before Coronavirus) to help her get up to speed on institutional policies and processes.

Communication is always essential, of course, but has become much more so recently. I have given thought to how (or even if) I should communicate to administrators about policies during this time. Normally, I send a weekly update to senior leadership and others with policy responsibilities, describing policy review activity, tips for good policy practice, and so on. I sent out a basic version in the first week just to maintain some hint of normalcy in a weird week, and last week, I added in a suggestion for using time working remotely to do policy work, along with reminders about tools to facilitate that. There are quite a few tasks that need to be done, such as formatting older policies in our current template, and they can be accomplished remotely, so all policy proponents have at least some policies they could address. I’ve already had an online meeting with one division’s policy team and I hope my nudge will encourage more to tackle policy projects, once the immediate needs associated with pandemic response are settled.

Because I’m a one-person office, my day-to-day work is relatively solitary and I have not found the transition to remote work too difficult, other than the need to address random questions and thoughts from my children, who are also home doing school work online. (My 13-year-old just asked me if I knew there is a penguin species that lives in the desert…science class research, apparently). After the first week of working just on my laptop, I went to my campus office over the weekend to retrieve some hardware, including my 39-inch monitor that helps me compare documents side-by-side. It’s invaluable in the office and even more so at home, even if it makes my dining room table/new office look like the bridge of the Enterprise. I’ve also received some in-the-moment training on using Microsoft Teams, which my colleagues are using for meetings. Georgia is blooming more each day and my family is taking a daily sanity walk, spring weather and pollen count allowing, while we maintain physical distancing, and I’m keeping the same daily routine, if somewhat more casually dressed, which I find helpful.

How has your work been affected as a result of coronavirus response? What role is policy playing in your campus’ response? Has the situation highlighted any strengths and/or weaknesses in your current policies? If you are working from home, what tips or discoveries can you share? How can we support you?