Last week President Katsouleas, Interim Provost Elliot, and Dean Holsinger received an email from a group of graduate students with a link to an open letter created by UConn graduate students calling for additional responses to the COVID-19 crises. More than 400 members of the UConn community (graduate students, undergraduate students, postdocs, faculty, and staff) signed the letter.

Last week, The Graduate School held an online Q&A session. With 7 panelists and over 300 folks joining us from across the University, we discussed a variety of topics including the suspension of on-campus research; graduation / commencement ceremonies, submitting signatures and paperwork electronically, pass/fail for graduate students, working remotely with a GAship, international students returning in the fall, and many other topics. The video is closed captioned and a transcript is also viewable beneath the video.

View Graduate School Townhall Recording (April 9, 2020)

Note that in the Townhall, Dean Holsinger refers to an upcoming discussion of pass/fail grading. Since the Townhall, the Graduate Faculty Council voted to approve a measure which is detailed in our April 14, 2020 announcement available below.

In an effort to address concerns that have been raised regarding the challenges faced by graduate students during the pandemic, the Graduate Faculty Council recently approved a motion to temporarily allow any graduate student to convert a course taken in Spring 2020 from “graded” to either “pass/fail” or “withdraw-audit”, with approval of the student’s major advisor and/or program director.  This option is available to all graduate students in a degree or certificate program under the jurisdiction of The Graduate School. The deadline for conversion of courses is May 22, 2020.  Students can, but need not, wait until after receiving their grade to decide whether to seek a conversion. However, once a course is converted, it cannot be converted back to a letter-graded course.

For graduate students, a passing grade in a course converted to P/F is defined as an overall grade of C- or higher.  A course for which the student has a P grade can, with approval of the major advisor (or, if appropriate, the program director), be included on the student’s graduate Plan of Study or Advisement Report.  Courses that have been converted to Audit will appear on the student’s transcript as “WAU”.  A course that has been converted to Audit cannot be used on a graduate Plan of Study or Advisement Report.

Any student wishing to convert a class to P/F or Audit  should email their major advisor and/or program director requesting the conversion, indicating in the email the course number (including subject area), their Peoplesoft ID, and the requested conversion.  If the major advisor and/or program director approves, they should forward the student’s request, indicating approval of the request, to the Registrar’s Office (registrar@uconn.edu) and copy the student on the approval email.  The request should be sent by the student to the major advisor and/or program director no later than Monday, May 18, 2020. The approval email must then be sent from the major advisor’s and/or program director’s UConn email address to the Registrar’s Office by Friday, May 22, 2020.  Extensions of the deadline (due to extenuating circumstances) will be allowed only with the approval of The Graduate School.

Dear Colleagues,

The ongoing COVID-19 epidemic is accompanied by extraordinary measures attempting to contain it. First and foremost, The Graduate School is concerned for the safety, health, and well-being of students, faculty, and staff of the University of Connecticut and the communities in which they live. Please heed the advice of public health experts to protect yourself and those around you. 

Governor Lamont signed an executive order on March 20 directing all non-essential functions in Connecticut to suspend operations beginning Monday, March 23 at 8:00pm. As a result, the President, Provost, and Vice President for Research have determined that all on-campus research at all campuses must stop and all labs close at the same time. The suspension of activity will last through at least April 22. The University will allow only critical research support functions to continue. Critical functions are those that are necessary to allow research to resume after this suspension (e.g., care of research animals or plants, maintenance of cell lines, maintenance of research equipment). Please refer to the Critical Research Infrastructure Inventory for more information. In addition, all University-sponsored travel out-of-state has been suspended, except in very limited circumstances. Please refer to the COVID-19 Travel Advisory and Guidelines for more information.  

Graduate students and their advisory committees should immediately develop plans for thesis and dissertation research that take into account these restrictions. We know that Governor Lamont’s restrictions to non-essential functions are now in place through at least April 22, but it is prudent to plan for the possibility that they will last substantially longer. Graduate students and their advisory committees should plan for the possibility that research involving on-campus facilities or out-of-state travel will continue to be limited through the entire summer, possibly even longer. The appropriate modifications to research plans will differ dramatically from discipline to discipline. They are likely to differ from student to student within disciplines. The Graduate School has developed a set of guidelines and questions for graduate students and faculty to consider as they adapt to these challenges. Please consult them carefully, and contact The Graduate School at gradschool@uconn.edu if you have any questions. Given the unchartered territory, we also welcome your ideas that might be useful to other graduate students and faculty. We will update the guidelines periodically as new information and advice becomes available. 

Please take care of yourself and everyone around you. 

Kent Holsinger 

To our UConn Community,

Due to concern about the COVID-19 (coronavirus) contagion, The Graduate School office will be closed from March 16th until further notice.  Our staff will primarily be working remotely during this time and the best way to reach us will be through email.  We will respond as quickly as possible and may be able to schedule phone and/or video meetings as needed. As always, feel free to email gradschool@uconn.edu with any concern, and we will get your e-mail to the right person and respond as quickly as possible.

During these extraordinary times, please be assured that The Graduate School continues to consider how the pandemic is and could affect academic work.  The leadership of The Graduate School is well placed on the working groups that are meeting regularly to anticipate and ameliorate issues, while making plans to ensure that the business of the university moves forward.  We have been impressed by how thoughtful our administration has been, though it is true that we cannot think of everything.  It is our goal that you feel supported. If you have a question for which you do not know the answer or concern that does not seem to have been addressed, please let us know.  We will either direct you toward the solution or work with you to create one.   

The COVID-19 situation continues to change very quickly. The health, safety and well-being of our community is our highest priority and continually guides our preparation, thinking, and actions. 

To address specific questions for graduate education audiences, please refer to the “Frequently Asked Questions” links in the side navigation of this web page.

More information about COVID-19 is available at this website: https://uconn.edu/public-notification/coronavirus

Thank you,

The Graduate School