I’m not sure how many professors are just sitting around at a school and can step in and take over class like say Medieval Islamic Art. Lots of obscure classes out there especially at LAC that are not just plug and play. Seems to me it might be a bit easier to find replacement grocery store workers.
I said it happens not infrequently.
I thought there was a surplus of PhDs looking for prof/instructor jobs? In addition, sometimes other faculty or admin members can step in and cover, or grad students at campuses or communities that have them, or even appropriate people from the private sector can fill in…especially in CS and business classes.
Does this mean schools will only offer classes where they know they have a qualified replacement available should the lead professor become ill? Seems like if they wait until it happens there will be too much lost class time waiting to find a replacement.
Please read #7142.
How quickly can you locate someone in the field who can take over a class in progress? Teach a syllabus they didn’t develop? And be worth your tuition?
My choice of words was deliberate. This happens infrequently.
Considering how hard it is to find substitute teachers in high school, particularly for advanced classes, I can’t imagine it would be so easy to find substitute professors.
@homerdog Seriously! Some people on this thread are making it sound like half of students and most the professors are going to die as a result of campus reopening!
Final thought
In our current reality, grocery store workers probably have a much higher value to society than professors.
However, the work professors do is much more specialized.
@alh Not professors who are doing COVID-19 research.
Just saw a news story that said kids under 20 are 50% less likely to get infected with Covid. And went on to say that shutting schools probably had little effect on slowing the spread. (Though they were probably referring more to K-12 schools). Still since colleges house a lot of 18–19 year olds, this news is positive.
I guess the real point is that schools should consider what their plan-B is should a prof get sick. Perhaps they should consider focusing on classes where they have some depth of resources? If it’s so specialized that there is only one (perhaps aged) prof then i’d consider that a high risk class to take in the fall.
The same thing that happens now. A few class meetings will get cancelled or rescheduled, the professor may work from home or one of his colleagues or the department chair fills in for him. That is how it worked last year for my kid ( non COVID related).
Seriously, no one is irreplaceable, and certainly teaching undergrads is something many, many professors in any field can do, as can grad students. This isn’t cutting edge quantum physics with postdoc fellows, it is just undergrads.
Is this the article? The missing piece is to what degree, if any, do asymptomatic kids spread the disease.
That’s not how the course of infection works. If I was exposed two days ago, and I get tested today, I could be infected but not showing it yet. The 7 day (or more conservative 14 day) waiting period from the time of exposure is the time needed to determine if an exposed person is going to get sick. If you let people out of quarantine before you know they’re not infected, the quarantine is not doing its job.
If a student returns to or newly enrolls in a college that is doing test/trace/isolate, they have agreed to submit to quarantine if exposed. A student who doesn’t want to be quarantined should not be at that college. They know what they’re signing up for, and they should carry out what they have agreed to do, even if they find it inconvenient. They had the choice not to go, but they chose to go.
It may be that test/trace/isolate is not workable for a college, because students won’t comply with the program. But if that is the case, the college has no business bringing the students back.
Given the choice, I’d rather be in a class the whole semester online from the original professor instead of having a few classes in person and then a sudden switch to whomever the department head is randomly able to find to step in (after missing a few classes).
Is that true? My son hasn’t signed anything saying that. Maybe you can say that by registering for classes, they automatically agree to something like that, but that seems a stretch.
No guarantee a professor will be available to teach online either. Things happen. Accidents, heart attacks, stroke, cancer. In my kid’s case, the professor’s elderly wife tripped and fell down the stairs, getting seriously injured, and he was too upset to teach. Colleges expect everyone to finish the year, but have experience with unforseen obstacles.
@Mwfan1921 The piece I saw was on CNN. But it wasn’t referring to asymptomatic teens and children, it was staying a study showed those under 20 are much less likely to get infected.
@“Cardinal Fang” there must be some plan that limits who the contacts are. I don’t know the right checkpoints for who gets quarantined but I’m pretty sure it’s not everyone in that person’s classes. There was some “rule” I remember seeing here. Something like the person had to be around the infected person, closer than three feet with no mask and more than 15 minutes in one go. So, that’s a roommate (if they have one), a friend they’ve been near consistently, or a significant other. Not everyone at a big party.
So, as long as each student is keeping personal time with other kids and masks off limited, each student won’t have that many contacts.
Of course we don’t know how colleges are defining a contact. Has anyone taken a contact tracing class and know the rule?
We can’t use testing to find positives, among contacts. They might not have turned positive yet when we identify them. We have to wait for contacts to become positives, and those contacts have to be quarantined while we wait. We don’t know another way to do it.
A contact is someone who has spent <some length=“” of=“” time,=“” i=“” think=“” 15=“” minutes=“” or=“” half=“” an=“” hour=“”> within <some distance,=“” i=“” think=“” 6=“” feet=“”> of the person. Probably it has to be indoors. Different contact tracing regimens have different specifics, but this is the general idea.
The person you ate lunch with? Contact. The person you spent two hours studying with? Contact. Your boyfriend, if you’ve seen them in the time you’ve been infectious? Contact. Your roommate? Contact. A person you were next to for two minutes? Not a contact.
Edited to add: The definition of a contact isn’t, and shouldn’t be, based on how convenient or inconvenient it would be for a contact to quarantine themselves. It’s based on how likely the infected person would have been to transmit the virus to the potential contact.