LSA instructors
prepare for a mostly
virtual fall semester

As the University of Michigan
campus gears up for a “public
health-informed
in-residence
semester” this fall, departments and
instructors have had to decide how
to hold their classes while aligning
with University guidelines.
For LSA, these guidelines means
large classes over 45 will be fully
online, and smaller classes have the
option to be in-person, hybrid or
fully online, according to LSA Dean
Anne Curzan.
According
to
University
spokesman
Rick
Fitzgerald,
faculty
and
leadership
within
their individual departments and
schools are best positioned to decide
the most effective way to deliver
courses.
“Each school or college will make
the final decision on classroom
capacity based on the needs of the
class and the specific configuration
of the space,” Fitzgerald said. “All
this is being done, of course, to follow
public health guidance of providing
a minimum of 36 square feet of space
per person in the classroom, with
more space required for courses that
require students to move around or
be there for longer periods of time.”
According
to
recent
correspondence from University
President Mark Schlissel, the Ann
Arbor Registrar’s Office is working
to post online information that
indicates what mode of instruction
individual courses will be taught in.
Students will be able to adjust their
course selections beginning Aug. 7.
The Daily Web Team compiled
data from the LSA Course Guide
and found that, as of Aug. 2, nearly
68 percent of classes are listed as
online courses, with approximately
18 percent being listed as in-person
and 13 percent as hybrid.
In an interview with the Daily last
month, Prof. Marcus Ammerlaan,
who taught the introductory lab

course Biology 173 last winter,
expressed the difficulty of teaching
a large lab class online.
“The instructor, obviously, is
going to be older than most of the
students and that in itself is a risk
factor,” Ammerlaan said. “So you
don’t want to see an instructor
getting affected by an asymptomatic
student and then pass that infection
on through GSIs (Graduate Student
Instructors) and to other sections.”
Lecturer Carly Nowicki, who will
be teaching Biology 173 in the fall
and is currently teaching it during
the summer semester, decided to
make the class online in the fall.
According to Nowicki, there are
about 700 students enrolled in the
course and 17-18 GSIs each semester.
Because of this large class size, she
felt she could not wait until the last
minute to make decisions.
“It was me having separate
conversations with the laboratory
support
staff,”
Nowicki
said.
“Those are the people that are the
frontlines. They’re the ones that are
exposed to every lab, and so I had
frank conversations with some of
those people to get their thoughts on
how they feel, outside of what any
administration felt.”
With
the
summer
semester
being the first time the course is
running fully online, Nowicki said
the class was rewritten to include a
combination of students performing
labs at home with simple household
items, virtual lab simulations and
watching videos.
“Every video demo I’ve done
has been in my own home because
that’s where students are going to
be performing (the experiments),”
Nowicki said.
Rackham
student
Annaliese
Keiser will be a GSI in the Math
Department for the fall semester.
Though she doesn’t know what
classes she will be teaching yet, she
said she knows she will be teaching
remotely, as the Math Department
decided that all the courses typically
taught by GSIs would be conducted
remotely.

2

Thursday, August 6, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
NEWS

Students respond to the
WilmerHale report of
Philbert’s misconduct

Friday morning, the University
of Michigan community awoke to
an email announcing the release
of the WilmerHale report, sent to
students, University officials, the
Board of Regents and the public
simultaneously. The investigation,
conducted by the WilmerHale
law firm, uncovered decades of
allegations of sexual misconduct
and harassment against former
University
Provost
Martin
Philbert, as well as numerous
instances in which University
administrators were made aware
of allegations prior to when the
investigation opened in January.
Many students have reacted to
the findings of the investigation
with
anger,
frustration
and
disappointment — but many are
not surprised, they told The Daily.
Public
Policy
senior
Nora
Hilgart-Griff referenced a string
of alleged abusers from the
University’s recent past — from
the late athletic doctor Robert
Anderson
to
former
Music,
Theatre
&
Dance
professor
Stephen Shipps — as she discussed
her own lack of surprise at the
contents of the report. She said
the years of allegations against
Philbert reassert the University’s
disappointing progress toward
creating an environment free of
sexual harassment and violence
on campus.
“We want to see these things
as maybe part of an ugly past
or part of a different culture,”
Hilgart-Griff said. “Colleges and

universities have maybe come a
long way, but they’re still by and
large institutions of privilege …
(and of) wealth and whiteness and
maleness, and I think that can’t
help but show. So I am horrified
and unsurprised at the same time,
which I think is a really frustrating
conjunction of emotions.”
The report arrived six months
after
University
President
Mark Schlissel first announced
the
University
had
received
allegations against Philbert and
had placed him on leave. Some
students saw the public release of
the WilmerHale report as a step in
the right direction, while others
pointed to inconsistencies between
the claims to transparency and the
contents of the report itself.
LSA and Music, Theatre &
Dance junior Andrew Gerace
voiced
skepticism
about
the
University’s
efforts
toward
transparency.
“The
University
is
very
comfortable
using
the
term
‘transparency’
when
they’re
saying things like, ‘Oh, we have
sent this report to you … as part of
our commitment to transparency’
— however, everything that the
report documented was non-
transparent,” Gerace said.
LSA junior Emma Sandberg
similarly
noted
that
other
institutional
barriers
to
transparency remain. Sandberg
is the founder of Roe v. Rape, a
nonprofit advocacy group for
survivors of sexual assault on
campus that works to challenge
several of the University’s existing
sexual misconduct policies.
“I
really
appreciate
the
University’s transparency in this
case; it’s so important that they

‘A culture of silence’

IULIA DOBRIN
Daily Staff Reporter

JULIANNA MORANO
Daily Staff Reporter

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Visualizing the data
for online, in-person
and hybrid classes

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