Two months into the COVID-19 pandemic, we are beginning to look ahead to the eventual resumption of Clarkson’s on-campus research. This return to research laboratories will be phased, deliberate, and guided by public health advisories, and will require detailed pre-return planning on the part of everyone involved. Our overarching goal is to protect and support our community, both by minimizing the risk and extent of viral infections and by finding safe and creative ways to reintroduce research previously put on hold.
In that context, in the next coming weeks, we will be asking for the research community’s help in staging this resumption effort. We are currently preparing a Research Resumption Toolkit, which will include details on the process, important guidance, and templates. The week of May 18th, we will be asking all principal investigators who manage on-campus labs, facilities, and centers to provide a resumption plan and personnel list and to submit your plan for approval via the appropriate web form, which will also be provided in the Toolkit. The web form will include additional questions to inform and prioritize the overall resumption plan. A research committee led by Michelle Crimi, Professor and Director of Engineering and Management and Shannon Robinson, AVP for Research and Technology Transfer, will share submitted plans with department chairs, center directors, and Associate Deans for Research and from there will develop a plan for resuming research in each unit.
We expect this resumption process to be slower than the process we took to ramp down research in March. We anticipate we will begin phasing back on-campus research only after the ban on non-essential business has been lifted by the state, and from there we will begin a staged process that may take weeks to ramp up. We will prioritize for on-campus return, to the extent possible, research activities that are time-sensitive and must take place on campus. Any research that does not require campus facilities will continue to be conducted remotely until the campus is back in full on-site operation. Faculty who conduct research that does not require campus facilities will not be required to submit a resumption plan. The guidelines we provide will factor in the very real possibility that we may need to ramp down research again at any point.
Stay tuned for an email communication early next week, which will provide the Toolkit information mentioned above.
Thanks,
Michelle and Shannon
