Dean's Message
:
A Pulse Check on the Life Sciences at UC Davis
Greetings,
I hope this message finds you healthy and thriving while likely enduring a stay-at-home order.
Warm days remind us that summer is on the way as we head into the final stretch of the spring quarter. Despite the tumultuous change initiated by COVID-19, we have good news to share.
We’re heartened to learn that more than 1,600 freshmen have registered to join us this fall as first-year students. This is a larger class than last fall, and in these uncertain times, we welcome this outcome. We’ll hear more about incoming transfer students in early June.
We’re proud of our current students’ abilities to pivot to digital learning during this unprecedented time. Instructors across 21 biology classes recently issued a survey to check in with the students about the stress and complexity of the spring online quarter. Over 500 students responded to this anonymous survey. Despite the abrupt and unexpected reality shift, the results of the survey show that our students maintain the ingenuity, adaptability and good-nature that makes Aggies one-of-a-kind.
This week, we begin developing procedures to responsibly resume on-site research, enabling us to offer better guidance and effectively manage ramp-up once the Davis campus reactivates from “suspended operations” status. We are encouraged by the support of our faculty, many of whom are incorporating COVID-19 inquiries into their research portfolios.
Stronger than ever, we are Aggies for all,
