COVID-19

Families First Coronavirus Response Act: The Families First Coronavirus Response Act became effective on April 1.

Public Health Emergency Leave (PHEL): Employees are now eligible for up to 160 hours of PHEL. For more information, please contact your supervisor.

Employee Assistance Program (EAP): For those employees who are having a difficult time with this situation, or may be concerned about coming to work, EAP counselors are available to full time employees that participate in one of our state offered health plans. More information is available through the Department of Human Resource Management.

Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act): On March 27, 2020 the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) was signed into law. The Act is designed to bring financial relief for individuals and families affected by the Coronavirus. The CARES Act includes the following:

Distributions:

• The Act waives the 10% early withdrawal penalty and 20% withholding for coronavirus related distributions of up to $100,000 across all qualified retirement plans (if your plan allows)
• Distributions will be subject to taxation and you will have the option to pay taxes due over a three-year period.
• The Act also allows you to recontribute within three years regardless of that year’s contribution limit. This will make it easier for you to replace the amount of your distribution in your retirement
• Participants can self-certify their eligibility

Loans:

• If you qualify based on coronavirus-related eligibility, maximum loan limits are increased from $50,000 or 50% of vested account balances to $100,000 or all of the vested account balance made within 180 days of enactment.
• Repayment of the loan due between the date of the CARES enactment and year-end delayed 1 year
• Participants can self-certify their eligibility

Stimulus Recovery Payment and Student Loan Deferral Programs:

• Qualified taxpayers will receive direct stimulus recovery payments of up to $1,200 for individuals or $2,400 for married couples filing a joint return, with amounts increasing by $500 for every child. These amounts begin phasing out when individuals have $75,000 in adjusted gross income or couples filing jointly earn $150,000. The direct payments are not available for individuals and couples filing jointly who have adjusted gross incomes of $99,000 and $198,000, respectively.
• Borrowers through the federal student loan program may suspend monthly student loan payments without penalty through September 30, 2020. Students may retain Pell grants if they must leave school due to coronavirus closures.
• Allows for extended tax filing and IRA contribution deadlines. The deadline for filing a 2019 tax return—and any corresponding 2019 IRA contributions—has been extended to July 15, 2020

Retirees

• CARES Act allows you to cancel 2020 required minimum distributions (RMDs) for distributions from 401(a), 401(k), 403(a), 403(b) and governmental 457(b) retirement plans and IRAs.

VRS is working with ICMA-RC to develop a process that will allow members and retirees to receive coronavirus related distributions from certain defined contribution plans. More information can be found at www.vartire.org.

Christopher Newport University will be allowing employees to withdraw funds or take loans from their 403(b) for Coronavirus related reasons.

Please contact your vendors for required paperwork.

TIAA - John Kuchta
Phone: (434) 964–2624
Email: john.kuchta@tiaa.org

Lincoln Financial Group - Sharon Ryan
Phone: (757) 873–3331
Email: sharon.ryan@lfg.com

Metlife - Brooke Larson
Phone: (757) 493–4354
Email: brookelarsen@financialguide.com

AIG Valic - Cheri Coleman
Phone: (757) 646–2314
Email: cheri.coleman@valic.com

Please contact the Office of Human Resources Benefits Team with any questions at hr@cnu.edu.

The University has adopted an emergency telework policy. Telework is extended until further notice. No additional paperwork is required from employees for the telework extension. Please refer questions to your supervisor.

IT Services has provided information on how to set up remote access to your work computer and phone as well as collaborative services supported by the university.

All faculty/staff mail from outside of campus will be collected and held in the mailroom. Please call (757) 594–7935 to pick up and/or drop off mail, which will occur in 30 Commonwealth Hall. Please share interoffice mail electronically as much as possible.

The campus will remain closed to the public until further notice. Entry to all buildings will remain card access only. The Stay at Home order will continue until June 10, unless amended or rescinded by the Governor.

Employees will need to use their CNU ID card to enter the building in which they work.

The Trible Library is closed.

David Student Union doors will remain unlocked from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

Regattas is serving meals 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. every day. The Commons and all retail dining operations are closed.

Until further notice, all out-of-state university-funded travel is prohibited. In-state travel should be avoided and is prohibited for gatherings that will exceed 50 persons. Internal university meetings should be limited in the number of participants and avoided if possible. Options for virtual meetings will be provided by IT.

Employees who obtained approved travel priors and booked airline or rail tickets, conference registration fees or hotel accommodations should first pursue obtaining a full refund from the vendors. If only a partial refund can be obtained documentation must be submitted to substantiate the initial cost and the reduced refund received in order to be reimbursed for the difference.

In the instance of airfare or rail tickets where the vendor supplies a voucher to be used by the traveler at a later date, the original documentation of cost and a copy of the voucher must be submitted to the Business Office in order to obtain full reimbursement. The original voucher must be given to your departmental admin so that it may be used for future business travel.

Please contact Andrea Moore at (757) 594–7214 or Erin Gray at (757) 594–7293 with questions.

IDEAs from this semester are necessary to know what students thought of the transition to online instruction and how they felt they progressed on the learning objectives. They will not be used for any faculty reviews.

All tenure-track faculty will have their tenure clock extended by one year. If you were scheduled to be reviewed Fall 2020, it will be pushed to Fall 2021. If you were reviewed Fall 2019, your next review will occur in Fall 2022. Extending the tenure clock does not change the start date of the materials for evaluation. Only the evaluation calendar is moved back one year

• All faculty members on tenure-track will have their tenure review schedule extended one year, and this is effective immediately. This is the default.
• Faculty members may decide, and are welcome, to opt-out of the extension. The way to opt-out is by notifying the vice provost of that decision via email at rcolvin@cnu.edu by May 15, 2020. It does not matter if the review was originally scheduled for this fall or next fall. There is one deadline. Dealing with the public health emergency this Spring Semester 2020 is the impetus for the extension and, in fairness, everyone has the same window of time to make the decision.
• You are encouraged to consult with your department chair and dean if you have questions regarding the wisdom of opting-out or not.
• Some faculty may have a one-year parental leave extension to their contract and peer review schedule, as provided in the Handbook. The Public Health Extension adds on top of the one year extension for approved parental leave. If you do not want both, you may want to opt out of the Public Health Extension.
• Yes, some people with parental leave and Public Health Extension will exceed the normal six year maximum for materials in the dossier. This six year rule has been waived to the extent exceeding the six years is caused by the Public Health Extension.
• The faculty member does not cut off the first year of data in the dossier to add a new year at the end. The number of years being considered increases by one. The original start date does not change, the length of time being reviewed increases.
• Under the Public Health Extension, faculty members will continue to have an employment contract for the academic year following the year in which a scheduled review occurs. This is standard practice and remains unchanged.

By Friday, May 15, we will know who is opting-out and, thus, staying on the original schedule.

Here is the new schedule of due dates related to the Fall 2020 reviews. The EVAL–1-R will need to be amended to reflect these two new dates. The remaining dates on the EVAL–1-R for 2020 remain unchanged.

• Wednesday, May 20, (Step 3, previously April 10) the vice provost prepares and distributes the final EVAL–2 list of candidates for peer review to the FRC and the deans; deans distribute the final EVAL–2 to chairs by department. The vice provost notifies all faculty scheduled for peer review. The department chair (or, in the event that the evaluee is a department chair, the dean) in consultation with the vice provost organizes the Department Review Committee (DRC).
• Wednesday, June 10, (Step 4, previously May 1) the chair submits the completed EVAL–5 form initially creating the DRC to the vice provost. These new dates allow faculty to complete the unique challenges of online teaching and exams before turning their attention to constructing DRCs. The time for chairs to complete the EVAL–5s is unchanged at three weeks.

These two new EVAL–1-R dates for 2020 apply equally for candidates for full professor. While the tenure extension obviously does not apply to candidates for promotion to full professor, the DRCs across campus need to be constructed at the same relative time due to optimizing membership and spreading the workload fairly across faculty members who would serve on DRCs.

For Fall 2021 reviews, we will return to the normal schedule.

Due to how difficult and stressful the transition to online learning has been, the university has loosened the rules on Withdrawal and Pass/Fail options.

For full details, please refer to the email to faculty members from Dave Doughty sent April 16.

Faculty must retain electronic copies of their students’ final examinations or assignments for one year. Faculty who are administering their final assessments through Scholar will have them automatically saved on their Scholar course shells. Faculty may update the settings of their Scholar course shells by making the courses ‘unavailable’ at the end of April 2021. Should faculty need IT assistance with their course shell settings or exam administration through Scholar, they should contact Will White at will.white@cnu.edu.

Dave Doughty email to faculty - Thu, Apr 16, 12:49 p.m.

The University Handbook lays out the criteria for final exams in Section VI.16.b.7 on page 74.

Virtually all classes, with just a few stated exceptions, must have a final comprehensive assessment or substantive culminating activity that is given or due in the exam period as scheduled by the Office of the Registrar.

For each of your classes the final exam or final paper or culminating activity must be either given or due to be submitted to you (via email/Scholar, etc.) during the regularly scheduled exam period. The time of final exams may not be changed, to prevent collision, and the due date for your final may not be earlier than your regularly scheduled exam period.

Our final exam policy also allows a student with three exams scheduled on one day to request to move one of them (but not to a reading day). Please be sensitive to students when they request to move an exam due to having three exams on one day.

Executive Order 55 #3 allows for academic research to continue with social distancing protocols.

• Graduate students listed below will be given card access to Forbes to continue their research.
• No loitering, or social gathering will be permitted.
• Students, faculty and staff must exercise social distancing - this is at least 6 feet between two people and no more than 10 in any one area.
• Card access is for Monday - Friday between the hours 9 a.m. - 6 p.m.

It is critical for the safety of all, that we limit the exposure during the COVID–19 conditions. We understand this might be a tight window for students to get their work done and may not be as convenient as allowing for any time access, but keeping building hours to a minimum allows for adequate cleaning with minimal staff on campus.

If the block of time is not sufficient for the academic

research please email tammy.sommer@cnu.edu.

The library's enormous resources and helpful staff remain available online. Tutors and writing associates are working with students remotely and the Captains Care referral system continues to be up and running. If you have questions, please email mary.sellen@cnu.edu.

Trible Library Book Curbside Delivery

Beginning May 11, faculty needing Trible Library materials for research or class prep may request them by emailing titles and call numbers to circ@cnu.edu. You may pick up Wednesdays or Thursdays between 10 a.m. and noon, or by appointment. The books will be retrieved, checked out to you, and brought to the doors facing the traffic circle. Please call the circulation desk at (757) 594–7133 when you are in the circle.

PROQUEST Database

ProQuest will soon be upgrading our subscription with access to these collections:

Academic Video Online [AVON]

This collection adds 68,000 new videos with UNLIMITED use. The videos in AVON are searchable on the ProQuest platform.

Alexander Street Press Music and Dance Online

Many more music resources and provides dance resources, as well. It includes the following databases:

• Music Online: Listening
• Music Video Collection
• Music Reference Collection
• Music Online: Classical Scores Library
• Music Online: Music Periodicals of the 19th Century
• Dance Online: Dance in Video, Volume I
• Dance Online: Dance in Video, Volume II
• Dance Online: Dance Studies Collection

Historical Newspapers MAJOR DAILIES

Additional titles include the Historical Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, and LA Times to our existing Historical New York Times coverage.

Online Educational Resources

Since 2016, VIVA (Virginia’s academic library consortium) has had a partnership with the Open Textbook Library to promote the adoption of open educational resources. Open educational resources (OER) are high-quality teaching, learning, and research materials that are free to use and repurpose. Additionally,

since most OER are available online, they are very easily adapted into the online learning environment. If you need help navigating these resources, or would like to learn more about using OER in your courses, please contact Matt Shelley at matt.shelley@cnu.edu.

Instruction

Over the summer, many of our students will be taking online classes again. The staff at the Trible Library are happy to support them by offering online instruction sessions. Whether synchronous or asynchronous, on a wide range of library resources and services, the librarians are ready to provide the same level of assistance virtually as they would in person. Schedule a session for your class at https://cnu.libguides.com/instruction.

Reserve Materials

The process to return reserve materials will happen when we are back on campus. For the summer sessions, if you need materials scanned to post in your Scholar shell, please email circ@cnu.edu with the request details. A staff person will scan and email to you within 24 hours.

Adjunct Faculty

If you are adjunct and need remote access, email library@cnu.edu and we will set you up. You have all the services that we offer full-time faculty.

Tutorials and Course Guides

If you want to supplement your online instruction by way of course guides or tutorials, contact Matt Shelley at matt.shelley@cnu.edu.

Check our tutorial list and course guides for additional information. Especially if you are assigning research, these guides and tutorials can be of great assistance to your students.

We are also happy to do live online instruction through Google Hangouts.

Interlibrary Loan (ILL)

For you research needs this summer, ILL will continue to function and deliver items and articles electronically only in a timely manner. Physical items such as books are not possible to get at this time as libraries have stopped sending books. ILL is doing what we can to get ebooks and ebook chapters instead of physical books when possible. Please contact ill@cnu.edu with any questions.

Reserve Materials

The process to return reserve materials will happen when we are back on campus. For the summer sessions, if you need materials scanned to post in your Scholar shell, please email circ@cnu.edu with the request details. A staff person will scan and email to you within 24 hours.

There will be no increase in tuition and fees, room and board for the next academic year 2020–2021 at Christopher Newport.

Moreover, we are planning for our classes to resume on campus in the Fall depending, of course, on the state of the coronavirus and direction from Richmond and Washington.

Commencement has been rescheduled for October 9–11, 2020. Full details and schedule updates can be found at cnu.edu/commencement.

The Alumni Society is asking that we make a special effort to congratulate our graduates from a distance on what would have been their commencement day:

On May 9, 2020, we invite all members of the Christopher Newport family to post on social media in support of this extraordinary class. Post words of encouragement, tell your stories, and take pictures using the hashtag #CNU2020. To make it more special, please consider purchasing an “I Support” the Class of 2020 t-shirt. This is a modified version of the actual senior class shirt. Wear it or any Christopher Newport gear in your posts in honor and celebration of these incredible Captains! It will be a day to own social media, show compassion for CNU seniors and welcome them into the proud family of Captains for Life!

Maymester is moving online and will be taught remotely.

Summer classes beginning in the month of June are moving online and will be taught remotely.

All summer 2020 Study Abroad programs, including the July programs, are cancelled.

The grade deadline at the end of the semester has been pushed back two days from Tuesday, May 5 at 10 a.m. to Thursday, May 7 at 10 a.m.

Every student is allowed two additional courses for which they may earn a pass/fail grade this semester. These are not limited to elective courses. These courses could be in their major, second major, concentration and/or minor, a writing intensive course, or in the Liberal Learning Core – essentially any two courses in which a student is enrolled during Spring Semester 2020. These two additional courses are for Spring 2020 semester only.

The deadline to submit electronic forms for Pass/Fail and Course Withdrawals has been extended to April 10 at 5 p.m. If students are considering graduate school, it might be to their advantage to get a letter grade rather than a P grade. A P grade does not calculate into a student’s GPA.