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Over the last academic year, the COVID pandemic has restructured our work environment in significant ways that will ripple long past 2021. Last spring and summer, faculty members expeditiously moved toward remote teaching while staff also learned innovative ways to deliver their missions. Essential employees continued to work on campus but adapted to new protocols of monitoring, masking, distancing, and cleaning: MMDC. Many employees adjusted to telework from home.

One year later, several outcomes of this pandemic year are evident. Universities can change quicker than many supposed, and institutions must remain in adaptive mode moving into the future. Meanwhile, many employees are wondering what work at UMW will look like as the pandemic recedes. This is a critical question whose response demands our prompt attention. Indeed, it has been a central priority for President Troy Paino and the UMW Board of Visitors to uplift the importance of faculty and staff in our academic mission. In addition, UMW’s Guiding Principles on Diversity and Inclusion describe the institution’s commitment to “a system of responsibility, accountability, and recognition of all of its members, and seeks to carry out these principles of diversity and inclusion in all of its operations, goals, and objectives.” 

At the same time, UMW must also be responsive to the policies of the commonwealth’s Department of Human Resource Management (DHRM) related to work and telework, including Policy 1.61 Teleworking and Work Mode Categories.

The Future of Work Planning Group is one of a variety of groups tasked with addressing key questions related to the post-pandemic UMW.