Center for the Advancement of Teaching

What a wild ride the past weeks have been! The Center for the Advancement of Teaching (CAT) was in the middle of providing support to Temple Japan and Temple Rome to move their instruction online when the call came from the Provost’s office with a simple message: “Get ready for main campus!” I’ll admit I didn’t sleep well that night, anticipating already the enormity of the task ahead, the challenges that our faculty and our team would face, and the very real responsibility to make sure we could provide an education for our students. Subsequent participation in university-wide committees tasked with making what seemed almost impossible actually happen introduced me to all of those people on the front lines responsible for health, student services, information technology, emergency management, human resources, communications, and so much more. Our university is a complex ecosystem and the number of decisions to be made on a daily basis were (and are) staggering.