Friday, March 13, 2020
Dear members of the Bellarmine community,
As the COVID-19 situation continues to prompt closures nationwide to slow the spread of the virus, we have decided that starting Monday, most employees should work from home unless their on-campus presence is designated essential by their vice president.
Health-sensitive staff deemed essential (anyone age 60 or older and/or those with diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, kidney failure or other chronic major medical conditions) or those caring for health-sensitive relatives should seek guidance from Human Resources. There is also the opportunity for essential employees to develop rotations.
Work from home
It is critical for all employees to monitor email and phone calls daily, as we will continue to share updates via email. It’s also crucial for every employee to enter time worked promptly and accurately and for supervisors to approve time promptly. Bellarmine’s pay practices will continue as usual. Whether you are on leave due to your own COVID-19 illness, your child is out of school/childcare due to school/childcare closure, or the campus officially closes, you will be paid. If you are on biweekly pay (hourly), you will track your actual work time on the timekeeping system as usual. You should record virus-related absence as OPTO. We will communicate more about this next week. It is important that the work of the University continue as if employees were at work.
We will also continue to update the Bellarmine coronavirus website.
Athletics
Athletics has suspended all competition after consultation with our conferences and the NCAA’s decision to cancel championship events. We know this is hugely disappointing to our student-athletes, especially our seniors, and to Knights Nation.
Please continue to be sensitive to the needs of all students as we prepare for resumption of classes online on Wednesday, March 18, and for registration, which will begin on schedule on Monday.
Again, many thanks to all faculty for pitching in so willingly to learn new ways of delivering instruction so that course delivery can continue; to Dr. Adam Elias, Gabrielle Read Jasnoff and Janice Poston for their coaching; and to Eric Satterly and the Information Technology team for keeping things running smoothly.
Below are some resources gathered by Eric Satterly’s team to help all of us prepare. He asks that I remind you to be hyper-vigilant with your passwords and wary of suspicious emails, especially those with attachments. If there is one group that welcomes times of crisis, it’s the hacker community. Here is a story that outlines some of the ways cyber criminals have been preying on COVID-19 fear to steal people’s data: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/hackers-are-using-coronavirus-concerns-to-trick-you-cybersecurity-pros-warn-2020-03-12
Let’s be careful out there
Susan M. Donovan, Ph.D.
President
PREPARING FOR REMOTE WORK
Phones
Forwarding office phones to other numbers and sending voicemail to email: https://one.bellarmine.edu/community/tsc/services/Pages/Voice-Services.aspx
Access to files
Move needed files from your W: Drive to One Drive, which is accessible from any computer through One Bellarmine.
Virtual Private Network (VPN)
The first question to ask is, do you need it? Most people don’t. To decide, please refer to this article: https://one.bellarmine.edu/community/it/Pages/VPN-Access.aspx. If you do need VPN, send an email to the Technology Support Center (tsc@bellarmine.edu) and they will get the ball rolling.
Office365 and Microsoft Teams
This remote working platform gives you access to Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other tools, as well as Microsoft Teams, which can be used to conduct group chats or videoconferences. These tools also help to keep our information private and safe. Here is a link to a lot of great, short videos on using Teams: https://aka.bellarmine.edu/teamsvideos/
More IT-specific resources
Password change update
Eric Satterly communicated on Feb. 25 that on March 16 we would begin requiring everyone to complete the registration process to be able to reset their passwords without the TSC. We are no longer enforcing that date at this time; however, you are welcome (and encouraged) to complete the process anyway. To register, visit https://aka.bellarmine.edu/ms-sec-info. If you want to learn more about this service or need help getting it set up, visit https://aka.bellarmine.edu/pwd-rst-info.