Dear English Majors and Minors, Apologies if you received a message from me already today. I want to make sure everyone gets this news. If you're planning to take English courses for Fall 2020, I wanted to let you know that our department has decided that all courses will be online for the fall. We decided to make this move because of the pandemic, and in anticipation that it will still not be safe for us to meet in the small classrooms allotted to most of our courses. We also know that many of you depend on public transit to get to campus. Please know that all instructors teaching your courses will be asked to take a seminar about online teaching pedagogies. Unlike this spring, when the move to online teaching was sudden, our faculty will now have the opportunity to prepare for teaching online this summer, which is in part why we're making this decision early. If you go on CUNYFirst, you should soon be able to see how your courses will be taught. Synchronous means that the course will be taught via videoconferencing at the scheduled times. Asynchronous means that the course will be taught mostly at your own pace, with set deadlines and discussion on online forums/ lecture material posted online. Some professors will choose to do a combination of these two things, and in the next few weeks we will post this information in the "notes" in CUNYFirst. If you have any questions about your specific classes, please feel free to reach out to your professor. For general or registration questions, please write to me or to the English Department at english@qc.cuny.edu <mailto:english@qc.cuny.edu> Have a good summer! Please stay safe. all my best, Professor Karen Weingarten Acting Chair of English