Welcome back (virtually) for the remainder of the spring semester.  I have been extremely impressed by how your AIM faculty have responded to the impact of COVID-19. While you were away during spring break, your AIM faculty were quite busy planning how best to provide your courses online via live Zoom sessions. Their commitment to their students and their desire to ensure the highest quality online learning experience possible has enabled us to begin this new venture with a great start. This is not to say that we won’t see hiccups along the way – certainly there will be those. However, your AIM faculty is committed to doing whatever they can do to help your spring semester finish strong and successfully.

Although this may not be how many of us envisioned the remainder of the spring semester to play out, our Volunteer spirit will help us become an even stronger University.  During this time Chancellor Plowman has challenged faculty to be: (1) creative, (2) compassionate, and (3) flexible. Your AIM faculty is committed to meeting this challenge. During this past week we have certainly had to be creative at times, and as the semester goes on we pledge to be flexible as challenges arise and to address them with compassion as needed. As this semester plays out, I would ask our AIM students be: (1) flexible, (2) understanding, and (3) patient. You will certainly be asked to learn in new ways that will require you to be flexible, and although your AIM faculty is working hard to deliver the best online class possible, I can’t promise that we will always get it right the first time. When inevitable hiccups do occur, please be understanding and patient as faculty and classmates strive to do their best to adjust to our new world.

We are in this together and we will get this done with Big Orange pride and a commitment to quality.

Go Vols!

Dr. Neal
Department Head, AIM