{"id":161885,"date":"2020-06-16T07:50:33","date_gmt":"2020-06-16T11:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=161885"},"modified":"2020-06-19T09:47:57","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T13:47:57","slug":"picturing-new-normal-uconn-clas-researchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2020\/06\/picturing-new-normal-uconn-clas-researchers\/","title":{"rendered":"Picturing a \u2018New Normal\u2019 for UConn CLAS Researchers"},"content":{"rendered":"

What will the new normal look like after COVID-19?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

On May 20, many UConn researchers returned to campus laboratories and research spaces as part of the <\/span><\/span>phased reopening<\/a><\/span> of the University and the state. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Now, faculty in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences share what the new normal for UConn researchers looks like, including missed chances, surprising opportunities, and a lot of hand sanitizer. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Currently, over 400 researchers have applied to return to research operations on campus, and about 100 researchers in CLAS have been approved.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

For the past five years, Hannes Baumann, associate professor of marine sciences, and his <\/span><\/span>fish ecology lab<\/span><\/a>, have been surveying the coastal fish community at a cove near the Avery Point campus. In the past, Baumann and his graduate and undergraduate students took a shared truck out to the cove, where they deployed a large net, called a beach seine, a few times every two weeks. The lab tracks levels of oxygen and pH in the cove, which means taking out a small boat to service the monitoring sensors anchored in the water. <\/span><\/span>Exploring how\u00a0coastal marine organisms cope with changes in their environment due to climate change is essential to their research.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, the survey must be done with no more than two researchers at a time, and only one person can be in the truck. Before and after they go out on the boat, they wipe every surface with disinfectant, including the life vests. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPrior to the pandemic, the thought of wiping off the boat before taking it out or disinfecting our old, oily and grimy life jackets, would have seemed comical,\u201d Baumann says.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Julie Fosdick<\/a><\/span>, assistant professor of geosciences, collects data to understand how tectonic and sedimentary processes interact to shape the Earth\u2019s mountains. Though she was allowed to keep her laboratory instruments, two mass spectrometers and a noble gas extraction line, running for maintenance, she will need to recalibrate them before resuming research on the cooling age of minerals from the Patagonian Andes in Chile. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cProtocols include staggering work locations and schedules,\u201d she says, including social distancing and rigorous cleaning. \u201cWe have five face masks per person, and will reuse them each five times before replacing them,\u201d she says. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Researchers returning to campus must complete a <\/span><\/span>COVID-19 safety training course<\/a><\/span> based on current CDC guidelines and UConn procedures. But it\u2019s a different playing field for many humanities researchers. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Anna Mae Duane, associate professor of English and American studies, planned to visit Philadelphia this spring to examine the records of the \u201c<\/span><\/span>House of Refuge for Colored Children<\/a><\/span>\u201d\u2014the first juvenile detention center for black children considered \u201cdelinquent\u201d in the 1850s. The Philadelphia institution has original records essential to Duane\u2019s research for her next book on child labor and the role of work as redemptive in the nineteenth century penitentiary, which explores the belief that work was both a punishment and path to redemption for people.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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