Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Important Announcement about 2020 Symposium

Colleagues and friends,

The coronavirus has given us all reason to pause. The SJSEP organizing committee is concerned for the health and well-being of all our social justice allies as well as the potential impact on the viability of the symposium. The response to the COVID-19 outbreak is occurring rapidly at universities across the US. Universities are beginning to restrict domestic travel of faculty, staff, and students, and this number will likely increase in the next 2 weeks. 

Given we are a small symposium and that a reduction of 20 people not attending will have a huge impact on our interactive format, collaborations, and presentations, we have made the very difficult decision to cancel the SJSEP Symposium for 2020. We did not make this decision lightly and know we are extremely disappointed in not moving forward with the symposium.

For people who have already registered, information about refunds will follow shortly. Information about airlines waiving fees can be found here:  https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/3/5/21166359/us-airlines-coronavirus-cancel-flights-waiving-fees.

We hope you understand and will remain interested and committed to SJSEP Symposium for 2021. We can't wait to reconvene,

The Founding Mothers

Thursday, March 5, 2020

Announcement: Contingency plans

We want to be proactive in planning for the 2020 SJSEP related to the coronavirus outbreak. We acknowledge the uncertainty that this virus is inserting into planning for March. 

The coronavirus situation is fluid; at this time, we have no reason to believe it will impact the conference. That said, most important is everyone’s health and well-being. 

We are carefully following CDC reports and will take our lead from our host institution, The University of Tennessee. Please do plan on joining us, knowing we will be in touch as the situation warrants.