Dear MICA Community,

As we continue our shift to remote, alternate and telework through our “Keep on Teaching,” “Keep on Learning” and “Keep on Working” initiatives, one of our online platforms, Zoom, has been in the news due to security topics that have arisen in the wake of their sudden growth.

To ensure that we do our utmost to empower our community through safe and secure spaces for connection in both virtual and physical spaces, the below information provides a summary of the topics and resolution/actions. While MICA is naturally not at risk for many of these issues due to our class sizes, community-minded orientation, and other factors, we are working to stay ahead of these issues to continue the beautiful, engaging, ongoing work that is occurring daily in these virtual spaces.

We encourage the 300 MICA faculty and staff with Zoom Pro accounts and hosting responsibilities to be aware of, and to be comfortable with, the straightforward account and meeting settings. We also acknowledge that Zoom has taken clear action to address the security topics as well as provide detailed information on how to securely set up a virtual classroom (links below).

By far, the top issue is keeping uninvited individuals from entering your meeting. We recommend that, in addition to only distributing the meeting information to your intended participants, that you also start using the “require a password” feature in your account settings that will then apply to all future meetings. For further measures, in your account settings you can also enable “waiting room” which can then be turned on/off when you schedule each meeting. Also, for each meeting, you can “require registration.” These are simple, user-friendly measures available to all meeting hosts. Detailed information is below.

We appreciate your attention and awareness in providing a safe and secure learning, teaching and working environment for our community.

Thank you,

Alexa Kim