COVID going forward: How have things changed since March, and what do administrators believe the campus will do going forward?

Keith Sayles V.P of student affairs at SFCC since july, 2020

Enrollment has decreased this fall, with fewer students taking classes on campus and the majority of students taking classes remotely. There is also a good change with online support now, as all of our areas in student affairs are offering additional support with online office hours. 

“Our fall enrollment is down by 18% from last fall. This is a nationwide trend, and we are hopeful that the post COVID environment will bring back enrollment.” Messina said

“Everything we did in person before on campus we are now doing online,” Sayles said. 

“With changes regarding attendance, and late work it is all up to the individual teachers, but teachers are probably more understanding because of the change in modality.” 

With changes to clubs, most of them are meeting remotely as well. There will be some permanent changes, and numbers with online students will now always be higher than they were in the past. Students should be more inclined to choose an online class or a hybrid class option because they are now used to taking online classes. 

Prior to COVID we had some practices that were cumbersome for students and required in person interaction. Post COVID, while we will certainly return to an in person service model, we will continue to support students in the online format. In addition, while our instructional program will certainly return to a more robust in person environment, I predict that student behavior will lead to a greater number of online options than those that existed pre COVID Messina said.

“We have had some very positive changes regarding Spokane Falls Community Colleges,” Sayles said. “Staff was very quickly able to move onto the remote classes and it has been good to know that our students are able to get the help they need. We hope that the students will feel more comfortable now navigating their school work.” 

“Regarding graduation rates for this year, we are hoping that there will be an increase because we are now able to offer more classes online to students.” Messina said. 

 Students who previously had jobs or other responsibilities and couldn’t attend classes are now able to make remote learning easier for them. The college has been fortunate so far that we haven’t had to eliminate any classes, but there were a few budget cuts that we were able to do through planned retirement. 

      “I have learned many lessons from this pandemic. One is that we need to be flexible and nimble. Strategic long term planning is critical, but it needs to have built in mechanisms to respond to the changing environment.” Messina said “I have also learned that some of the ways we did business, not just in higher education, were too rigid and needed to change anyway. This crisis propelled us to make necessary changes.”

“COVID has required isolation and highlighted the need for community and connection”  Messina said. 

“If I have learned anything about this process with adjusting to COVID-19, it is that we need to keep bettering our online classes and services for our students,” Sayles said.