Start to WSCC year going 'as well as can be expected' - Manistee News Advocate

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Kyle Kotecki, kkotecki@pioneergroup.com

Published 2:13 pm EDT, Monday, September 21, 2020

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  A pair of West Shore Community College students walk on campus. This year, WSCC is holding roughly 60% of its courses online, which is a substantial jump from the 30% of years past.

  A pair of West Shore Community College students walk on campus. This year, WSCC is holding roughly 60% of its courses online, which is a substantial jump from the 30% of years past.

  Photo: Kyle Kotecki/News Advocate

Photo: Kyle Kotecki/News Advocate

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A pair of West Shore Community College students walk on campus. This year, WSCC is holding roughly 60% of its courses online, which is a substantial jump from the 30% of years past.

A pair of West Shore Community College students walk on campus. This year, WSCC is holding roughly 60% of its courses online, which is a substantial jump from the 30% of years past.

Photo: Kyle Kotecki/News Advocate

Start to WSCC year going 'as well as can be expected'

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SCOTTVILLE — West Shore Community College gained valuable insight by observing the issues schools that opened earlier in the year had encountered. WSCC was able to implement what it learned and have a smooth start to the fall semester.

"I think we're fortunate that we got to watch the experience of other people opening up over the summer, so we were well prepared and we had the time to open up right at the end of August and early September," said president Scott Ward. "We were well prepared and we certainly took a lot of lessons away from others that we watched as they struggled to open up. Currently, we have no issues and no real concerns from the people working or our students."

Ward was happy to hear the student body is pleased with all the college has done to meet the needs of students.

"It's going as well as can be expected. Working with the student senate, one of our student senators gave me the most positive response I could have hoped for when I was asking for the student perspective," he said. "And that was, students who wanted face-to-face classes were very appreciative of the number of offerings we have for face-to-face instruction, and the students who wanted online learning and didn't want to come to campus were very appreciative of how many online offerings we had. I couldn't have hoped for a better response from our student government."

Masks are mandatory within all the buildings on campus, and WSCC student senate president Becca Townsend said the student senate has made sure masks are available to all students.

"We've been ordering them to place around campus, and when we ran out at first for a period of time, we gathered medical masks to put around campus," she said. "Whenever students have been showing up, if they happen to forget one that day, they're inside all of the doors of all of the buildings so they can grab one for the day. Everyone seems to be obeying all the policies quite well around here."

Over the last few years, WSCC held about 30% of its classes online. This year, in order to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, 60% of classes are online.

"Not all of them, but a majority of the face-to-face classes are ones that really can't be done online — like our welding labs, some of the nursing clinicals, some of the science laboratories," Ward said. "There are some sections that could be done online that are face to face, and that's where I think students are really appreciative, the ones who really want that face-to-face experience and it's a better learning opportunity for them and their preferences."

WSCC offers synchronous online learning for some courses, which affords students the safety of remote learning while still giving them real-time interaction with instructors and classmates.

"We do have the students who have some trepidation with moving to online. Many of our faculty have moved it so it's online, but it's live online, so they still have that interaction with other students and faculty members," Ward said. "... I think that type of format gave a lot of surety to the students who really felt more comfortable with face to face, so I think, as far as we're hearing, that's working out really well for students."

Townsend agrees.

"Most of our classes went online unless they were able to do face-to-face classes. I know in some of the sciences, the professors opted to do labs in person but they would do everything else online," she said. "They would have recorded lectures or synchronous lectures via Zoom or Google Meet or whatever they opted to use. Everything seems to be going pretty well this semester for everyone so far. ... We're making it work."

With there being an emphasis on remote learning, the college has worked to ensure students have everything they need to learn from home.

"We do know some students are still struggling with connectivity — both with the broadband access and having the right equipment," Ward said. "We continue to do everything we can to help those students, and we did receive some federal funds, so we're looking at how we can continue to help any student that steps forward with that need.

"I think our staff did a remarkable job in March as this came upon us and we were able to react quickly," he continued. "We still have that attitude and ability to continue to help students as their needs come forward."

Other safety measures in place, such as smaller class sizes, online tutoring options and student organizations conducting meetings virtually have gone a long way in keeping everyone on campus safe, Townsend said.

There are daily required health screenings for WSCC employees, but the college opted to make the screenings optional for students. The screening forms can be accessed by scanning a QR code on campus or via a website.

"One of the considerations was that we do have a large presence of high school students from the dual enrollment programs. We have 500-plus high school students coming on campus every day," Ward said. "Weeks before school started, the high schools indicated that they were not going to screen and had advised not to screen. We would be setting up two standards of some students walking in screening and other students are walking in not screening, so we didn't want to set up that double standard.

"With our screening tool that we have, it records who does and we do have a fair number of students who are reporting every day, too."

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