April 13
Coronavirus Update from President Gentile, April 13
Greetings NSCC Students, Employees, and Community,
I certainly hope that everyone was able to celebrate their religious holy day(s) in a meaningful way, even if not done as has been in the past. I also hope that you are taking good care of yourself and the others in your family and circle of friends. This epidemic is certainly exhausting in so many ways and presents challenges that most of us have not had to handle in the past. You are brave, you are capable, and you have so got this challenge! #NSCCStrong #InThisTogether
The good news is that the vast majority of our community remains healthy. You are all taking the CDC and public health agency recommendations seriously and it shows. In doing so, you are not only keeping yourself healthy, you are saving lives one day at a time through your sacrifices. We are all so grateful for your demonstration of love for others and for taking your civic duty so seriously. For those who have been battling the virus, we hold you in our virtual arms and send you strong healing vibes across the internet.
Our students are demonstrating their perseverance and grit and have made the mid-semester transition to remote and online options with grace and humor. I am humbled by such courageous displays of dedication to your studies. You are the best! And, you deserve support. North Shore Community College has submitted its certification for the federal emergency financial aid grants under the CARES Act. Shortly we should be able to draw down federal funds to help our students with their expenses related to the disruption of campus operations due to coronavirus, like cost of attendance, such as food, housing, course materials and supplies, technology, transportation, health care and child care. The NSCC staff in the Financial Aid Services office will be handling the distribution of these funds once received. I will notify you when this distribution is ready to be implemented and, I am sure, you will get lots of information on how to apply.
I certainly want to salute our academic division for their hard work planning for the upcoming summer sessions. Due to COVID-19, all the credit courses offered during summer season I and II 2020 will be moved to online instruction. There will be no face-to-face in-classroom courses offered during the summer sessions at this time. Depending on what happens over the next several months, we might be able to schedule back into Session II some in-person classes – but that is not clear yet and safety is our priority. As you can imagine, the reason for the move to all online for credit courses is to maintain student and faculty safety. Preference for any face-to-face instruction in the summer will need to be focused on finishing out courses in the fields that require field experience, clinicals, labs and simulation from the spring semester. Any of those will, of course, be accomplished in safe social distancing as per instructions at that time.
There are other complexities as well. With moving to online delivery, we are obligated to follow a faculty distance learning contract which requires certain levels of online training in order for a faculty member to be assigned to facilitate an online course. This limits some of the courses that can be offered during the summer. In addition, our enrollment for the summer is lagging behind past summers, as people are busy dealing with the day-to-day impacts of the coronavirus mitigation strategies and distracted dealing with the resulting challenges. Therefore, the number of courses and seats have been rolled back a bit to meet what seems to be student demand at this point.
For those folks who are interested in enrolling in a noncredit course, those will be offered remote and online for the summer.
Any students who have enrolled in a summer course will be contacted individually about their course and the impact the summer transition may have on their specific course(s). Please check your northshore.edu email on a regular basis for communications from the College on this matter. Likewise, all impacted faculty members will also be contacted about the courses they may have been assigned to teach. The college schedule is being updated as well. These transitions will take place over the next two weeks.
Make sure that you are checking the college website at www.northshore.edu/covid/ for updates and information.
Stay the course! Stay positive, stay at home as much as is possible, and stay optimistic. This too shall pass.
-Patricia A. Gentile, Ed.D.,President