March 17
Coronavirus Update from President Gentile, March 17
Greetings Students and NSCC Community,
Today, March 17, NSCC is closed to the public due to our “COVID-19 Challenge”. This provides administration and managers time to continue to work out the logistics of Governor Baker’s request below and our community college sectors commitment to maximizing remote work, teaching, and learning opportunities for the foreseeable future as we work to ensure the health and safety of our students, employees, and communities.
Last night through MEMA, Governor Baker and the Secretary of Education put out the following guidance to the 29 public institutions of higher education (UMASS, State Universities, Community Colleges):
“Continue to move towards remote learning. With regard to higher education, the Department of Higher Education and DPH strongly recommend that colleges and universities, both public and private, continue to pursue strategies to reduce the need for students to be on campus, including suspending in-person classes and implementing institution-wide programs to shift to remote learning, technology-enabled solutions, and other tools to allow students to successfully complete course and degree requirements. Institutions should also pursue strategies to reduce the need for faculty and staff to be on campus by maximizing remote work opportunities, while maintaining essential on-campus services, especially for residential students who cannot safely return home. Existing guidance is posted here and additional guidance will be forthcoming.”
In light of this requested strategy, NSCC has sent out a student survey to gauge how prepared our student body is to move from face-to-face classroom instruction to remote and other options. If you have received a survey request, we hope you will take the small amount of time to answer it. We need your input.
This week we remain on Spring Break, which means no courses are operating. However, we recognize that students may need access to advisors, to computer labs, or to other resources housed at our Lynn and Danvers Campuses. Therefore:
- Wednesday, March 18, 2020 we will be concentrating on supporting our employees who are moving to remote work options and have other work on campus. Only employees will be admitted to campus.
- Thursday, March 19, 2020 and Friday, March 20, 2020, both the Lynn and Danvers Campuses will be open to students and potential students from 9 AM to 1 PM for in-person services. The general public will not be admitted to campus. Campus Police will be regulating admittance to the campuses to ensure safe social distancing. We hope that you can complete what you need with remote assistance on these two days but if it is necessary to come to campus, we will have a skeleton crew to serve you.
Post spring break:
- On Monday, March 23, 2020 all regularly scheduled online classes will resume and those classes are expected to complete by May 11.
- On Monday, March 23, 2020 the 7-week courses that were supposed to start on March 16 and are online will begin and complete by May 11.
- In compliance with a request from the MA Executive Office of Education, no face-to-face classes will be held next week. We will be completing plans for each of these courses and will be contacting students as to those options later this week or early next week.
This situation is very fluid and these are our current plans. Please know that we may have other guidance from the Governor at any time.
I thank you once again for your continued patience, understanding and flexibility as we work together to keep all of us safe during this difficult time. Working together we will get through these difficult times.
Please continue to check your NSCC email as it is the official means of communication and check our NSCC Coronavirus web updates at www.northshore.edu/corona.
Please take the guidance being issued from local and state public health agencies seriously – practice safe social distancing, wash your hands with soap frequently, if you feel sick call or telecall you physician for more directions and stay home as much as is possible.
Patricia A. Gentile, Ed.D.,President