FEATURE
STAYING AHEAD OF THE LEARNING CURVE
Maritime training transforms during the era of COVID-19
Delgado Maritime and Industrial Training Center: New Deckhand Building Rendering and Plans
Rendering of a new deckhand building in the works for students at Delgado Maritime Center. 30 Marine Log // February 2021
brought about significant changes for its training center. “For the first time in 25 years, our entire training schedule had to be canceled for over a month, as the facility was shutdown because of the governor’s lockdown mandate,” says Schwab. “Corporate partner training programs were put on hold, as well.” During the shutdown, Schwab said the college put into place several safety precautions to ensure its staff and students could attend classes safely. Smaller class sizes, social distancing, temperature checks, mask mandates, and hand sanitizer were put into place ahead of a hopeful return to school. Another well known maritime college, the Maritime Training and Technology Center at San Jacinto College Program located just outside of Houston, Texas, had its own set of hurdles to overcome despite not enduring a shutdown like the one Delgado Community College underwent last year. “We left for spring break in March 2020 with the expectation of returning as we do every spring, but we didn’t,” says John Stauffer, associate vice chancellor of maritime for the school. “We had to launch a business learning program with a partnership called Learn America, and that’s how we operated for incumbent workers.”
Stauffer says the school received U.S. Coast Guard authorization to conduct its Maritime Credit Program courses as a hybrid experience, where students have both online and offline (in-person) educational experiences. The school has been operating under a cautious eye and with a hybrid offering ever since. It’s not all doom and gloom for these schools, though. Both have new and exciting training applications and courses to offer its students in 2021. The Delgado Maritime Center has adapted to the new norm of working with corporate partners and mariners by building a few newly designed programs. Like San Jacinto, the school received Coast Guard approval to create hybrid courses with real-time lectures occurring through the Zoom platform. “The Coast Guard courses approved for this hybrid learning were Basic & Advanced Firefighting and Advanced Firefighting,” says Schwab. “We also created a new deckhand training program for new hires, and we’re breaking ground on a new $1.4 million deckhand building with a barge set up for training new industry employees, giving them the opportunity to learn the ropes of the maritime industry.” Schwab says the new building is expected
Photo Credit: (Top) San Jacinto College; (Bottom) Delgado Maritime Center
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t’s been almost one year since the deadly pandemic known as COVID-19 started spreading across the globe and companies are still feeling its effects and will perhaps for years to come. In response, most educators have had to adapt to online learning as an alternative, but what about the crucial handson learning experiences offered by so many maritime training centers? Rick Schwab, senior director of the Maritime and Industrial Training Center at Delgado Community College in New Orleans, La., says, unsurprisingly, that COVID-19 has
By Heather Ervin, Editor in Chief
