Maintaining safety and online attendance Masks received and online attendance discussed at response team meeting

BY GISELLE ORMENO

The COVID-19 response teams discussed student accessibility toward student services and how to keep students informed through an online Zoom meeting on April 15.

Director of the Student Health Center Beth Benne discussed Team A’s update by stating that they received 2,000 masks, but the masks were not the ones that Benne expected to receive.

Benne also said she is concerned about the growing number of students receiving help for their mental health because they are worried about their privacy.

“They have family members who don’t know they’re in counseling,” Benne said.

“They’re having trouble finding a private place or going on a walk.”

Vice President of Academic Affairs Sheri Berger from

Team C explained that Pierce classes should follow distance education guidelines, rather those of correspondence education.

“The fact is that we don’t have correspondence education and that we need to maintain regular effective and substantive contact,” Berger said. “It needs to be instructor initiated and we need to have student to student interactions.”

Faculty must launch their Zoom classes from within Canvas, rather than sending links to the meetings, according to Berger.

“If you’re going out to some other publisher-based site, it has to be done from Canvas,” Berger said. “There has to be some way that we can document these things that are required by the U.S. Department of Education, in terms of our accredited status.”

Berger also said faculty will receive an email on how they can report students that have been unresponsive or not participating on Canvas.

“We have a process to set up an email that will go to student services,” Berger said. “Some peer mentors will be reaching out to some of those students, as much as they would if they were on campus face-toface to help direct them to the appropriate resource on campus.”

The Enrollment Management Committee recommended Team D on how to communicate engaging and supportive information to students, according to Juan Carlos Astorga, Dean of Student Engagement. The recommendations include creating concise messaging, developing information that has a date and ensuring that the information is important to students.

Public Relations Manager

Doreen Clay said while monitoring social media, she has noticed that many students are anxious about the future.

“For some students, that’s a good option because originally it was only available for courses in the catalog but the state chancellors and CSUs have approved even major prep and golden four can be pass/no pass,” Anderson said. Anderson adds how students need to be mindful of eliminating a letter grade and opting for the pass and no pass scale because the UC’s still haven’t released information about their new requirements or if they will have any.

As for the CSU’s, Transfer Center Director Sunday Salter explained how the CSU Chancellor’s Office will allow students to transfer with 48 units as long as they complete the rest by the end of summer. However, this change is only for Fall 2020 transfer students.

Prior to COVID-19, students needed to complete all their units and the “golden four” by their spring semester but in light of COVID-19, the CSU’s made an accommodating decision to allow students to complete their requirements by summer.

“We want to send a message to Pierce students that we are still here for you if you want to stay and complete your courses with us,” Salter said. Adding how the CSU’s are also allowing students to defer their enrollment to the Spring 2021 term.

Salter said how the UC’s are only temporarily removing the cap pass and no pass classes which means students will not be penalized for opting for credit or no credit prerequisite courses.

The difference between CSU’s and UC’s is that each UC campus will release their own new change or requirement in response to COVID-19. Salter said she is still waiting for UCLA’s requirements since most Pierce students want to transfer to UCLA.

Kinesiology professor Sabrina Prieur raised a concern about if students opt for the pass no pass, it could hurt their chances for a school that doesn’t accept pass or no pass, unlike UCs and CSUs.

According to Clay, students want to know about things such as when commencement is going to take place or when the summer session schedule is going to come out.

Vice President of Administrative Services Rolf Schleicher concluded the meeting by advising team leaders to list essential tasks and adjust them throughout the week.

“I’m hopeful that we get some of the questions we had last week and maybe look through those,” Schleicher said. “We can have the teams maybe answer out and some of those questions that probably are things we’re already covering now.”

“In the best interest of the students, a letter grade would be better unless they end up with a poor letter grade, and not to go with the pass no pass option because we don’t know what all universities will accept,” Prieur said.

As a response to this concern, Sunday Salter agreed and explained how a letter grade would be a better option for those unsure of the university’s requirements.

“When they have multiple options in front of them, we always have to go with the most restrictive and encourage students to go with a letter grade when we are unsure of the answer,” Salter said.