As we approach the middle of April, our world has been turned upside down by the Covid-19 pandemic. None of us have ever seen anything like this and hopefully we never will again. The “stay at home” orders nationwide have tremendously impacted all segments of the public and private sectors of education, business and industry. Like everything else in this world, we have all been learning to adapt and formulate plans on how to keep things going as normal as possible on a day by day basis.
April is national Community College Month, and ironically, there has never been a time where more emphasis has been placed on “community” than here recently. Where challenges and bumps in the road arise they can also give way to opportunities. Community colleges have been the staple of communities throughout our great nation for decades, and no other educational establishments understand the importance of change and adaptation more than community colleges.
Community colleges have always been important to higher education, but they are more important now than ever. At TV Alabama Community College, we have continued to serve our students and communities the best way we know possible. Yes, this pandemic has forced change but not all change is bad. As a matter of fact, most of the time change ends up making institutions re-evaluate processes and procedures to see what has been working and what hasn’t.
I know I’m biased, but I truly believe we have the best administration, faculty and staff a college could ask for. On a day to day basis, we don’t get an opportunity to see what everybody else is doing in their respective areas of the college. Since we all have been having to work remotely, never have we had to rely on good communication more than now. It has been impressive watching how well each department has communicated and worked together to ensure our students have the best opportunities to be successful. Faculty have gone above and beyond to make sure students, who might not be comfortable with the transition to online courses, have the access they need to help whenever needed.
A few other examples would be: establishment of WiFi hotspots on each of our campuses and centers for students who may not have easy access to the internet; laptop computers were made available to any student who may not have one; a student support phone number. and departmental emails were created so students could access the departments they need. These are just a few of the processes put in place to help our students.
From a community outreach standpoint, our nursing department donated PPE’s to our local hospitals, Coosa Valley and Russell Medical, to help with the shortages and needs. These hospitals have been great to our college. So many of our nursing students have completed their clinicals in these two hospitals and were later employed by them permanently. This is the best example of community serving community on display front and center.
This will not be the last time we will be faced with change. CACC has been a staple of our communities, under different names, since 1963. This college has adapted to meet the changing needs of our communities before and we will continue to do so long after this crisis. We are CACCSTRONG, and I believe we will come out of this even STRONGER!