Mohawk continues to adapt to pandemic circumstances

By Meaghan Drury ‘12

As we all know, COVID-19 has changed the way we live. The way we work, learn and interact with others has been dramatically transformed.

Over the past seven months, Mohawk students and staff have had to adapt to new ways of learning and working in remote environments. As leaders in remote and virtual learning — Mohawk has delivered online courses for more than a decade — our faculty and staff faced this challenge head-on.

In late-March, while courses were put on hold for one week, faculty worked hard to rapidly conform their courses to solely-online delivery (where possible). This allowed many students to safely finish their winter semesters in virtual environments.

As we prepared for the spring semester just a few weeks later, a delayed-start allowed faculty more time to fully adapt their courses to virtual teaching. The spring semester began on May 25, 2020.

By July, with the province re-opening many sectors of society and public-health advising that it was safe to go out in public again while limiting contact, Mohawk welcomed back 1,000 students to in-person classes. With new safety measures in place, like physical distancing and mandatory masks, students who were stuck, unable to finish their winter semester courses, continued their hands-on learning. That summer session allowed many of them to complete their programs and graduate this fall.

As we headed into the fall semester, with the safety of thousands of staff and students in mind, the college opted to deliver most programs through a virtual and remote learning delivery model. Courses that require in-person delivery were staggered throughout the semester to limit the number of people on campus at one time and to optimize safe physical distancing, as much as possible.

With no vaccine for the virus and a continued focus on the safety of our students, the winter semester will also be delivered this way. And Mohawk will continue to adjust its operations in the coming months, as necessary, focusing on safety and student success as we navigate the changing tides of this pandemic together.

This story originally appeared in the Fall 2020 issue of the InTouch magazine.