Email Update on COVID-19 Response

March 27, 2020

Good afternoon,

I hope this finds you and your family and friends safe, healthy and well. We miss you and while we not be able to be together in a physical sense, we will be able to connect using remote means.

As we approach Monday, March 30th and our resumption of classes, I wanted to check-in with you and share our plans for classes, for academic supports and other College operations. I hope you find it helpful.

This past week brought with it both reasons for hope as well as moments of sadness and worry. Both can and often do reside side-by-side in each of us. While I like to think that hope is our default at North Country Community College, we know that hope often needs action to help strengthen it. With our beloved state in the eye of the coronavirus storm, our North Country region and our North Country family have been and will continue to be affected. With a projected peak of new cases several weeks out, our public health officials continue to stress the need for social distancing measures and personal preventive practice. Those are the primary tools in our took-kits that we can and are employing.

Our primary objective is and has been to ensure the safety and health of our students, our faculty and our staff. As good community members and citizens, we have a responsibility to the larger society as well. Out of a continuing commitment to those objectives and based on the guidance of the Governor’s Office, our SUNY partners and our regional public health leaders, we have decided that we will extend our modified schedule through the end of the Spring 2020 semester. In practice, that will mean the following for you:

  • Classes will resume in an online format on March 30th, 2020 through the end of the semester,
  • All tutoring, library services, registration and advisement will take place online through the end of the semester,
  • All College operations (Bursar’s Office, Business Office, Financial Aid Office, Registrar’s Office) will operate remotely through the end of the semester,
  • The gym, pool, library and other public venues will remain closed through the end of the semester.

While College operations could be modified depending on changing guidance from the Governor’s Office, our SUNY partners and our regional public health leaders, we are planning to be working remotely until that time.

As an institution that values the deep and abiding relationships we have with our students, there is concern that those relationships could be lost. We believe that just as our values transcend any medium we work through, so too can, and does, the connections we forge and nurture with one another. They will not be lost, only realized using different means of interacting.

To that end, we are planning the following steps to help us retain that sense of community and hope you will join us: 

Tuesday, April 7th (tentative)

  • Student Town Hall - 12:00-1:00 pm: this will be an online opportunity for us to connect with you, hear your successes and concerns, and answer questions you may have. More details will follow.

We are a resilient lot and together we will find our way through this and emerge as a stronger version of ourselves. Getting there will take the continued good-will and commitment of us all. I trust that we will do so. We are bound together by much more than this crisis. We share a common mission, a common set of values, and a common concern and love for this institution, its people and most especially you, our students. Each of us is an important part of this greater whole that is North Country Community College.

Be well, stay healthy and take good care,

 

Joe Keegan

NCCC President