It was just last month that Southwestern Michigan College announced plans to shift nearly all learning to a remote format on November 20th, but the college’s board of trustees learned from President Dr. Joe Odenwald last night that the plan will advance by two days due to new state restrictions announced Sunday night.
Odenwald told the board about the steps being taken to comply with the latest state orders regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services announced on Sunday that face-to-face instruction for the majority of college courses must be suspended effective Wednesday, November 18th.
While SMC had planned for remote classes to begin on November 20th and for the remainder of the fall term, now that shift will be effective two days earlier, beginning tomorrow, November 18th and run through the end of the semester on Friday, December 18th.
In his president’s report, Odenwald noted there have been 47 confirmed coronavirus cases in the SMC community since fall semester began September 8th, with four students currently isolated off-campus and four students isolated on campus.
Dr. Odenwald says, “We’ve been fortunate to catch campus cases early, and to keep it under control.” He adds, “There’s not a single incident we’ve had in the last 10-plus weeks where we’ve had students get COVID because they’re in a classroom. We’ve made it work with all the cleaning and separating we’ve done, but the virus is prevalent in the wider community.”
The President went on to report, “We made a decision about four weeks ago to move back to remote learning because we could see what was likely to happen in colder weather, and our prediction just missed by a couple of days.”
Regarding enrollment trends, Odenwald says, “Rather than look backward, we’re trying to look forward with a goal of where we want to go,” adding, “We have a goal for spring of 1,550 students, including 430 dual-enrolled or Early College students. We’re at almost 74-percent in that segment, so those are coming in well. For new students, there are a couple of orientations happening in December/January. Right now we’re sitting at 939 overall. That number a week ago was 815, so we had a pretty strong run, and we’ll continue to enroll students right up until the start of classes on January 25th.”
In other business, a review of quarterly financial reports through September 30th showed the college budgeted for 16-percent less in state aid than last year’s $7.2 million figure. With an updated expectation that all allocated state aid will be received, that means $1.1 million more than had been anticipated when the budget was finalized in June.
