The first day of classes at Jamestown Community College is a blast from the past.

Classes began Tuesday at JCC, with the main difference in 2022-23 compared to the last two years during the COVID-19 pandemic the increase in students that are back on campus.

“Coming out of the effects of the pandemic, we’ve had a lot of restrictions lifted,” said Kirk Young, JCC vice president of student affairs. “The only requirement we have now is that students have to be fully vaccinated to be on campus. Things are pretty much back to how they were before, and that’s very nice to see.”

The pandemic caused a lot of schools across the country to rethink ways that they were doing things, including JCC. The most prominent way that this happened was the increase in the use of technology.

“The pandemic forced us to put in place new ways to be able to serve students,” Young said. “The main way was through technology, and this has had added benefits for us still this year. We can still do things like advisor appointments through Zoom. I haven’t heard of any major hiccups. We can use things like this to make things better for our students.”

Other new programs worthy of note for the upcoming school year include the new e-sports program. Before, there was an e-sports club on each campus, but Young said that with a remodeling of a building on the Olean campus, the club is now able to become a program.

“This is our first time with an official team,” Young said. “It’ll be just like the basketball or soccer team. And because it’s gaming, students can participate from any campus and then travel to the new facility in Olean when we’re hosting competitions or to other schools when they are hosting.”

Another new program is the workforce readiness program, which has been made possible by JCC applying for grants during the pandemic. The college has also remodeled a building for this program on the Jamestown campus. The program is set to help students enter the workforce in areas such as automation.

The amount of students enrolled in JCC taking classes online has also increased.

“We’ve had a number of students enroll for online classes, and we’ve been able to add more classes that are available online,” Young said. “This enrollment has grown quite a bit and we’re excited to explore the opportunities that this allows us.”

Additionally, Young said the college is seeing a lot of students return to campus who took some time off during the pandemic.

“We’re seeing a lot of these students being able to return to campus now,” Young said. “During the pandemic there were also not a lot of activities on campus. We are now back to where we were with that as well. We already have planned speakers and partners of the college coming during the year for our students. We’re excited to see students be able to get involved and round out their college experience.”