Jamestown Community College has made many financial decisions adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic, including a stay of tuition for the coming school year. P-J photo by Jay Young

Jamestown Community College President Dr. Daniel DeMarte and his staff are looking forward to regaining their momentum as the world moves slowly closer toward a post COVID-19 future.

The college has announced to students that it will not raise tuition for the 2021-22 school year — one key decision that is part of a much larger financial pie.

“It is a bit of an educated gamble on our part to hold tuition where we have had it this last year and if we need to make cuts, we’ll cut elsewhere,” DeMarte said. “The core of why we made this decision is we know this pandemic is not going to last forever. We are hoping that, now that the vaccine is out, that we can begin to get somewhat back to normal by summer and fall. All of our energy then, is going into regaining our momentum, getting back to where we were before the pandemic hit.”

DeMarte noted that the college was heading in the right direction with increased enrollment and budgeting prior to COVID-19, and that his focus is now on returning to that positive trajectory.

Leveling off tuition is a first step in that direction.

“We were on a positive track for the first time in several years in terms of our enrollment and our budget. So we were declining for nine consecutive years and stopped it, going into the pandemic,” he said. “Then the pandemic hits and we are back into a slide. We are focusing all of our energy now on getting past the crisis we are in and getting back to where we were going into this summer and fall.”

The college raised tuition the previous year, and has looked at nearly every facet of its operational costs since COVID-19, as have all colleges and universities.

In order to help close the deficit caused by the pandemic, the college has taken actions including freezing or eliminating vacant positions, enacting layoffs and furloughs, employees giving back salary and benefits, reduced operating expenses and the elimination of certain programs.

“There is a lot of variation even amongst the community colleges, but we are funded very differently than the four-year sector,” DeMarte said. “I think the general sense is that this year is going to be no different than last year, and what is likely to happen is colleges will have to increase their tuition like we did this last year. However, maybe we have a positive influence on that decision by going out as early as we did and keeping those numbers low. Maybe we won’t see increases at other colleges, but that is so unique and specific to the counties and the regions that they serve.”

LEARNING ONLINE

While the pandemic has forced a wide range of changes for students and teachers, digital learning is not something new for JCC. Primarily, the college has focused on scaling up its online offerings during COVID-19, while staying flexible with scheduling for courses that do require in-person instruction.

“All of that hands-on work was done before the Thanksgiving break,” DeMarte said, referring to classes which require labwork, for example. “Last spring, this thing caught us by surprise and what happened was those students weren’t able to finish.

They had to wait until summer to wait until we could bring them back safely to finish. We want to avoid that situation this spring. So what we have this spring is we have slid back the start of classes by a week, our semester will start one week later than usual.”

A SUNY directive states that students will not be allowed back on campus until Feb. 1.

“Our greater emphasis on remote learning during the pandemic has created opportunities for faculty and students to refine various learning modalities,” said Dr. Marilyn Zagora, vice president of academic affairs. “In some disciplines, faculty have found creative ways to use distance technology to deliver instruction, and some of our new approaches will enhance our ability to provide top quality in-person and remote instruction as the pandemic recedes. While everyone has had to make adjustments, our faculty and students have adapted very well, and we’ve all taken away some important lessons which will strengthen the teaching and learning experience going forward.”

STUDENT BODY

JCC administrators have found that COVID-19 concerns have affected students differently when it comes to returning to campus and planning their academic tracks.

“We put together the fall schedule in a away that up to a third of our students could be on campus if the conditions were right, and they were right since the second week of the semester. Yet, only half of those students who could have been on campus actually came to campus. So why is that?,” asked DeMarte. “Our speculation is there was more fear of the pandemic than any of us realized among those college-aged students who would have been coming to us. Has that changed? Probably not given what is going on right now. So we are probably going to see even more of a decline in the spring because of pandemic conditions.”

JCC continues to plan for the return of students to campus, should demand or pandemic conditions change moving forward.

While overall enrollment has dropped, numbers for certain segments of the student body have remainined at their previous levels.

“Where things are positive and a bit unexpected is what we do with dual enrollment and college connections. Fall semester, down 14% overall, but in college connections where everything is online, almost even with last fall,” DeMarte said. “Our high school age students appear to be less impacted by the conditions around the pandemic than the students who would normally be coming to us. That bodes well for the future — that those high school students that hope to be coming to us have been steeped more in that online environment than they would have been in the past because of the pandemic. The numbers have not suffered in that area.”

VACCINATION SITES

College administrators coordinated with the Cattaraugus County Department of Health to open a vaccination site at JCC’s Olean campus beginning on Jan. 6.

“They are pushing through 40 to 60 individuals a day getting the vaccine,” DeMarte said. “The hospitals were not able to handle the volume on their own, with the space and number of vaccines. They needed a second outlet and campus made sense as far as location. We are hoping to do the same thing over here (in Jamestown).”