Like many other higher education institutions in Colorado and nationally dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, Northeastern Junior College has transitioned its lecture courses from in-person to remote learning.
Career and technical education, lab, and other hands-on courses are still being held in the traditional in-person format with safeguards.
We recognize this has a significant impact on students, faculty, staff, parents and the broader community so I wanted to make sure you heard directly from me about why we’ve taken this step and the implications now and as we move forward together during this challenging year.
Please know that we take our responsibility seriously as we work to protect our community’s health and safety while working to support instruction, athletics and the college experience.
Because the state moved Logan County to Level 3: High Risk, Northeastern Junior College this week chose to take immediate steps to comply with countywide safeguards to limit the potential spread of the coronavirus. We also have a significant number of cases among students so it’s important that we take these steps to limit additional infections among the Northeastern Junior College community.
The details of these new restrictions can be found at our website but I wanted to provide a bigger-picture summary here.
As of Oct. 23, 67 Northeastern Junior College students and a handful of employees have tested positive for COVID-19. Most had mild symptoms and none has needed hospitalization. Twenty-four of these student cases are still active and half of those students remain on campus in isolation in the residence halls. Sports teams that have had one or more teammates test positive have been placed in quarantine together.
Although we are transitioning from in-person to remote learning for lecture courses, we are committed to ensuring that instruction will continue at a high level.
Tutoring will continue remotely, the learning center remains open to provide access to computers, and library services will remain available. Instructors will still meet one-on-one with students, either in person or remotely as needed. The fitness center is closed.
All meals are being provided to go; there will be no seating in the cafeteria. The Northeast Colorado Health Department is encouraging students who live on campus to stay here to limit the potential spread of the virus but no one will be required to remain on campus. Custodial staff will be taking extra steps to limit the possibility of infection. We’ll be limiting the percentage of employees who come to campus with many working from home.
We’ll continue to offer engaging on-campus activities for students while maintaining their safety through social distancing.
We have been working hard to maintain a safe in-person learning environment and we had hoped we wouldn’t need to take these additional steps to restrict in-person activities. However, we also have been planning for this contingency and were ready to quickly implement the required restrictions to further protect students, faculty, staff and the entire community.
We can’t predict the course of this virus but we can commit to doing our very best to ensure that students have a rewarding college experience that prepares them for future success while keeping them and the broader community as safe as possible. We’ll continue to regularly communicate with public health officials to align our efforts and respond as necessary to developments. We’ll also communicate with you to provide updates as needed.
We recognize the trust students, their families, faculty, staff and broader community put in Northeastern Junior College and we’re committed to rise to meet the challenges of this difficult time.