OCC announces plans for fall semester

ONONDAGA, N.Y. — Onondaga Community College (OCC) on Thursday announced it will resume in-person instruction in the upcoming fall semester with classes beginning Aug. 31.

OCC said instruction will be both in-person and handled remotely. Faculty, students, and employees will all be required to wear masks on campus.

All on-campus instruction will conclude prior to the Thanksgiving break, OCC said, and any activity following Thanksgiving until the end of the semester “will be done remotely” so students do not have to travel and then return to campus.

“Anything that would happen between Thanksgiving and the technical end of the semester would be remote,” OCC President Casey Crabill told CNYBJ in a Thursday phone interview. “Students might have a paper to finish or … attend a Zoom session,” she said.

Classes

Some classes will involve a combination of in-person and remote instruction.

For example, a class with 18 students which meets three days a week may have six students attend in-person Monday, a different six students in the classroom Wednesday, and another six students in-person Friday.

Students not in physical attendance will interact with the class and their professor virtually and in real-time. If a student becomes ill, he or she will be able to keep up with classes and coursework from a distance, OCC said.

Some classes will be conducted entirely remotely — either in real-time or in traditional online formats where students participate on their own schedule.

OCC says it measured all learning spaces to determine “maximum allowable density.”

The school will also stagger schedules for labs which require in-person, hands-on learning for density purposes, allowing all students the chance to receive in-person instruction time from faculty “as they normally would.”

Residence halls

All residence hall bedrooms will be singles (no doubles or triples), meaning one student per room. Students living in suite-style units will continue to share common spaces in those suites in small, “family-style” groups.

One of the college’s residence halls will remain empty and reserved for quarantine purposes, “if necessary,” OCC said.

Students will move into residence halls during a staggered, four-day period in mid-August. Students will undergo a health screening upon arrival.

All classroom, residence hall, and campus common areas will be cleaned and disinfected on a daily basis.

Health screenings

Two of the campus’s three entrances will be open and everyone who comes to campus will undergo a brief health screening “every day.”

Students living in residence halls will also be screened daily. Since campus reopened as part of phase two, everyone entering campus has been screened daily, OCC noted. Screenings will continue “as long as recommended by New York State,” it added.