FRC announces COVID-19 decisions

Feather River College President Kevin Trutna announced the following decisions Thursday evening, March 12. He emphasized that the response to COVID-19 is a fluid situation, and that individuals can check the college website for the latest information.

· As for now, with guidance from the Plumas County Health Department medical staff, we are continuing to hold classes as scheduled. Social distancing and cleanliness practices are paramount.
· Non-essential travel outside of Plumas County has been suspended; exceptions must be approved by the President’s Office
· Spring break class field trips and FRC program visits to other schools outside of Plumas County have been cancelled in the next few weeks
· The CCCAA suspended, indefinitely all athletic contests statewide
· I (Kevin Trutna) have been meeting with several departments to ensure that essential functions will continue in the event that someone on our campus is quarantined and/or the campus is shut down for an extended period of time. These include payroll, HR, instruction, financial aid, IT, dormitories, registration, livestock handlers, and facilities. There are more departments to meet with as we make contingency plans.
· In discussions with elected faculty chairs and senate president, we are planning a soft approach for transitioning as many classes as possible to online instruction. This includes all lecture courses, with laboratory classes as applicable. The decision is not final at this point for a forced migration to online instruction, as we are making contingency plans.
· Look for an announcement as to where training sessions will be held. These training sessions will allow faculty to personally sit next to a trainer to ensure that online course content can be developed and loaded into Canvas. It will be open to all levels of Canvas-users, including faculty who have never entered their Canvas course shell. The purpose is to help create and/or migrate courses to an online format if campus is closed.
· Our goal is to have a smooth transition to online, if necessary, and deal with laboratories in a separate decision. Training will be provided.
· We are communicating with students to see if anyone travels over spring break to known areas that have higher infection rates.
· More definitive decisions will be made as we learn more information. This is a changing situation.
Just so that everyone can follow our thinking, here are some major concerns impacting our decision: we have heard from students of their anxiety about having to finish classes online (people come to FRC for our personal attention and this is diminished online); not all laboratory courses are applicable to be taught online, nor are all lecture/discussion classes taught effectively online; we are unsure of how long it will take until some type of normalcy returns – how long can we continue solely online; we have students in the dorms who cannot afford to leave and later return to FRC, or they may not have a good place to go to in the event of a campus closure; as well as our physical infrastructure and livestock need tending, even if we close as a campus. There are other factors to be sure, these come to mind as I write this.
I am sure there will be more information and changes overnight and throughout the next few days. This is the latest information that occurred today and I wanted to pass it along. Be safe everyone.