As most students have shifted their learning to online for the fall 2020 semester, nearly 2000 students are still on campus for in-person classes, a number projected to hit around 2500 by the end of the semester due to late-start courses.
According to Gene Carbonaro, Dean of Career and Technical Education at LBCC, the process of determining which programs would be allowed to return to campus was mostly contingent on health department regulations. Fields that were considered “essential,” according to COVID-19 regulations, such as welding, horticulture, culinary arts, metal fabrication, and nursing returned to campus.
Long Beach City College has the most students on campus compared to any neighboring schools, with more programs allowed to continue in-person than at surrounding Los Angeles and Orange County community colleges, said Carbonaro.
“Rio Hondo is probably a close second, and everybody else is distant. Some schools aren’t bringing anybody back until Week 8,” Carbonaro said.
Carbonaro specified that which fields are determined essential can vary by region, although most surrounding schools opted to only allow an average of two or three programs onto their campuses for in-person learning. Carbonaro said that most L.A. community colleges only have 200-300 students on campus.
“Our senior leadership, our vice presidents and presidents, they felt it was necessary,” Carbonaro said.
“You really can’t weld by watching a video, you can’t fix a car by watching it on youtube. We felt we were doing a disservice to our students by not letting them come back and get hands-on training.”
However, Carbonaro explained that class sizes were cut to better accommodate social distancing. In culinary classes, for instance, the caps were set at 25, but after faculty determined how many students could safely operate in a kitchen together, class sizes were then modified to only 16 students, and similar factors were examined for each program.
“Every program we brought back is under the allowed count. Most of the trades are at 25, and we capped at 16 to 18. Culinary, nutrition, we cut way back. The college is down about 5.5% of enrollment, but the school of CTE is not down,” said Carbonaro.
Carbonaro said that faculty was very involved in the process of modifying classes for social distancing, meeting consistently over the summer to devise a plan for each program, determining factors such as how social distancing would be ensured, how classes would be effectively taught, making sure students wear masks, and how to deliver lectures without being together in a classroom.
“None of the lectures are on campus but faculty needed to do some demonstration, and some basic lecture before you actually get into a lab. For instance, before someone goes into a welding booth, even though the instructor puts the lecture online, the instructor still needs to demo, before you go into a booth, same things with auto and other programs. So we had to devise a plan and they had to be part of it and explain how they were going to social distance and still get that message out to students,” said Carbonaro, regarding the planning process.
LBCC utilized different technologies to assist with CTE classes. Auto programs, for instance, brought in numerous monitors to place around the auto shop to allow students to observe while at a distance.
Software was utilized to map out each classroom and lab space in use this semester, by designating where seats should be placed in order to maintain a six foot distance between students.
Carbonaro said that faculty was active in developing each program’s plan and tweaking the necessary details for each specific program.
Carbonaro’s job entailed helping provide the faculty with supplies they may need, such as monitors or microphones.
Culinary, for instance, presented unique challenges due to the nature of a busy kitchen environment. As a result, changes were introduced such as implementing a designated exit and entrance doorway.
Additionally, at culinary faculty’s request, before classes classified staff volunteers have been setting up boxes at each student’s work space with the necessary ingredients for each day’s lesson, in order to reduce movement within the space. Each workstation was also set up with individual scales and cooktops.
“We’ve devised those little intricacies for every one of the programs,” said Carbonaro. “It’s a full college team effort.”
Some classes, such as welding, required little modifications as the nature of the classrooms were already distanced.
Associate Professor of Metal Fabrication and Welding, as well as Department Chair of Trades and Industrial Technology Damon Skinner spoke about adapting his classes for safe in-person learning.
“In my building we teach metal fabrication and welding, so in the welding areas there is a dividing wall between every student already, just because you don’t want to be blinding and burning people while you’re welding. So that half the building was really easy, because everyone was already distanced. There’s an actual physical barrier. In the other half the building, we just space the students out in a zig zag going along the workbenches. And the audio visual team has brought in a laptop with a webcam, which it then streams wirelessly over a couple big screen TVs, so when we’re doing demonstrations, not everybody’s in one spot. It’s worked out really well. It is a lot of work, but it’s not hard work. It’s just you’ve gotta be able to think on your feet and solve problems,” Skinner said.
Classified volunteers have been employed to assist with the extra safety protocols that are
currently required, such as administering temperature checks and monitoring the campus. These volunteers also monitor areas to ensure everyone is wearing a mask and there is no congregating occurring in areas such as bathrooms, with one or two volunteers designated to each class.
Many of these volunteers came from areas that had been previously shut down such as the Child Development Center.
However, the center will be reopening on Oct. 5, presenting a new need for staffing.
A recruitment process took place, leaving 70 applicants for student assistants currently in the pool, said Carbonaro, and at least 20-25 will be needed after Oct. 5. Carbonaro said that this will all be paid for by the CARES Act, and onboarding has begun for many to help in labs and at check-in tables.
The CARES Act was also utilized to provide classes with their necessary supplies and additional equipment. “We were really proactive off campus and on campus to make sure each student has the items they need,” Carbonaro said.
Throughout the process of developing these modifications and plans, Carbonaro said that there was relatively little anxiety or pushback from students and faculty.
He said that there were only two full-time faculty members in his department who opted to teach online this semester due to their age and health concerns, but “Most faculty couldn’t wait to come back. They struggled teaching their class in spring online when we went online in March just to get through June. A lot of them didn’t get through.”
Some CTE courses were considered suspended by the end of the spring semester, and were instead completed over the summer, said Carbonaro.
However, he explained that this made the fall process far smoother, as most faculty then began the semester knowing what was required to make social distance learning work.
As for students, Carbonaro reported that there have been no incidents thus far of any students disobeying the pandemic-related regulations, nor has there been one case of COVID-19 on campus.
“I think people are happy to be out of the house and actually doing something. It’s better than sitting in front of a monitor alwl day doing your class. We made it clear to them, we have the rules they need to follow, and there will be disciplinary actions, a notification, then a suspension from class, so they understand it’s important and they all take it serious, it just helps everybody if everybody’s following the rules,” Carbonaro said.
Skinner affirmed that his classes have had no incidents regarding COVID-19 safety regulations. “We’ve had zero problems with students and masks and social distancing. They’ve been really great about it. I have more trouble reminding students to keep their safety glasses on than I do with keeping their masks on.”
“Being on campus is great. Most of us in CTE do things with our hands, we’re kinaesthetic learners, and being stuck on the couch trying to Zoom everything was more of a challenge than coming back and making this work,” Skinner said.
Having COVID-19 testing sites available on both campuses has also made it easy for students to immediately get tested if they experience any symptom, said Carbonaro. Faculty and staff teaching on-campus are expected to be lenient with students feeling unwell and not penalize them for missing a class, allowing them to return once a negative COVID-19 test has been acquired.
As for the spring semester, Carbonaro said he anticipates it going even smoother. He said that LBCC is set to follow the exact same format as this semester, however he said he would like to see some fashion programs back on campus, as remote learning has been a challenge for some students.
“The situation is far from ideal, but we’re making the absolute most of it that we can. Considering the skills that were teaching are listed on the essential skills list, and the job shortages in the coming years for the industries that we serve, getting the students trained as quickly as we can and as safely as we can has been really fun,” Skinner said.
