While we are getting closer to a post-pandemic world every day, the effects of COVID-19 on students will be felt for many years to come, and LBCC’s Counseling and Transfer Center services have been working to help transfer students navigate a changed admissions landscape.
Where many other California Community College campuses have seen double-digit drops in enrollment, according to an April Inside Higher Ed story.
LBCC has been an exception, at its lowest point during the pandemic, enrollment at LBCC was only down by 5%, according to Department Head of Counseling Lorraine Blouin who thinks the Counseling Office has played a significant role in achieving that outcome.
“Where other schools have really struggled to adapt, LBCC has really stepped its services in every way imaginable,” said Blouin.
Like every other aspect of LBCC, the Counseling Office had to transition to providing their services online-only in a matter of days. This conversion was difficult, according to LAC Transfer Center Coordinator Ruben Page.
However, Page, who has been with the counseling office for 20 years, says that, “Once we got the hang of it, we found it actually made our services more efficient.” This was due in large part to their use of Cranium Cafe, an online hosting platform for meetings and online lobbies.
Students can not only schedule appointments through this service, but can also ask questions in open lobbies and see counselors on-demand for quick questions. Along with the increased accessibility and simplicity that Cranium Cafe provides, the Counseling Office has also consolidated their services onto a single webpage, making it easier for students to get help.
“By allowing students to come together in these lobbies, we’ve seen that more students are getting their questions answered more quickly,” Page explains. He sees this ease of use factor as crucial for effectively helping students.
The Counseling Office has also stepped up their direct outreach to students. By sending emails and texts to students who had expressed interest in counseling services, they were able to broaden their reach and bring more students in to help them.
According to Blouin, they had already stepped this up before the pandemic and had seen a boost in graduation and transfer rates as a result. Page says this has also helped them with marketing their services.
Even though they were able to put together an efficient platform for their services, they want to make sure students know about the changes they’ve made. “We wanted to move from a ‘build it and they will come’ mindset to ‘build it but tell everyone about.’ I think we did a great job with that marketing,” said Page.
One way they saw this approach pay off was in the transfer bootcamp workshop they host a few times a semester. Through all of fall 2019, Page says somewhere between 60 and 70 students attended a bootcamp session. In fall 2020, over 600 students attended a single workshop.
For students who have seen their academic record take a beating, Page explains that the school has been offering some much needed relief. If a student has done poorly in a class and believes it was the result of pandemic-related hardships, they can request an Excused Withdrawal, or EW.
An EW allows a student to withdraw from a course even if they’ve already been given a grade. This erases the grade from the student’s transcript, which will no longer affect the student’s GPA. Page says that 4-year universities are also shifting their attitudes towards being more forgiving EW’s.
“I think that for this period of time, when students were enrolled during COVID, UC’s and CSU’s will allow students to explain their situation. EW’s should have a minimal impact on admissions.” He went on to say that this policy has an expiration date, set by the California Community College Chancellor, which will be when students return to campus full-time.
Any students needing assistance with choosing their courses and finding a pathway to graduation are encouraged to contact the Counseling Office and Transfer Center, which can be done from their homepage at www.lbcc.edu/counseling.