Able to turn campus life on a dime, Northeast Iowa Community College (NICC) utilizes technology to make the most of COVID-19.
Wendy Knight, Vice President of Institutional Effectiveness and Advancement, said even though Coronavirus brought unexpected changes to the spring semester, faculty and staff successfully moved instruction online and used virtual simulation to bring students and guests as close to campus as digitally possible.
What were once hands-on opportunities on campus are offered through mirrored, real-life situations.
“We continue to take guidance to our accreditation bodies, but they all have embraced the fact that learning needs to continue,” Knight said.
A unique aspect of NICC is the Dairy Center that includes an educational facility as well as an operating dairy farm with 280 cows. The farm showcases current technology with robotic milking units and the latest dairy innovations. Knight noted despite all of the changes, livestock on campus have not had any changes in care.
“They are still on the farm,” Knight said. “We are still milking our cows in addition to raising youngstock and the beef herd. We have two full-time staff and one part-time student that is helping to take care of those animals.”
According to Knight, prospective and current students, instructors, parents and community members have been welcome to take virtual tours during the pandemic.
“It has been a shift of course, but we are still centric on focusing on our students and being able to guide them in a time of such uncertainty,” Knight said.
Although there are still many questions about how the fall semester will look, one benefit of NICC is their class sizes were already small in nature.
“That will help us be able to phase in bringing back students onto campus in smaller groups and keep social distancing into the near future,” Knight said. “We want to be able to be their choice for getting their education successfully and getting them a job at the end of the day.”
–Kaitlyn Riley
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