THUNDER BAY – COVID-19 had a major impact on Confederation College over the past year.
That shouldn’t be too surprising, the virus affected just about every aspect of the global economy, with no sector left unturned.
For the college, it meant a whole new way of doing things.
President Kathleen Lynch said the Thunder Bay-based school, with campuses spread throughout Northwestern Ontario, had to reinvent how it delivered learning to students, who for the most part were not permitted to be on campus.
COVID-19 also closed the borders to non-essential travelers, which had an effect on the college’s burgeoning international student complement – and is threatening to do so again to start the 2021-22 school year.
There were 1,324 international students enrolled in 2019.
Lynch, who was unable to deliver her traditional, annual report to the community in person, said she hopes they’ve weathered the worst of the COVID storm, but acknowledged the precautions taken this past school year could be in place for the foreseeable future until public health officials deem it safe for a return to normalcy.
All in all, Lynch said she’s encouraged, following more than a year of uncertainty.
“What we were able to do was quickly adapt to the changing circumstances month-by-month and bring students back on campus for their labs and essential face-to-face requirements. We’re really proud of that,” Lynch said.
“The reason we were able to do that is we put a lot of measures in place. Obviously screening, tracking who was on campus through software, managing our scheduling so we could adapt our classrooms for the number of students allowed. We also bought a lot of new software to support students to be able to study from home.”
Key to that success was ensuring every student had access to the tools they needed to earn the education they expected to receive.
“Not all of our students had those facilities available to them to be able to access our programming online. So we made sure that our students could own laptops and we even provided some Internet access initially to help them make sure they could study and be successful.”
For now, the fall school year is being approached with the status quo.
Lynch said they are planning to have students in classrooms if it’s permissible at some point.
“But we also know there are a number of students who cannot come onto campus. We have students studying internationally, so they will continue online throughout the semester. But if we can bring some students back to campus for additional theory classes, we will.”
Kristen Oliver, chair of Confederation College’s board of governors, said the annual report shows just how much work was put into ensuring students and staff were able to navigate what was likely the most trying year in the school’s 54-year history.
“They showed a lot of resiliency and an ability to adapt and be mobile to the changes that were required really, really quickly,” Oliver said.
“To see that play out, I think it was a great achievement. The board’s really proud of the work Confederation College achieved this past year.”
