Cuesta College welcomes thousands back to campus amid COVID: ‘A bit overwhelming’
Cuesta College’s San Luis Obispo campus came abuzz with life again as thousands of students walked into their first classes of the fall semester.
A total of 26 students wearing face masks sat in a nutrition class Aug. 17, patiently listening to their teacher, Kate Haisch, while others attended the class virtually.
In an auto body lecture class, Ron McDonald spoke to just 15 students while using his old school overhead projector to go over classroom protocols while the air filter that’s found in every classroom on campus busily cleaned particles from the air.
Across campus, more than 100 students squeezed into a crowded lecture hall to hear professor Katy Dittmer give her first lecture of the year for an introduction to psychology class. Six of her students couldn’t be in class Aug. 17 because they had tested positive for COVID-19, she said.
Dittmer, a tenured professor with 19 years of experience under her belt, opened up the class by expressing her nervousness — telling her students that lecturing to 100 people while the COVID-19 Delta variant causes a surge in local case numbers and more death “is a bit overwhelming.”
But, she added, “This is what keeps me going. This is what fills my wells. This is my passion.”
“I’m really, really happy to be here,” she told the class.
Rapidly changing pandemic conditions cause worry for some
In an interview before her Aug. 17 class, Dittmer said the buildup to the first day of class was a bit chaotic.
In February or March, she volunteered to teach her class in person at about half its normal size, she said.
Dittmer’s psychology lecture was easily one of the more popular options because it is the only psychology lecture class taught in person.
In total, 40% of Cuesta College classes are being held in-person this fall, while the rest remain online.
By the beginning of the summer, Dittmer’s class had a waitlist.
“We were all getting vaccinated and feeling really good. There was no Delta variant” reported in San Luis Obispo County, she said. “So I suggested, ‘Why don’t we just open it up? We have, obviously, a demand from students.’ ”
The class size swelled and quickly every seat was filled — which, at the time, wasn’t anything to be alarmed about, Dittmer said.
She grew concerned when the highly transmissible COVID-19 Delta variant was reported in the county and as Cuesta College failed to require students and staff members to get vaccinated against coronavirus as other schools have done.
Although Dittmer was in regular contact with her dean, the professor said she received no straightforward communication from administration on how she can keep herself and her students healthy while learning in person.
“It would have been nice to have the management send an email ... anytime this week with a list of key points on safety and what we need to know as people that are on the ground teaching face to face this term,” Dittmer explained.
In fact, her concern overs COVID-19 safety measures distracted her a bit from her lesson planning, she said.
After the first day of class, however, Dittmer said she took a deep breath.
Ultimately, she said, her appreciation for the “really, just amazing” students in her class outweighed her ongoing frustration with the Cuesta College administration.
“It was great,” Dittmer said. “Everyone wore a mask. They were so sweet and just happy.”
Since the fall term started, Dittmer said, her class has moved into the 400-seat main stage theater in the community college’s Harold J. Miossi Cultural and Performing Arts Center to allow for renovations to the lecture hall that originally held her class — and more social distancing.
How Cuesta College will handle positive COVID-19 cases, testing
The constantly evolving conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic have made creating solid plans and protocols a bit tricky, said Jason Curtis, Cuesta College’s vice president of academic affairs.
“We’re doing our best to follow the rapidly changing, rapidly evolving guidelines,” Curtis told The Tribune.
Although Cuesta College didn’t have any documented spread of COVID-19 tied to transmission within classrooms last school year, Curtis said the school will be monitoring reported cases closely.
The only way the community college will know if a student or employee tests positive for COVID-19 is if they do so at the on-campus testing facility or self-report to their teacher or supervisor, Curtis said.
Students in higher-risk settings such as performing arts classes and athletics are doing regular testing for the virus, he added.
“Faculty and staff are encouraged to self report if they develop symptoms, or if they’re told by county public health that they need to quarantine because the county believes they’ve been exposed,” Curtis said. “We’re working with the county to make sure those employees are staying home, staying away from campus so they don’t expose anyone. And we have a separate form that students can send to their instructor if they’ve had a positive test for COVID.”
Curtis said that if a student reports a positive coronavirus test, the college’s student health center will reach out and assess whether the student may have exposed others on campus.
For example, if a student who tested positive for COVID-19 was hanging out with friends, Curtis said, Cuesta College would then try to find out whether any of those students were vaccinated against the virus.
Unvaccinated students would then have to quarantine for 10 days, Curtis said, while vaccinated students would be asked to wear masks and monitor their symptoms in the same time frame.
If an instructor tests positive for COVID-19, which Curtis said “we haven’t had to deal with yet,” that person would need to isolate and get a substitute teacher or move the class to a virtual setting for the duration of their isolation period.
Should about three or more students in one class test positive for coronavirus, then the class would move online, Curtis said.
Community college’s board of trustees may issue vaccine mandate
To decrease the number of students in classrooms at once, some Cuesta College teachers teaching a class twice a week opted for a hybrid modality, known as “hy-flex,” Curtis said.
In that case, half of the class comes to in-person instruction one day while the rest are learning via Zoom, he explained. The groups then switch for the second day of the class.
Curtis said the college invested in new technology to ensure students on both ends were able to clearly communicate with the teacher and others in the class.
The college has also invested in new air purifiers for each classroom and HVAC filters to ensure transmission stays as low as possible.
Cuesta College’s board of trustees will hear a resolution in a special meeting Wednesday on whether to give the college’s superintendent and president, Jill Stearns, the authority to require students and employees receive COVID-19 vaccines before coming to campus.
Other local community colleges, such as Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, have already required students and employees to be fully vaccinated against the virus.
In the meantime, however, Curtis said the general attitude on Cuesta College’s San Luis Obispo campus has been positive and people seem happy to be back to in-person instruction.
“It’s good to see everyone,” he said. “As long as we can do it safely, people don’t feel too nervous or too at risk, I think this is what we’ve needed to do.”
This story was originally published August 23, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
