Months after initially closing and moving classes online, Fanshawe College is reopening to allow some students to fish their winter 2020 lab work.
More than 1,000 Fanshawe students and staff are back on campus for the first time since the start of COVID-19 as part of a pilot project approved by the Ministry of Colleges and Universities.
The students are completing face-to-face academic requirements to finish their winter semester and include programs from the Faculty of Science, Trades and Technology; Faculty of Health Sciences, Community Studies and Public Safety and Faculty of Creative Industries.
Respiratory therapy student Aaron Lesouder said he is happy to get to finish his semester over three months after it was put on hold.
“I took it hard, to be honest, because we were six weeks away from going into hospitals for our final year.”
When classes were stopped, Lesouder went to work at Cambridge Hospital, which he notes was an interesting experience assisting respiratory therapists treating people during the pandemic.
“There are times where they give you a chance to learn and experience this, and other times where we only have a certain number of N95 left, we have to have a minimum number of health care providers in that room,” he said.
Lesouder was not the only student assisting during the pandemic.
“A lot of our students, even though school ended they went to work in the hospitals, so a lot of them took positions at screening or assessment centres,” said Julie Brown, coordinator of the respiratory therapy program.
Brown said they are happy to be back and educate students in a field that’s needed right now.
To help students finish, she said they are cramming five weeks of labwork into two weeks, having students in class all day, every day to fit everything into the shorter time frame.
The remainder of the classwork will be finished online.
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Fanshawe College initially closed on March 16 in response to the pandemic, and most students finished classes online.
To protect students, the school has limited entry points, and everyone has to go through a health screening when they enter. People are also required to wear a mask and use hand sanitizer when entering.
Peter Devlin, president of Fanshawe College, said they have also spaced out workstations and limited the number of people in each classroom.
Looking at the new school year, not all will be back in class.
“Half of our programs will be fully online and the other half being hybrid, with most of the theory online with students coming to campus for access to labs and faulty when necessary,” Devlin said.
He estimates 9,600 students will be entirely online, and 8,200 students will participate in the hybrid model.
Devlin added that any students who try online learning and don’t find it effective will be allowed to defer until the next available semester.
Students at Fanshawe are expected to start school on Sept. 21.
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