Tri-C Taking Steps to Reconnect With Students

Article in ‘The Guardian’ notes College’s efforts to recover from pandemic effects

The pandemic story of Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C^®) is similar to that of many colleges across the country, with double-digit enrollment declines over the past year as many students opted to suspend their education due to personal hardship.

A recent article in The Guardian looks at the widespread impact of the pandemic on community colleges and the steps Tri-C and others are taking to reverse the trend of students stopping their educational pursuits.

Karen Miller, Tri-C’s provost and executive vice president of Access, Learning and Success, spoke about how the past year has impacted the College and the steps Tri-C is taking to get students back to class and on the path to a degree.

“[Students] were definitely affected by this, whether it be a family member who might have contracted COVID or they contracted COVID, or somebody in their family lost a job and they had to go to work instead of coming to school,” Miller said, noting that students from lower-income households were, in many cases, hindered by a lack of access to computers or reliable internet.

To help reverse the issues caused by the pandemic, Tri-C is taking steps to get students back on campus while still monitoring COVID-19 cases in the region and considering the comfort level of students, faculty and staff regarding a return to campus.

Miller noted Tri-C is working to reconnect with students who discontinued their classwork, encouraging them to re-enroll.

“We’re trying to re-engage them and let them know that we’re going to have on-ground opportunities, more on-ground classes, and open up our service footprint again come August,” Miller told The Guardian. “We’re hopeful that we’re going to see [students] come back this fall.”

July 14, 2021

Erik Cassano, 216-987-3577 or erik.cassano@tri-c.edu