Steps have been taken to safely offer classes at the Kirkwood Washington Regional Center in the fall. The center has been closed to the public since mid-March due to COVID-19 but will start opening its doors in August. Director of the Regional Center Tera Pickens shares most of the classes will be offered online through WebLive on the Zoom platform, “Students will still be attending their classes at their regular scheduled time. There’s still going to be real-time lecture. There’s still going to be some rich engagement within the class and discussion amongst the students and the instructor. But we felt that if we really wanted to put safety as our number one priority, which we do, the best choice for our students, faculty, and staff, if social guidelines are still in place in the fall, is to not have the majority of our students return to our building but have them participate remotely.” These include the traditional courses as well as the academy courses that are offered to high school students as concurrent credit.

Pickens adds that safety plans have also been put in place for the courses that are more hands-on like automotive technology, advanced manufacturing, and welding, “Those are courses that have a strong lab component and some of the learning outcomes just really cannot be replicated in an online Zoom format. So, we will still be hosting those academies in our building in a face-to-face format. There’s going to be some big changes though. The students who are going to be coming into our building for those experiences, we will be adhering to social distancing guidelines. So that might mean, you know, if we have a class of 14 students only seven will be in class on a certain day of the week. We might be reducing our classroom capacity to reduce the number of students that are in the classroom at one time. All students will be required to wear facemasks, we will have those provided if they need them.” She adds there will also be extra cleaning protocols in place.

Pickens says that enrollment is still open for people who want to register for classes, but some courses are already full.