SMC Announces Online and In-Person Courses for Fall 2021
A student swimmer sits in a row to herself during the student athlete meeting on the re-opening guidelines for Santa Monica College non-contact sports programs on March 12, 2021 at Santa Monica College, Santa Monica, Calif. (Neil O'Loughlin | The Corsair)
Santa Monica College (SMC) has announced that they will be offering both online and in-person courses for the Fall 2021 semester. While most of the classes will be held online, a “significant number” of in-person classes will be available to students for the Fall 2021 semester, which begins Aug. 30.
In an email sent out to students, faculty, and staff, on March 15, SMC President and Superintendent, Kathryn Jeffery, shared that the decision was made based on Los Angeles County moving into the red tier. The red tier in California allows Higher Education institutions to house indoor lectures and students gatherings at 25% or 100 people, whichever is less. The red tier also allows for certain courses such as labs and studio arts to open at regular capacity.
Jeffery’s also stated that “in-person course offerings may pivot back to an online, remote environment,” if COVID-19 conditions don’t improve as anticipated.
To abide by protocols currently put in place by LA County, SMC is requiring all visitors to fill out a daily symptoms checklist before coming to campus. SMC is currently working with app developers to add the COVID-19 symptoms checklist to the SMC Go app.
“There would be a visual where they could actually show an instructor, whoever, that they filled it out because on the screen it will [have] a green icon that kind of shimmers a little bit to show that they’ve done it with the date,” said Chief Johnnie Adams, head of SMC Police Department. “The reason why it has that, it’s kind of an extra protection because people can always, you know, take a photo of a screenshot, but this is kind of like a live type photo that kind of shimmers a little bit so we can see that it's actually accurate.”
Workers at the main Santa Monica College (SMC) campus, helping with a pre-Thanksgiving food pantry, in Santa Monica, California, on Tuesday, November 24, 2020. (Marco Pallotti |The Corsair)
The schedule of classes for the Fall 2021 semester will be available to students on April 12, with enrollment beginning April 26. SMC will also be updating the search criteria when looking for classes to include online or on-ground classes by April 12.
On January 21, SMC announced that the Summer 2021 semester would be online. The college continues to offer scheduled and flexible classes in the online setting that allow students to participate in regularly scheduled lectures and discussions via zoom, as well as classes taught primarily through Canvas, to fit students schedules more conveniently.
The announcement for the Fall 2021 semester comes a year after SMC first went remote in Spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. An email was first sent to students on March 11, 2020, informing them that beginning March 18, 2020, SMC would “transition as many in-person classes as possible to temporary remote instruction modalities such as Canvas, Zoom, and other platforms.”
Many resources available to students will remain online for the time being such as counseling and office hours. Further information about which services will be available on-ground, will be released closer to the start of the Fall 2021 semester.
While SMC has yet to make a decision about sports for the fall semester, they are optimistic that they will be able to resume for the regular season. This comes after the news that a few low-contact intercollegiate sports would be able to return on ground on March 15, per entering the red tier. Practices for swimming, tennis, and track & field have been allowed to resume on campus, with competitions set to begin after spring break.
SMC has provided a Roadmap to Recovery for students and faculty to stay up to date about SMC’s reopening. As of March 15 SMC remains in Phase 1.
