Cleveland State Announces New Normal for Fall 2021 Semester

Holly Vincent
Sunday, March 21, 2021 12:00 AM
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CLEVELAND, Tenn. – While Cleveland State Community College has been busy preparing for the fall 2021 semester, the college is announcing its new normal…more student engagement and even more options! This fall, Cleveland State will be offering traditional in-person, online and hybrid options.

“We are a community college, so we are here to serve everyone,” stated Dr. Bill Seymour, CSCC President. “That’s why it is so important to have a mode of teaching to fit everyone’s needs.”

According to Seymour, recent data shows that the college is increasing the number of face-to-face classes for fall 2021 by 100 percent compared to this academic year.  There will be more student engagement both inside and outside of the classroom, but that doesn’t mean the other options will no longer be available.

Seymour stated, “This past year, we learned there are some people who prefer and like online classes, so we’ve got that option for them. There are some who prefer more traditional face-to-face classes, so we’ve got that for them. Then, there are some who like both options, so we’ve got the hybrid option for them.”

Last year, the college went to great lengths to study the best methods for instruction during a pandemic environment. The Center for Dynamic Instruction at CSCC offered weekly professional development sessions over the summer, geared to help prepare faculty for hybrid and online course design and instruction. These sessions share the best national practices and provide faculty with examples of both hybrid and online class design as they prepared to instruct students for the fall. The college also surveyed its students (both new and returning) about their interests and the various teaching modes in light of the pandemic, such as face-to-face traditional classes, fully-online classes and hybrid.

Dr. Barsha Pickell, Vice President for Academic Affairs, said, “We are in a much better place offering our classes in different formats now. That is a huge accomplishment. At the end of the day, we have come out in a better position. We have a lot more tools in our tool belt that are going to help make us more competitive, but also help our students take classes in a way that best suits them, and it really is about meeting the needs of our students.”

According to Pickell, both asynchronous and synchronous options are also available. Synchronous online classes mean the class is still meeting all together at the same time. They still have the same meeting time as their normal class time. It is the option that is the most like having a traditional in-person class; it’s just meeting online. With asynchronous classes, students do their work on their own time. They have assignments and discussion boards, but they can work at their own convenience and do not have to log-in at a certain time. Many working adult students choose this option because of the flexibility.

Fall semester will bring other options, as well. Not only will students have a variety of teaching modes to choose from, but with the addition of CSCC’s new Health and Science Center that just opened this month on the main campus and the new McMinn Higher Education Center set to open in May, new students starting this fall will be among the first to use these new state-of-the-art facilities.

Seymour said, “With everything we have learned over the past year, we now know what our new normal should be at Cleveland State, and we are proud to do it.”

For more information on Cleveland State Community College, visit the website at clevelandstatecc.edu or email clscc_info@clevelandstatecc.edu. If you are interested in applying, visit mycs.cc/applynow. Students are currently enrolled online and on-campus through the CSCC main campus in Cleveland, Tennessee, as well as CSCC’s Athens Center in Athens, Tennessee and Monroe County Center in Vonore, Tennessee.

CSCC earned the Tennessee Board of Regent’s 2019 College of The Year. CSCC directly serves Bradley, McMinn, Meigs, Monroe, and Polk Counties in Tennessee. The College System of Tennessee is the state’s largest public higher education system, with 13 community colleges, 27 colleges of applied technology and the online TN eCampus serving more than 140,000 students.

Photo Caption: Students will be able to choose between a variety of class formats at Cleveland State Community College this fall. Traditional face-to-face, online and hybrid options are all a part of CSCC’s new normal. (Photo was taken prior to the pandemic.)