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Pittsburg State University made the decision to suspend all face-to-face course meetings during the spring semester. Pitt State has now decided to continue the online delivery of courses throughout the summer.
The majority of summer courses at Pitt State were already online, but there were some that now need to be redesigned for online delivery. There was not a lot of notice given to professors in the spring semester and, while redesigning a course for remote delivery is not an easy task no matter the timeline, professors of summer courses have more time to plan and transition their courses online.
“One of the things about summer is that over the last several years we’ve moved… the vast majority of all our courses, somewhere in the mid 90 percent, I think are online to begin with,” said Howard Smith, Pitt State Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. “…I don’t know that I would call it a good thing, but at least there was more advance notice this time. It wasn’t that somebody was being told in two weeks they’re (going to) have to do it. So, those courses will be designed for that to begin with. They won’t have to redesign them in the middle of the course. There’s few of those to do because of the nature of how we’ve been offering courses over the last several years.”
According to Smith, the first concern of Pitt State is the safety of its students, faculty and staff. To maintain the health and safety of everyone at Pitt State, PSU continues to look to the guidelines and recommendations of the state, local and federal governments.
“We’re hoping that we can come back on campus (in the fall) and we’ll just have to wait and see,” Smith said. “We look to the medical professionals and our local and state and our federal government to give us direction as far as orders and those kinds of things. So, that’s something that we just have to look to others for to make sure that we can comply with those regulations that are sent out and that its (going to) be safe. Our first concern is always safety. So, we’re just paying close attention to what’s happening out there and right now that’s still a way out. So.., we don’t have a date set in mind yet but we’re actually creating transition plans to come back to campus at some point. We just don’t know when.”
It is still too early to tell whether or not Pittsburg State will welcome students back to campus in the fall but that is the goal according to Pitt State President Steve Scott.
“Our goal is to be back in the fall,” Scott told the Pitt State Marketing and Communication Department. “The precautions we take now and over the next few months will hopefully result in a risk reduction for August so we can resume normal course delivery and operations.”