Special Message: August 7, 2020
Office of the President
Special Message from the President
Good afternoon colleagues,
Congratulations on a good start to what will be an exceptional fall semester - one for the history books! Thank you for showing up and being the best version of yourself during one of the most challenging times in our collective history. As I shared yesterday, if there is a silver lining to this pandemic - the virus has taught us to become more flexible, compassionate, and stronger each day. While I am sure there may be a few issues with the start of the new online semester, we will continue to face challenges that continue to provide us with new opportunities to develop new skills both in our work, our home lives and our leadership abilities. I hope you will join me in viewing this as an opportunity to develop new skills that will expand our range of abilities in the future. We have come this far in an exemplary manner, and I can only view this experience as ultimately strengthening our collegewide capabilities in the future.
This afternoon we received additional COVID-19 guidance from Governor Newsom. Many of the advisories and protocols have already been initiated and put into practice on our campus. One point of caution, the state guidance to Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) outlines conditions under collegiate athletics who are NCAA schools, which we are not a part of. We have a different set of guidelines we must follow for athletics. However, I wanted to share the entire California Department of Public Health news release (which is listed below) with you.
So you may be asking yourself, “what does this mean for FCC?” It means we are well prepared to proceed as planned next week. We will continue to monitor our local health conditions and plan for our eventual return. As noted in previous correspondence, the greatest challenges we have faced are in the laboratories, the hands-on aspects of our science and CTE requirements are essential to those disciplines. Our faculty, staff and administration have worked collaboratively with each other and with our external agencies such as the Board of Registered Nursing. We will continue with our plans to deliver classes in the sciences in a remote reality using software platforms to provide interactive lab simulations. Some faculty members are also being accommodated in order to come to campus to access laboratories for the purpose of developing simulations and recording them for online student use. Addressing these issues is a work in progress.
Let me close by extending, once again, my heartfelt gratitude for all that you are doing. That gratitude extends to our community supporters and our students for their suggestions and their patience with all of the changes we have had to make in our practices. Due to your commitment and passion, flexibility and grace, shared values and dedication we are well positioned for a remarkable fall semester. GO RAMS!
Stay well,
Dr. Carole Goldsmith
President
Fresno City College
1101 E. University Ave.
Fresno, CA 93741
Phone: (559) 489-2212
Fax: (559) 499-6045
