Olympic College Shelton hoping to boost enrollment

Matt Baide | Jul 28, 20220

Matt Baide count

Education had to adjust to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and more than two years later, many schools are still trying to navigate the world the pandemic has created.

Olympic College Shelton is still recovering from the pandemic and is trying to figure out how to get students back on campus.

"When the pandemic first began and the governor issued proclamations, higher ed was kind of the least important things for him to worry about at the time when he had other things and it continued that way throughout the pandemic," Director of Olympic College Shelton Allison Smith told the Journal. "When he would change things for K through 12, it would affect K through 12, it didn't affect higher ed. And as many businesses, we kind of had to figure things out as we went along. When changes finally came, he gave the colleges each a choice to decide if they wanted to be an immunized campus or a non-immunized campus and Olympic College opted to be an immunized campus."

Smith said the faculty had a lot of concerns about teaching and being in close quarters with other people during the pandemic, so OC Shelton asked students for proof of immunization.

"I would say a majority of the colleges, there's 34 community and technical colleges in the state of Washington and the majority of those decided they would simply go for attestation," Smith said. "And yet, we are opting for proof, so students need to show us proof of immunization in order to, they can continue to take online classes without that but if they want to come onto campus to use the library or the computer lab or anything else, they need to have proof of immunization so we've been working on that very diligently."

There were a couple programs that were still able to operate in person during the pandemic, including the nursing and welding programs. Later in the pandemic, there was a professor who tried to teach to a classroom and online, which took some getting used to.

The hybrid model was offered during 2021 and into the winter quarter of 2022, and only three students signed up to come in for a math class.

"One was a no show and one of them came to class the first day with COVID," Smith said. "So that one didn't last either. Spring quarter, same thing, we offered hybrid options, and students are just choosing to continue to take things online and you're between a rock and a hard place because if you want to try and force students to come back to campus by canceling online, you lose FTE's (full-time equivalent student) all together because they can attend any college in the country they want online. So, it's a balancing act but we really are offering quite a nice variety this fall of classes in person and hopefully we will get enough students to do that."

According to the latest numbers from the registrar, head count for summer is down 2.6% from last year and FTE's is down 6.9% for Olympic College and the state FTE is down 7.1%. For fall, head count is currently up 3.7% based on day of enrollment and all FTE's are up 4.5% compared to the state FTE's are up 3.78%. Smith said the gap of enrollment compared to pre-pandemic levels is huge.

"The main campus in Bremerton is a ghost town compared to what it normally is," Smith said. "It's a little scary to worry. We're still managing but the brick-and-mortar type of education might be, you know, you keep hearing people say we'll never really go back to what it was like prior to the pandemic and I'm not sure."

Olympic College Shelton is hosting an Enroll Now event from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 10. The event is for new students to complete all the steps of enrollment before classes begin Sept. 19. Anyone interested in attending should register online at https://tinyurl.com/2p9er6dj since the event will provide pizza and they need a head count.

"All kinds of answers can be had and help so that even it's not too late for them to come to this event, register online and come and be able to start in our fall quarter," Smith said.