HAMLET — With textbooks open and an array of wires and connectors at their fingertips, Richmond Community College students in Billie Adeimy’s Industrial Controls course were hard at work in their lab on Tuesday morning.
Nearby, a group of students in RCC’s electronic lineman course watched a demonstration put on by their instructor.
In normal circumstances, those kinds of sights are common on RCC’s Hamlet campus. The college offers courses in a variety of trades — electronics, welding, engineering, nursing, and others — and many of them depend on hands-on experience, whether it’s helping manage the campus power station, working in a lab or participating in an occupational simulation.
But those experiences have been limited recently because of the COVID-19 pandemic. For the past several weeks, classes have been held online in order to prevent the spread of the virus. Following along with Gov. Roy Cooper’s plan to reopen North Carolina’s economy progressively over the next few months, RCC recently began the process of opening its campus Monday.
This week, approximately 70 students in classes with intensive hands-on components had opportunities to return to their classrooms to finish projects. The semester is already over, but those students were given more time to finish their work.
That’s the case for Adeimy’s industrial controls class. For weeks, Adeimy’s students read textbooks and watched online simulations while in-person classes were on hold. On Tuesday, they were back in the lab working on wiring motor control systems. Each student had their own work station, and the stations were spread apart from each other to accommodate social distancing.
“We are normally a 16-week class, and our last six weeks got put on pause because there’s no way to simulate this through any online means,” Adeimy said.
“There are simulators,” she added, “but they’re not going to do this justice.”
Adeimy’s course is one of several that was put on hold because of the coronavirus crisis. Numerous other courses finished out the semester online. For RCC’s nursing program, there was no stoppage because healthcare workers were deemed essential by the government.
And those students did well. Fourty-one nurses graduated from RCC this spring, and they’re now taking exams in order to become registered nurses.
Janet Sims, RCC’s Dean of Allied Health and Human Services, said keeping the nursing students safe has been one of the department’s biggest priorities.
“Our LPN (licensed practical nurse) students continued to do their simulated clinicals,” Sims said. “We used our simulation hospital, we used our labs on campus.”
Sims said RCC’s dialysis students also were able to complete their coursework with the help of DaVita, a local dialysis center, who hired them so they could do their clinicals.
RCC’s CNA students also kept working during the crisis, often working clinicals in 10-hour shifts.
“I’m pleased to say we had no occurrences of COVID-19,” Sims said. “So we obviously did very well with practicing social distancing.”
Next steps
RCC’s online summer classes are scheduled to begin Monday. Eight-week in-person and Basic Skills classes are set to begin June 15.
Sheri Dunn-Ramsay, associate vice president of marketing and strategic planning, said the college is using the time it has before in-person classes start to make sure all safety measures are in place to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.