Merced College ‘hitting reset button’ as enrollment increases for first time since COVID
As students and faculty wrapped the second week of classes at Merced College on Friday, school officials say the start of the new semester is already offering hope this year will be a chance to reconnect with the college community in a way that hasn’t been possible since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s really good to have people back,” President Chris Vitelli told the Sun-Star. “I really look at this year in so many ways as hitting the reset button and working toward whatever the new normal is.”
About half of Merced College’s classes are in-person this fall semester, with the rest either in a hybrid format or entirely online. Last year’s fall semester kicked off with roughly 60% being taught online.
As the campus edges back toward more in-person learning, the student body is also inching up toward pre-pandemic levels. Like many community colleges across the nation, Merced College enrollment suffered due to the pandemic.
Students attending Merced College in the fall of 2019, before the virus spread globally, tallied at about 10,770. By the next fall however, enrollment had decreased to about 10,300. Last year, enrollment dropped even further to 8,523 students.
This fall semester marked the first since 2019 that enrollment grew slightly rather than shrank. As of Friday, 9,927 students were enrolled.
While Vitelli acknowledged that enrollment has yet to recover by leaps and bounds, “We’re just glad to be in the black and not in the red,” he said.
College staff are working hard to break down barriers that may prevent prospective students from returning to or starting college, Vitelli said. The increased learning flexibility mandated by the pandemic has become a sort of silver lining that’s helped further that mission, as educators were forced to become more creative than ever in their teaching methods.
Now, Merced College is continuing that flexibility so students with a diverse set of lifestyles or needs can choose an education track that suits them best.
“Students have flexible options,” Vitelli said. “What we’ve learned is, there’s a lot of adult learners whom without that flexibility, they’re not going to get those skills.”
In addition to providing classes on a spectrum including in-person and remote, some courses offer synchronous learning while others are asynchronous, providing students with a variety of options to match their learning styles, according to the college. Other programs are available on a fast track for students who want to expedite their education.
Merced College has also created a selection of fully-online degrees designed with working professionals in mind, titled the Relaunch program. Students can achieve an associate degree in business administration, early childhood education, administration of justice and more in 17 months.
“We’re doing everything we can to address whatever need,” Vitelli said. “We’ll meet them where they’re at.”
Also new this year is the Raj Kahlon Agriculture and Industrial Technology Complex. The recently completed 29,000-square-foot facility is meant to revolutionize the way students learn about agriculture. A ribbon cutting event for the new building will be held at noon on Sept. 15.
When classes kicked off Aug. 15, Vitelli said his overarching message to faculty and staff was to reset, reconnect, and renew their commitment to students and each other.
“Towards the beginning, we were in survival mode,” Vitelli said. “Now we can all kind of take a deep breath and engage with our students.”
