Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — American Samoa Community College is seeing an increase of about 100 students who registered for the Fall Semester, which began last week. This term,  67% of classes will be face-to-face in the classroom, and COVID-19 prevention — social distancing along with wearing face masks  — will be strictly observed.

This is according to ASCC president Dr. Rosevonne Pato who updated the governor’s cabinet during a presentation at last week’s cabinet meeting, where she also predicted when a further increase in enrollment is expected when evening courses start in two-weeks times.

Under the governor’s current and previous COVID-19 emergency declarations, ASCC along with all public and private schools is allowed to open for the new school year. At the cabinet meeting, Dr. Pato thanked the governor for allowing to the college to open “because it has made a huge difference in our enrollment.

As of Aug. 14th, the enrollment “was a little over 900 students — over a 100 student increase,” she said, noting that in the past three-years, ASCC has been averaging about 850 students.

“To see 900-plus students is a big plus. And we were allowed to do face-to-face registration and placement, which made a big difference, as well as, knowing that students now have the opportunity to go to the college,” she said.

Dr. Pato notes that the college is looking forward to start its evening and apprenticeship classes in two-weeks time. She said these classes usually bring in another 150 to 300 students.

“We know we will go beyond 1,000 students and that’s a very big plus for us, as you know that’s our revenue — students coming in,” she pointed out, and credited the increase in enrollment with students staying on island to attend ASCC — which had been encouraged by the governor and other ASG officials as concerns mounted locally over the spike in the number of COVID-19 cases in Hawaii and the US mainland.

Dr. Pato thanked the governor for the initiative, which raised the minimum threshold salary level for Associate Degree holders to $16,000 “because that has been a big issue. We tell our students — to ‘get your degree’. But when they walk in to employment, they fall short of their minimum salary. So it’s been a big plus. And I know students are looking forward to completing their degrees because of that.”

She also said that ASCC has to submit a report to it’s accreditation commission on how the college will be conducting classes. She explained that classes for general education courses or lecture courses, are 67% face-to-face and 33% online.

“What that means is that every student gets at least two-days of face-to-face classes, “ she said, noting that it’s either Monday, Wednesday or Tuesday, Thursday and then Friday is the online day. “This is for general education and lecture courses.”

For lab courses, it is all depends on the course, as ASCC has computer labs, science labs, nursing clinic, as well as trades and teacher education. “They run from 80% to 100% face-to-face depending on the type of classes.”

As classes being at the college, Dr. Pato said “we have abided by social distancing” and keep classes below 25 students at a time. While the college is looking at an increase in enrollment, “we will [social] distance our students, with their desks and make sure that we’re abiding by that,” she said.

Using funds allocated by the US Department of Education under provisions of the CARES Act, ASCC has purchased dispensers for hand sanitizers that are placed outside of every classroom as well as in offices, she said.

Additionally, ASCC now has access Google classroom, as the college moved to a different system, which also allows students and teachers to store documents in the “Cloud” - which Samoa News points out is now widely used in American Samoa.

Just like the local Education Department, Dr. Pato said ASCC teachers went through training to make sure they are prepared to teach the online portion of their courses.

“I feel our teachers are very well equipped to begin this [Fall] semester — unlike in the Spring and... in the Summer, we were still struggling to get our teachers to use online instruction,” she added.