Published August 20, 2021

To the Shasta College Community:

I trust the first week of the semester is ending well.  We were fortunate to have the expected Tuesday night PSPS shutoff canceled for the main campus.  Having a triple emergency situation (potential power shutoff on top of being an evacuation center on top of the pandemic) was stressful for some of us, and I want to give a big thank you to our physical plant and campus safety and other staff who were preparing to handle the situation.

During my address at Welcome Back day last Friday, I mentioned an article I appreciated that gave me some perspective on how the delta variant has changed the endgame of coming out of the pandemic.  It can be found here:  https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/08/delta-has-changed-pandemic-endgame/619726/  What I really appreciate is the idea that there really is an endgame to all of this, which fuels an optimism in what I see to be an increasingly angry rhetoric in the national and local discourse.  I believe as a college we can continue to model an approach that will get us and our communities through this difficult time. 

To that end, I encourage you all to consider being vaccinated, and if not, to be faithful in the weekly testing so that we will be able to find any cases quickly and maintain our operations in serving our students and our communities. 

On the enrollment front, we are currently projecting that we are down about 7% from last fall.  Recall that last year we were down nearly 21% the fall compared to prior fall and down about 18% overall for the year.  We are being held harmless on credit FTES (excluding dual/concurrent enrollment FTES) in our funding for last year and this year, which means we really need to focus on getting enrollment back up by fall 2022.  I believe we all contribute to getting enrollment up, and by working together to provide timely and excellent service to students, together with the excellent education found in our classes, we will do just that. 

OK – that is all for now.  Thanks for all you are doing, and I look forward with you to a brighter future.

Joe Wyse
Superintendent/President
Shasta-Tehama-Trinity Joint Community College District
11555 Old Oregon Trail
Redding, CA 96049-6006
530-242-7510