NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — MCLA president James Birge said students are mostly doing well to start the new school year, after two-and-a-half years of remote or hybrid instruction.

 

"I think all of us know that the pandemic hasn't disappeared. It's in an endemic stage, and so there's a little bit of disease, but generally, the people that I've encountered seem really excited to be back," he said. "Really happy to be sitting with people and not necessarily online."

 

Birge updated the school's Board of Trustees on the beginning of the semester at its meeting on Thursday. He said the college is starting to return to more familiar patterns, noting that all the courses that had been remote or hybrid during the pandemic are once again fully in-class.

 

Another return to form from pre-pandemic, Birge said, is the full reintroduction of travel courses.

 

"There's a group that's going to be going to Peru, a group that goes to South Africa, a group that's going to Japan, and we have a spring break trip that's going to Belize," he said. "I'm excited to see people are starting to realize that it's a big world and there are places for us to go. Obviously, we'll be watching very carefully the emergence, or re-emergence, of the virus and all of those places."

 

One thing Birge said students are struggling with, however, is mental health. He said many students are taking advantage of the counseling and other services provided by the college.

 

"It's something that we had anticipated. It's been widely reported in the media nationally that students are struggling more with mental health now than ever before. And we've seen that here," he said. "... We're trying to be as supportive as we can be, either on campus or with off-campus resources."

 

Regarding COVID-19, Birge said the college is still monitoring the virus on campus. He said students still have the option to get weekly antigen tests and can continue to wear masks if they feel comfortable doing so.

 

In other business, the board welcomed new Trustee and MCLA Alumnus Jean Clarke-Mitchell to the board. Clarke-Mitchell is currently an Assistant Professor of Social Science at Lesley University and holds both a Master's and PhD in Social Work from Smith College.

 

"I'm happy to be here and happy to serve," she said. "I'm excited to see what I can contribute and what I can learn."

"What NECHE is looking for us to do is to be able to demonstrate across these nine standards, really, a story of an institution," said Vice President of Academic Affairs Richard Glejzer. "Not how we necessarily got here, but that's part of it; but where we're going and the ways in which we get there."