The COVID-19 pandemic prompted John Jay to offer more online classes, a trend that has continued since the return to campus. Students have grown accustomed to a large number of asynchronous and hybrid course options but that might change under a new mandate released in early February.
In a memorandum sent on February 3 to all full-time faculty at the college, Provost Allison Pease wrote that starting Fall 2025, “all full-time Lecturer and Tenure-Track faculty members […] must teach a minimum of two, fully in-person (not hybrid) courses each fall and spring semester on the John Jay campus.”
The memorandum also states that if the faculty member is only teaching one class per semester the course must be taught fully in-person.
The memorandum begins by explaining that this move resulted from the department chairs’ concerns and urgings, which originated back in the Fall of 2024. Yet in a recent interview, Pease said the move was also spurred by the college’s goal to maintain the highest level of quality in its course and degree offerings, the fact that John Jay does not offer nor is it authorized for online undergraduate degree programs (except for one), and the need for students to have access to their professors as well as staff to have access to their colleagues and department members.
“I think I am doing it for the right reasons, which is the quality of the education that we are giving to our students,” Pease said.
Faculty and students alike have had mixed responses to this announcement.
Karen Kaplowitz, an English department professor and the elected president of the Faculty Senate, teaches a fully in-person schedule, yet, acting as the voice of her colleagues, she sent an email to Pease urging her to delay this proposed change for an academic year as a compromise.
This compromise also suggested that, instead of moving to approximately a two-thirds ratio of in-person to online course teaching, professors should teach at least two hybrid courses in the upcoming academic year.
“The concerns among those who are opposed to the Provost’s announced change, are as follows: a lot of students seem to do well in hybrid courses; a lot of students prefer hybrid courses because of their work schedule, family schedule, their commuting situation, and so forth; and, there is concern whether we will have a drop in enrollment if we provide fewer online courses,” Kaplowitz said.
“Lots of faculty are asking for data to better predict what might happen before we make a change,” Kaplowitz added.
The Faculty Senate quickly put out a survey following the memorandum, which asked the teaching faculty their preferred class modality and what they believe is the preferred and best-performing modality for their students.
“There is a whole series of questions to try to gauge what the faculty opinion is,” Kaplowitz said. “We are looking forward to seeing the responses.”
This survey data has been forwarded to the Provost as the scheduling for the Fall 2025 semester is to be finalized by March 7. According to Kaplowitz, the Provost agreed to see the data and consider it in her final decision. At this time the Sentinel does not have access to the survey results.
Despite a lack of student survey data, JJAY students also haven’t stayed quiet about this issue.
Kiana Parker, a junior, shared her concern about the announcement in an interview and her statements at the college’s Town Hall on February 11.
Parker graduated and transferred from the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) through the Macaulay Honors Bridge program, and she also is open about her multiple sclerosis diagnosis, an autoimmune disease she has been coping with since she was 11-years-old.
“I have accommodations because of it, and my main recurring symptoms over the years have been fatigue, limb pain, and mobility issues, which can make commuting to campus difficult. So being able to take online and hybrid courses has been really important in helping me stay on track with my degree,” Parker said. “Without these as options, it would probably take me much longer to graduate.”
While Parker agrees that online courses are not the best learning environment for every student, she echoed Kaplowitz’s concerns about declining enrollment and the strain a full-time course schedule can put on students.
“Even outside of disabilities or medical issues, many students have jobs, childcare or caregiving responsibilities, mental health struggles, or other personal circumstances that make commuting or certain kinds of schedules hard,” Parker said. “This has been the case for a lot of my classmates over the last few years.”
Lucia Paredes, a sophomore and Law and Society major, believes that the move back to in-person will benefit the student body.
“I had to take, by force, a lot of online courses. Not by my own selection, even if I wanted to take an in-person course,” Paredes said.
Paredes shared that she felt the online courses that she has taken in her last two years at the college benefited the busy schedules of students, but left her feeling, “like I didn’t grasp the knowledge of the courses that I took.”
When creating her course schedule, Paredes noticed that certain classes are only offered online. According to Paredes, some of these courses seemed to be a better fit for the in-person class modality.
“In my freshman year, there was this Law and Society course, which was a part of my major, and it was only offered online,” Paredes said. “I thought this class would have been great to be interactive in-person and to have debates in-person. Although, yes, we had a classroom and we spoke, personally it did not feel the same.”
Paredes also shared that many students had their cameras off and the professor often just “spoke to” the class, so overall the course was not a great learning experience for her.
Additionally, besides the lack of student connection that online learning can bring, Paredes also shared that online learning can lead to confusion about assignments and, even further, difficulty in being able to contact and make connections with professors.
“It is that issue of how are we communicating with our professors in a way that is effective for students to get their best experience,” Paredes said.
Overall, Paredes echoed Pease’s concern about the quality of her online courses, and she explained that without her in-person learning experience she would not have her current work-study job, which resulted from a relationship that Paredes developed with a professor in her freshman year through chats and opportunities after class.
With the discourse around this issue, it is important to remember the actual numbers behind the change discussed in the memorandum.
During her interview, Pease said that approximately 1,688 students of the undergraduate student body have taken all of their coursework fully online at the college.
Further, while there is no individual undergraduate student data regarding their split of course modality types, the college currently provides 30 percent of courses fully online, 13 percent hybrid, and 57 percent fully in-person.
Pease said the goal moving forward is for 25 percent of courses to be online and 75 percent to be in-person; this percentage split has hybrid courses counting as 50 percent online and 50 percent in-person.
This means that ultimately there will only be an approximate 10 percent decrease in fully online and hybrid course offerings, or a 10 percent influx in fully in-person courses.
The goal percentage split for the course modalities is meant to resemble pre-COVID numbers, which saw only 22 percent of courses in an online modality.
In her interview, Pease also shared that the pass-fail scores between online and in-person class offerings only differ three percentage points, which suggests that there should be no substantial change in student success rates with the modality offering change.
Kaplowitz echoed Pease’s sentiments regarding the importance of in-classroom learning and the lack of data showing that online courses equal better learning.
“Sometimes the grades do not really reflect how much the student is learning,” Kaplowitz said.
The scheduling for the Fall 2025 semester will be finalized on March 7, so staff and students will have to wait and see if the Provost’s decision will be revised because of the faculty data and student concerns, such as those from Parker.
“The department chairs, the Faculty Senate, and the Provost all have the same goal, which is the best for our students. But, the Faculty Senate wants to see a survey of students and hear what the students say because we don’t have that yet,” Kaplowitz said.
“We have to do right by our students.”
