resources overview page<\/a> with more information for employees.<\/p>\nFran\u00e7ois says that many high tech companies are offering more support because of COVID-19. \u201cFor example, Microsoft is offering daily webinars for teachers about using Teams in Office 365, and even direct access to their specialists to ask questions,\u201d he said. Another example is Zoom, which is offering daily webinars about their platform and tips for successful work from home strategies.<\/p>\n
Fran\u00e7ois is happy to share that Adobe\u2019s Creative Cloud<\/em>\u00a0is now available free for everyone. It is a collection of 20+ desktop and mobile apps and services for photography, design, video, web, UX and more. For details about this offer, as well Microsoft and Zoom extended support, please refer to the resources overview page.<\/p>\nSince the pandemic was declared, IST managed a rush of demands for help and tools, trained the whole Help Desk team in Zoom troubleshooting, acquired 100 more Zoom licenses and is working with the Academic Administration to develop solutions should the school closure be extended beyond March 30.<\/p>\n
Registrar\u2019s Office sending admission offers<\/strong><\/p>\nThe first priority for IST last week was setting up the Admissions team from the Registrar\u2019s Office to carry on processing applications from home.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn Friday, we made sure everyone had the tools to work from home,\u201d said Carmela Gumelli, Dean of Academic Systems. \u201cIt was a little chaotic for everyone. We borrowed laptops and made sure everyone had an internet connection at home.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Admissions\/Advising team consists of about 20 staff members. They are continuing the work of processing more than 11,000 applications.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we left, we had already sent out 3,728 offers of admission,\u201d Carmela said. \u201cTo date, we have now sent out almost 4,500 offers of admission. Our focus this week has been to come up with a Plan B for interviews, auditions and other application requirements for particular programs.\u201d All plans are now in place.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur Application Centre and everyone on our team is online and our work is proceeding as usual,\u201d Carmela said.<\/p>\n
Payroll\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIST also ensured that Dawson\u2019s Payroll Team members are functional at home. \u201cIt is a priority for the College to pay our employees and we had a pay scheduled this week. When the possibility of leaving the College became real, I moved quickly to ensure that my team was equipped with laptops and everything to work from home,\u201d said Pascahl Scott, who as Dawson\u2019s Director of Human Resources oversees payroll.<\/p>\n
Gearing up for high demand for online tools<\/strong><\/p>\nThe IST team is gearing up for a surge in demand should the information technology infrastructure become the only infrastructure of Dawson College for the next weeks and months. Purchases are being moved up and solutions are being identified for putting the whole College online.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur focus will be on supporting teachers,\u201d Fran\u00e7ois said. \u201cWe want to take away the technical worries so that teachers are able to focus on the pedagogical elements.\u201d<\/p>\n
No decisions have been made yet about how the semester will continue. Access to the College remains restricted.<\/p>\n
Communications updates<\/strong><\/p>\nKeeping the students and employees up to date is a major priority for the College. Multiple updates have been shared since the beginning and they are all archived on our COVID-19 update page: https:\/\/www-chris.dawsoncollege.qc.ca\/news\/coronavirus\/<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MONTREAL (March 20, 2020) \u2013 While Dawson College remains closed, essential work continues. The Director General, the Academic Dean, the directors, the deans, managers, and many employees are hard at work to develop a comprehensive plan for the resumption of activities. Next week (week of March 24), no classes or activities will be held. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":254,"featured_media":3536,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www-chris.dawsoncollege.qc.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3535"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www-chris.dawsoncollege.qc.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www-chris.dawsoncollege.qc.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www-chris.dawsoncollege.qc.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www-chris.dawsoncollege.qc.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3535"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www-chris.dawsoncollege.qc.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3539,"href":"https:\/\/www-chris.dawsoncollege.qc.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3535\/revisions\/3539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www-chris.dawsoncollege.qc.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www-chris.dawsoncollege.qc.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www-chris.dawsoncollege.qc.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www-chris.dawsoncollege.qc.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}