by Mike Craw, MPA Director

October 7, 2020

Greetings MPA Students,

Welcome to the start of the MPA program’s fall quarter and the 40th year that our MPA program has welcomed new students! We hope you had a restful summer and we are excited to begin the year with you. We want to update you on two matters that will affect our MPA program this year. 

First, MPA courses for Fall 2020 will be held in a remote learning format as part of the College’s plan for social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic. If you are new to remote and online learning, the College has prepared a Keep Learning tutorial (please ask us for link) to help you transition. In addition, our MPA faculty have suggested a resource for learning online produced by California State University – Channel Islands. You can find this tutorial at (please ask us for link). We have not yet made an official decision about the format for courses in the upcoming winter and spring quarters. The available forecast information for Covid-19, however, suggests it is very likely that Winter 2021 will also be held in a remote learning format. We hope to have a decision for you about the winter quarter course format when winter registration opens on Dec. 7th. 

Second, you may be aware from a recent email from Evergreen’s Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. David McAvity, that the economic impact of Covid-19 has required Evergreen to implement budgetary changes for the upcoming academic year. These changes require slight reductions in the work time of the MPA program staff and faculty.  The MPA program is committed to minimizing the effect of these reductions on our students. We are actively in communication with Evergreen’s administration on having a sufficient number of spots in our core and elective courses to allow all MPA students to complete their degrees on time. You may, however, notice a more limited range of electives compared to previous years. In addition, while we will continue to offer individual learning contracts (ILCs), MPA faculty will be limited in their capacity to sponsor them.

MPA assistant directors, Puanani and Marcia, remain committed to helping you with your questions about course registration, financial aid, and other program matters.  In accordance with the College’s Covid-19 plan, we are continuing to work remotely through the fall quarter, 9 am – 5 pm weekdays. Please anticipate that on average it may take up to 2 business days for us to respond to phone calls and emails.

We anticipate being able to continue to provide the high quality of instruction that you expect and deserve from our MPA program. Our fall courses are all proceeding as scheduled. 

We appreciate your resilience during these interesting and challenging times that we are all living through together. Should you have questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to me directly at crawm@evergreen.edu.

We congratulate you on beginning your MPA, despite all of these moving parts and we wish you a successful fall quarter!