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NANTICOKE &mdash; Expanding instructional space &mdash; including the use of the gym and other student activities spaces &mdash; will allow Luzerne County Community College to bring most students back to campus for in-person learning this fall, President Thomas Leary said Wednesday.
				Leary also said some students will probably be on campus this summer, thanks to Gov. Tom Wolf&rsquo;s announcement Wednesday that allows in-person lessons at colleges and universities as early as this Friday where counties have entered the yellow or green phases of the state re-opening plan. Luzerne County is in the yellow phase.
				&ldquo;I think the situation looks a little better today than it did yesterday,&rdquo; Leary said just a few hours after Wolf&rsquo;s announcement.
				LCCC is focusing primarily of expanding instructional space so students can stay at least six feet apart. Along with removing walls to increase the size of rooms, the college has also mapped out use of spaces previously reserved for student activities in large groups, including &ldquo;18 or 20 very large spaces we did not use for instruction before, our education conference center, the gymnasium, and some other open spaces.&rdquo;
				The state is still restricting the size of groups that can gather, and Leary said he doesn&rsquo;t expect the school will be able to allow many of the extracurricular activities those spaces usually hosted, at least through the fall semester.
				&ldquo;The primary goal is to have enough instructional space,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We wanted to maker sure students who want and need in-class instruction would not be relegated to virtual learning.&rdquo;
				That doesn&rsquo;t mean the online courses are being reduced. On the contrary, Leary said, offerings are expanding to give students more choices and to make hybrid courses &mdash; part on line, part on campus &mdash; more available.
				The college is also mandating face masks for the foreseeable future, he added.
				And while the focus is on in-person learning, LCCC will be offering online courses and probably arranging some hybrid classes. He cited biology, where the lectures could be delivered on line while the labs were still held on campus, though perhaps broken into smaller groups to maintain social distancing.
				The governor&rsquo;s announcement doesn&rsquo;t change anything for students taking classes during the colleges first of two summer sessions, which began entirely on line near the end of May and start of this month. But Leary said he will be talking to faculty to see if some of the second session, starting July 6, should include in-person classes.
				The governor&rsquo;s announcement also means students who were unable to complete hands-on course work for some classes in the spring semester may get a chance to complete that work and finish the course. When in-person classes were barred due to the COVID-19 pandemic, LCCC extended the time students had to complete some course work, particularly the work that could only be done in person.
				The cost of all the changes hasn&rsquo;t been added up because some of it is still underway, Leary said, but he was optimistic that most of it will be covered by federal money made available to schools through the CARES Act, which made money available to offset a wide-range of pandemic-induced costs, including for colleges and universities.
				The changes are being made on the main campus and at all of the locations across four counties.

LCCC preparing to bring students back on campus in the fall, some sooner