Services to maintain same hours in spring

Academic advising and admissions, as well as most other student services, will be open in person Monday through Thursday and virtually Monday through Saturday in the spring semester.

Most services, including the library, will open at 8:30 a.m., but closing times vary. For example, Financial Aid closes at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, and at 6 p.m. on Tuesdays.

Most in-person services will be closed on Friday.

“Hopefully [the hours] affect students in a very positive way,” Felicia Patterson, the vice president for learner support services, said.

“We try to make sure that the hours we’re providing are what students need.”

The cafeteria will be open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Chick-fil-A will be open 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday.

Patterson noted that the college plans to “stick with” this schedule.

“We’re hoping that these hours that we’ve developed for spring become our regular hours moving forward,”

Patterson said. “And we’re certainly open, you know. If students respond and tell us, ‘Hey, these hours are not working as well as we’d like,’ then of course we will respond to that, because that really is the goal: to make sure that students can get their needs met.”

Patterson said the pandemic led the college to adopt online student services.

“We didn’t have very many remote services,” Patterson said. “We had a few but not to the extent … we have now. Now you can pretty much do anything remote.” lege. At a four-year college, you’re alone for the first time and you have to figure out so much on your own … but now I feel really prepared.”

Students at the small charter school who get into the program take AACC classes for free from ninth grade to 11th grade. The pathway in this charter school is part of a larger partnership between AACC and Anne Arundel County institutions called the Early College Access Program.

AACC’s director of instructional pathways and partnerships with high schools, Sara Eger, said the program “allows [students] to explore while still in high school,” to find out what they want to major in before transferring to a four-year college.

It’s an opportunity “for students to really figure out if this is really what [they] want to do,” Eger said. “They have the opportunity while in high school to switch gears before they commit to maybe choosing a college that specializes in something that wasn’t what they wanted.”

Hendricks, who discovered her passion for the medical field while taking an AACC course in the program, agreed.