About

From 2020 - 2022, most of Portland Community College's classes were remote. Instructors taught from home. Students learned from home. Services such as advising and library assistance went online. While some staff were present on campus at various times, we mostly stayed apart.

How did this time affect our sense of community? What were the experiences of PCC students, faculty and staff? While we studied and worked at home, what else was happening in our lives?

PCC's 2021-2022 Writer-in-Residence, Caitlin Dwyer, interviewed people about their experiences. She collected and wrote up some of those stories. They represent a wide variety of experiences and perspectives.

The idea of this project is not to give a cohesive sense of what "the pandemic was like" at PCC. There was no single experience of the COVID years; they were disruptive, they were joyful, they were devastating. They included hard endings and new beginnings. They stopped us in our tracks and pushed us in unexpected directions.

Many thanks to the participants in this project for volunteering their time, and to the PCC HARTS Council for making this project happen through the Writer-in-Residence program.