A large number of Dallas College classes were canceled last minute, leaving students scrambling to find something new.
Provost Shawnda Floyd said the volume of the cancelations was caused by scheduling delays with the early college high school program whose schools had undergone major changes due to the pandemic.
“We were trying to absorb their schedule needs and changes,” Floyd said. “[As] we began to get their changes and modifications in, and try to work them into the schedule, that’s what created everything at the last minute.”
Erbin Ayala, a continuing education student success coach at Eastfield, said many of the cancellations took place the weekend before classes started.
“Students were coming to us, and we didn’t know exactly what was going on,” Ayala said.
Ayala said cancellations and changes happen every year, but this year was the only year it happened on such a large scale.
Floyd said she didn’t have an exact number of classes that were canceled.

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Ayala said he and his colleagues did their best to help the students who reached out to them get put in another class.
According to Ayala, some students received emails about their classes being canceled, and others did not.
“My calculus III class was canceled before the semester began due to low enrollment, but I was able to replace it with another class quickly,” Brandon Anaya, a mechanical and energy engineering major who attends Eastfield, said. “I just received an email, and the next day I went back into eConnect to enroll in another class.”
Floyd said a lack of instructors was also a factor in the cancellations and a reason why some face-to-face classes were switched to online last minute.
According to Floyd, some adjunct professors came to class the first day, but then decided they didn’t want to be in a face-to-face environment, so changes were made to accommodate them.
There were 260 courses that were switched from 16-week face-to-face to second-8-week online courses.

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Ayala said there will be a new list of classes for the next eight weeks and next semester, so if a class got canceled this semester, a student might have better luck at that time.
Jacqueline Fabela, a psychology major who attends the Eastfield campus, said she feels lucky that none of her classes were canceled but she is concerned it could happen in the future.
“I do fear the cancellation of classes next semester because I’m just trying to graduate on time,” she said.
According to Floyd, the next eight weeks should run more smoothly.
As for next semester, Floyd is not certain what is to be expected, but she said they are holding the early college high school partners to a tight timeline, and she hopes for a smooth ride.

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