The Spring 2021 commencement ceremony for Iowa Central Community College graduates will once again be a virtual event.

The ICCC Board of Directors made the decision on Tuesday evening after a discussion about the outlook of the COVID-19 situation in April.

Angie Martin, vice president of finance and operations, brought the issue to the board now because she and the other vice presidents felt with the planning involved with organizing the commencement event, it was best to make a decision earlier rather than later.

“It’s a really tough decision and a really tough recommendation for us to make, but we just want to make sure we’re able to have a well thought out graduation honoring our graduates,” she said.

The virtual commencement ceremony will be held in April. More information will be released in the coming weeks.

Martin also gave the board an update on the college’s COVID-19 situation. She said move-in for the spring semester went well.

She said the college currently has 10 students who have tested positive for COVID-19 and 27 are in quarantine.

“We’re going to monitor this and see how things are going,” Martin said.

She said the college is having more face-to-face classes this semester than it did in the fall.

The Board of Directors also approved a series of curriculum changes, including adding back the culinary arts AAS degree. Currently, the culinary arts diploma program is a one-year program, but this would add 31 credits for a total of 65 credits in a two-year program.

The graphics technology program will be dropping Dreamweaver I and replacing it with Photography IV.

“Basically, it’s outdated,” Stacy Mentzer, vice president of instruction, explained of Dreamweaver. “So we’re going to exchange it with photography classes.”

The curriculum changes also add a digital media production program, which will take courses from digital mass communications and TV/radio broadcast and be designed to meet real-world demands.

“There’s a huge need in the workforce for this,” Mentzer said. “These people can become bloggers, video production, public relations, content creators, social media, the list goes on and on.”

Human services and engineering transfer majors were also added.