CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Colleges and universities across western North Carolina are continuing to adapt to new challenges in the aftermath of Helene.

Several campuses recently reopened their doors to students due to the storm impacts. 

John Gossett serves as president of Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College. 

"The student and employees are really what make a college campus special," Gossett said. "I came here in the middle of the pandemic in 2020, when we were teaching at a distance. A college campus without its people is just a conglomeration of empty buildings, and that's kind of a soulless place to be. This is my life's work, helping students get to a better place in life."

Gossett says the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic helped his team's response to Helene. 

A-B Tech reopened Oct. 28, operating under a hybrid learning model with many students continuing their learning online. 

"We waited a month to bring our people back to campus, mainly because of fresh water," Gossett said. "We brought folks back, especially in our hands-on programs, as quickly as we could. We learned some good lessons from COVID. The instructors were able to change their curriculum and help our students get back to life. Once we brought those students back, I made an effort to go see those students to make sure they were squared away at home before they get back here. One student said, 'Thank you for opening the school back, it gives [us a sense of normalcy].' I told them this is not normal, Buncombe County will not be normal for a while. How about let's agree on familiar, so we brought students back to familiar. It gave them some sense of solidity knowing a part of their world was back to where it was prior to the storm."

Gossett says luckily, none of the A-B Tech campuses or infrastructure suffered physical damage, which enabled some of their spaces to be shelters after Helene hit. 

"When the world literally stopped turning in the storm, the county manager called asking for our assistance," Gossett said. "By [that] Friday night, they were bringing people into our conference center to upfit a shelter. We also had a medical shelter in our Allied Health building. We're blessed with a lot of facilities, and I'm very thankful. We will share that blessing with our community."

According to the North Carolina Community College System, colleges across the state experienced substantial enrollment growth from 2020 to 2023. 

A-B Tech estimates nearly 6,000 students enrolled at the beginning of the fall 2024 semester, representing an 8%-10% boost from the previous academic year.  

Gossett says they'll be monitoring the impact Helene has on enrollment numbers. 

"We've been told from other schools whom survived [Hurricane] Katrina and a flooding in Kentucky that we could lose 40-60% of our students as a result of this storm. We haven't seen that yet, although we are seeing more and more students telling us they're having difficulty getting back on track, getting back to the technology they need. Bless their hearts, some lost their vehicles, transportation, much less their homes. We do expect to lose some, we don't know that number just yet, but we do have some students that have dropped," Gossett said. 

Gossett says the college has been taking steps to support students with overcoming these challenges, any way they can. 

"My message to our faculty [is] whatever we need to do to help these students get to where they need to go," Gossett said. "We've enacted grading that allows them to continue past the Christmas holidays. Some of our students still don't have internet. So we've opened up labs, created labs for them to come in and work here. We've helped them see where they can find internet in their communities. We're doing everything we know to do."

Gossett says at first, he was concerned about a great number of hospitality and culinary students not returning to the learning environment post-Helene. 

"Those industries are everywhere and if those students are devastated here they could go to Raleigh, Charleston, wherever, and pick right back up. Because of the quality of our instructors, those students are coming back. We're excited to help them. The students are seeing how you work in your industry during a time of crisis. We're taking the crisis as a way of teaching something we would not be able to teach at all. I think our students are responding to that, they're rising to the challenge and are excited about learning something new," Gossett said. 

Mariana Argueta Flores is a sophomore studying business at A-B Tech. She also serves as president of the Student Government Association. 

"It's so welcoming," Flores said. "The teachers and people are really down to earth who not only help me academically but also in my life."

After Helene, Flores stepped up to help neighbors and students impacted by the storm. 

"I love helping and making sure we are doing good in my community. I started with getting water around and making sure my neighbors were OK, especially my family and friends. We picked up a car and went around areas to get resources for Asheville," Flores said. 

Flores says coming back to college after Helene was somewhat a challenge. 

"I'm also a student and I work," Flores said. "Losing internet the first two weeks, it felt like I was losing motivation and learning. I was really kind of in between should I continue, should I stop, what should I do. This was a very heavy [challenge], and I feel all students who are in this area got affected by it. I saw around me and I saw I needed to do more than just quit. I needed to continue my education for me, and my family and friends and people that afforded me this."

"Right now, all my classes have switched to online. It's feeling like back to COVID times. I'm a little bit nervous about it. It's looking great so far. It's so great to have that support [from the school]," Flores said. 

Some experts say climate change likely played a big role with happened in western North Carolina. Flores hopes these recent weather events motivate her peers to learn more about it. 

"I feel like after this we all can come together and realize [the impacts from] climate change. As students, we can learn and work on that and to realize it's going to affect us in the future so hopefully people will change it for the better," Flores said.

As for Gossett, he hopes more people will see the role community colleges play with rebuilding and strengthening their communities. 

"I want you to know how important community colleges are. In the storm it was community college graduates that ran into the storm. It's community college students and graduates who are going to rebuild western North Carolina, and I can't tell you how proud I am of that," Gossett said.