Northern pitches Hagener Science Center renovation

Administrators and faculty at Montana State University-Northern took Montana State University officials, members of the state's Long Range Building Program and prominent local stakeholders on a tour of the campus's 49-year-old Hagener Science Center building Thursday.

MSU President Waded Cruzado, Greg Kegel, chancellor at Northern, Provost William Rugg, Northern Montana Health Care are CEO David Henry, Havre Mayor Tim Solomon, Hill County Commissioner Mark Peterson and State Rep. Stephanie Hess, R-Havre, were among those in attendance.

Northern is seeking $4.2 million from the state to rehabilitate and revamp the campus's Hagener Science Center, with $2.7 million going to much-needed maintenance repairs and the rest of the $1.5 million in renovations that need to be made to the building to make room for new allied health programs.

The tour was the start of a process that Northern hopes will get it onto the consolidated project priority list, which is used by the university system and state to decide which projects receive funding..

With the help of a $638,000 grant from the U.S Department of Labor, the school hopes by 2017 to offer degree programs in Emergency Medical Services, Health Care Informatics Tech, Medical Billing and Coding, and Phlebotomy.

The programs would also be stackable, or allow a student who has studied in one area of health care to later return to school and put those same credits toward a degree or certification in another.

MSU-Northern Chancellor Greg Kegel said the Hagener building has a sound overall structure, but the building, which was constructed in 1966, has fallen into disrepair. He said the buildings lecture hall, known among many as "the pit," where those in attendance were seated, was an example of the building's condition.

"This room is kind of indicative of the whole building," he said. "It's just basically sat here and not had much attention to it."

Much of the building's plumbing, heating and electricity is antiquated or in a state of deterioration, according to Dave Ulmen of the campus' physical plant who is charged with the building's upkeep.

Ulmen was one of several speakers who with the aid of a PowerPoint presentation educated visitors about the condition of the building.

Heating and cooling system that were updated five years ago are inefficient, with vast discrepancies existing in the room temperatures of offices and classrooms. During winter months, many rooms on the edge of the building drop as low as 50 degrees, with students at times having to put on coats and gloves, while labs deep within the building can get as hot as 90 degrees.

Ulmen told the audience the building is plagued by inadequate ventilation systems, gas and waterlines in lab facilities that are worn down and out of code, ineffective fume hoods in some of the chemistry labs. Water damage is also apparent in boiler and mechanical rooms.

Many of the labs on the second floor also have the feel of a time capsule of sorts with old furniture and room decor resembling something out of the 1970s.

But not all the money will be used for repairs to the building. Northern is hoping to make improvements to some of the classrooms and labs to accommodate to its proposed allied health programs and move the school's nursing quarters from Cowan Hall where it is located to Hagener where it would be with the rest of the life and medical sciences.

Jan Starr, head of Northern's Nursing program said the space allotted to her students is tight, and they would be better served with some additional space. The school hopes to increase the number of simulation labs from one to three, one of which will be used as a multipurpose room. Starr also hopes the school will put all the computers used for national testing into one classroom, as opposed to the arrangement where students test at several locations.

Starr shares her office with four other people. Additionally, the campus only has one simulation lab where aspiring nurses use mannequins to practice how to care for patients with a variety of conditions. The Allied health programs are still in their infancy but at present the CPR certificate program just launched in July, will have to use the same classroom as the healthcare informatics and phlebotomy.

The next step in the process will involve members of the MSU-LRPB crafting a Consolidated Project Priority List, which ranks the importance of those campus infrastructure improvement and building projects later this month. Administrators at campuses will then view the CPPL in late September, before it advances to the stage of the approval process.