Northern plans for full campus re-opening

Montana State University-Northern is returning back to campus by doing face-to-face interactions, but with safety precautions and caution.

"We've decided that we're opening the campus," Chancellor Greg Kegel said. "We've decided to go everything face-to-face as normal, but the normal has parts to include as much as we can in distancing, trafficking, meaning to spread the students across the campus as much as we can to minimize as much overload as we can in a classroom."

He said in order to do that, the school had to do a complete evaluation of all of the campus' space.

A team this summer, he said, went into each classroom and looked at its designated occupancy load and then looked at what the load would be with the distancing standing that that school wants to establish for safety.

This evaluation has been done in every single room on every floor in every building, he said.

"We're scheduling those kids in those rooms to those levels," Kegel added. "We're providing all the sanitation stuff that they need, meaning the spaces will be clean before and after each day, the sanitation stations will be available for any person that wants to sanitize. We are requiring that face masks are used in our facilities - either mask or shield."

He said the campus is trying to bring back as much face-to-face as it can.

  An option of live broadcasts will be available to people who cannot make the class for whatever reason, he said. 

He said the school has invested thousands of dollars for new equipment in order to do that, from sound equipment, cameras, different platforms of delivery and more.

"We've also had teams working on what I call spinning up faculty, so that they're ready to go, and they've been doing workshops with our faculty all through the summer," he said. "Teaching them how to use the equipment and making sure that their coursework is brought up so that it is organized and structured for the 13 weeks of instruction this fall, so it's been monumental in what we've been doing."

The fall semester begins Monday, Aug. 31, and runs through Tuesday, Dec. 8.

Face-to-face instruction courses will be offered through Tuesday, Nov. 24.

After Thanksgiving, students will not be returning to campus and their courses will be accessed through alternate delivery methods.

Finals will also be accessed through alternative delivery methods between Wednesday, Dec. 2 and Tuesday, Dec. 8.

Kegel said he is asking the students to minimize trafficking as much as they can.

"If you don't have to go home this weekend, don't go home. If you don't have to leave the state of Montana, don't leave the state of Montana," he said. "All of that will help contain what we've got, which right now is a very safe atmosphere. We've been running all summer in Hill County with very low numbers, and we want to keep the numbers as low as we can."

He is optimistic about that, Kegel said.

He said the school will be performing some type of sentinel testing.

Every day more and more rapid testing ideas are coming about, he said.

Northern has a research center, he said, it has the ability with some of its instrumentation to do different types of testing on campus.

"I've suggested that to the people down at Montana State, so there's some consideration in that and I would like to look at that a little bit further as to what we might be able to do right here, locally with our research laboratory to assisting the turnaround time with those tests," Kegel said. "We're asking the students to do a lot of self-diagnosing, so that if they feel funny, have any of the symptoms of COVID that they let us know and we work with them that way or maybe test them because of it." 

He added that he was encouraged in all the communities he went to by how many have embraced the fact that everyone wears a mask, does their distancing - this virus can be crushed.

"I'm bringing that whole thing back to Northern, I'm hoping that's the way we go forward and I'm very much optimistic that we are going to have a good fall," he said. 

COVID-19 hit Montana right around spring break time at Northern this year.

Kegel said he's pretty confident that Northern handled it as good as any institution in the state if not better.

He has heard zero complaints from the students, he said, but he came back and that was a different time.

It was kind of like a surprise attack, nobody knew what COVID was, to the degree, what kind of effect it was going to have on the campus and society, he said.

"There's probably a little bit of grace in that with our instruction and now when we're promoting a safe-as-we-can environment as quality-as-usual environment. We're going to have to deliver," Kegel said. "That was one of the reasons we spent all summer ramping up everything to make sure that we are totally ready to go, both safety wise and quality wise." 

He said he hasn't received the numbers yet on enrollment for the upcoming year, but he expects them down due to COVID-19 related matters.

Before COVID, he said, Northern was doing things and was on track to do some great things.

"We've got the stadium that's almost completed, the new Diesel Technology Center that just went up and started an equine program that I'm about ready to kick that thing off - all of those things were happening before COVID," he said.

"COVID has been a challenge - it has challenged me as the leader of this institution in a lot of different ways and it's nice to have challenges, it's nice to be able to embrace and do the best that you can under those circumstances, but this is a different one," he added. "It's a complicated one that has been politicized too much. It's deadly, we know it's deadly. All of this intertwined, we want to do the right thing always."

Now with COVID, he is worried about things that he thought he would never have to worry about, he said.

"We're going to make every decision based on what's best with the conference, with all of the teams that play in the conference, for all of us, and I'm going to make decisions that's best for our students and for our faculty and staff," Kegel said. "It's been different. It's been hard."