By Josh Margolis
HAVRE, Mont. (NMB) – The start of the fall semester at Montana State University-Northern is just a few days away, and Chancellor Greg Kegel says he believes they are prepared for the challenges that lie ahead.
“I’m feeling like we’ve done a lot of prep work all through the summer to try and get everything prepared for what we’re calling our new normal. And that’s a huge undertaking, I’m not going to mince words with anybody on that. We’re trying to make sure our quality of instruction is as good as it’s ever been, and at the same time, making sure that we provide a safe atmosphere for all of our students, faculty and staff. But that’s a lot, in saying that in a pandemic, that’s saying a lot. But I’m happy with the progress that we’ve made, I’m happy with the evaluation we’ve done with the campus and all of our facilities and our facility space and the type of equipment that we have to be able to do what we want to do, and that’s to be safe and maintain that quality.”
Kegel adds that they are continuing to work to set up surveillance testing for COVID-19 on campus.
“Our ability to do those types of tests depends on having the equipment, knowledge and wherewithal to do those tests. We’re hoping to do that in collaboration with Northern Montana Hospital as well as what they’ve got going on at Bullhook. So when we get to that point where we’re able to do it, it’ll be a collaborative effort. There is money that is being made available through the state of Montana for each one of our campuses that will assist us in being able to do quicker, better testing.”
Orientation for faculty and staff was on Monday, and the general student population has started arriving on campus.
Kegel says they are highly discouraging students from participating in activities such as large gatherings that could contribute to the spread of COVID-19.
“We’re working with them as groups of students…to talk about trafficing, talk about not maybe doing the types of things that they would be tempted to do like go home every weekend, go to large functions, be involved with those larger gatherings, partying. I’ve already made a couple pleas to students and groups to help us with that. To help monitor it and be part of extending that message out there. That we’re serious about it, that we want to keep this campus open, we want to be able to go face-to-face. We don’t want to do everything that we do in a distanced format. We want our new normal to look very close to the old normal.”
The first day of classes at Northern is scheduled for Monday, August 31st.
