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MSU-Northern Back to School 2015

Kegel restores order to Northern

Montana State University-Northern is not at all unfamiliar territory for Greg Kegel, but the position he found himself in around this time a year ago certainly was.

Kegel arrived at MSU-Northern in 1982, teaching industrial technology and draft design, where he became a known advocate for increasing opportunities and programs for students in high-tech fields. In 2001, he became a dean at the college, but it wasn’t until late last August that he was thrust into the spotlight when he was appointed interim chancellor.

The conditions under which Kegel took the helm were far from ideal. His predecessor, James Limbaugh, whose tenure was marked by what many saw as an abrasive style, contentious relationships with faculty and a series of embarrassing headlines, had abruptly resigned. This, combined with declining enrollment and some mismanaged programs, made for a campus plagued by doubts about its future.

Kegel could hardly be a stronger contrast to Limbaugh. Whereas Limbaugh’s background was that of a college administrator out of Texas, Kegel’s that of a teacher from a Montana classroom. Many on campus saw Limbaugh as brash, Kegel a force of conciliation. And Limbaugh’s decisions were swift and dramatic, Kegel’s more deliberate.

“That was kind of a tough start, but it ended up going better than I ever thought it would,” said Kegel.  

A year later, Kegel is now chancellor in his own right. He has worked to heal the wounds and re-establish ties on the Northern campus as well as with key stakeholders.

Going forward, he has a range of ideas for the future of the university he now leads — from the planned diesel and automotive center for which he has long been an advocate, to revamping the nursing program, reviving the secondary education program, increasing enrollment and reinvigorating the campus social scene.

The Havre Daily News had a chance to sit down with Chancellor Kegel to talk about his vision for Northern in the coming year and beyond.

Restoring faith in MSU Northern

When he first took over as chancellor, Kegel saw the strained relations that the Northern campus and Havre had experienced.   

“Any resident within the community realizes the importance of MSU-Northern, and a lot of those people had been very supportive over the years.”  

Right away, Kegel worked to re-establish those ties with donors and friends in general through dinners at the chancellor’s house and a number of other events.

The community reciprocated. A week after he was appointed interim chancellor, longtime allies of Northern approached Kegel about holding a community appreciation barbeque. It was something Kegel readily agreed to. Expecting 300 guests to show up, the gathering attracted a total of 1,000 people that weekend.

“I think it really helped in the healing,” said Kegel.

That October, four donors Kiegel had long been working to attract showed their support by pooling their money and presenting the college with a $3.15 million check for the construction of a new building to house the college’s growing automotive and diesel progras, long a pet project of Kegel’s.

“Those gifts were just huge for Northern,” said Kegel.

Fueling Northern’s growth

Unlike many of its other programs where growth has remained stagnant or even waned the ranks of Northern’s diesel technology program have swelled with new recruits as well as returning students.

The university is renowned for its four-year diesel program offers students the chance to earn a Bachelor of Sciences in that program, whereas most colleges only afford them the chance to obtain an associate degree or certificate.

For nearly eight years, Kegel has been a driving force behind the effort to raise money, foster relationships and ultimately make the aim of a new $10 million facility for its diesel and automotive technology program a reality.

Plans have been drawn up for the building project that will ultimately span more than 30,000 square feet. In his office on his computer, Kegel shows off the computer drawings for the planned building like a proud expectant father showing off the sonograms of his soon-to-be-born son.

Currently staff are in the process of cataloging and relocating equipment and evacuating the building. The university is scheduled to begin breaking ground on the new project.

Between the start of construction and its completion, however, those students in the diesel program and the equipment they use will need to find another location. Kegel said the university is looking at some downtown properties that can accommodate those needs, but given the difficulty of lodging and transporting such equipment, finding a suitable building won’t be so easy.

NorthWestern Energy had an available building that would have been ideal said Kegel, however, at the last minute the company decided to retain that space for other side projects.

Meanwhile, Northern officials are exploring solutions to this quandary that include making better use of existing space in buildings on campus by holding multiple labs simultaneously and running some classes all five days a week.

Despite the scarcity of a building that can serve the needs of students, instructors and equipment, Kegel is optimistic they are on course to find a solution.

Unlike much of the economy, Kegel says those with four-year degrees in diesel and high-tech sciences a wide range of opportunities beyond working in a classroom or a lab.

“The beauty of our program is it’s not one where every one of those kids are just going to go to work for a case dealership,” said Kegel, who says the skills gained from the program are transferable to an array of different fields.

“So what do you have end up with? You end up with a kid with good skills, good work ethic who has been through a structured training program. He’s got that bachelor’s degree. He can read and write. The versatility of that degree is endless.”  

   The nursing program

When he took over as chancellor, though, frayed relations both on and off campus as well as a new facility for the diesel technologies program were far from the only issues on his plate.

The school’s popular nursing program had staff that was stretched thin and having to perform multiple functions and, as a result, instruction suffered and some administrative work was not getting done.

The program came under the scrutiny of the state Board of Nursing that handles the program’s accreditation.

“It’s crucial when you are accredited that there aren’t any findings, and there were some findings during their last visit,” said Kegel.

The nursing program is crucial to the Hi-Line because it serves as a pool from which area hospitals, especially those from smaller, more rural communities, can hire.

“We knew how important it is, so I wanted to fix it,” said Kegel.  

The former director of the program who had split her time between that and teaching was soon replaced. Two new administrative positions were also created that would teach part time, while assisting with administrative business the rest of the time.

Elsewhere, it was found that many candidates who were enrolling in the school’s pre-nursing program were not ready for that program. As a result, the university has capped the number of new enrollees into the program each semester.

The nursing program is expected to undergo its next accreditation this fall, and Kegel said that, given the changes that have been implemented and the support he has received from the program’s staff, he believes it will come out looking a lot better.

Moving forward, Kegel wants to build upon the nursing program, hoping to move the program into its own nursing school on the Northern campus with a strong focus on rural medicine.

Secondary Education

In recent years, the secondary education program saw a large drop in interest and as a result was put in moratorium during Limbaugh’s tenure.

Kegel has begun the process of reviving the flagging program.

“Sometimes eliminating a program isn’t the answer to the problem,” said Kegel. “Instead of eliminating why not fix what is causing the symptoms?”

Bringing the program back, however, will be a long-term effort. Components of the program that will be revived in the coming year will mostly consist of courses being taught as part of other programs and will come at little cost.

As a former teacher, the declining interest in secondary education pains Kegel, especially in the realm of technical sciences. At one time, Kegel said, the majority of tech teachers in Montana had been Northern graduates. And as the program churned out new graduates, those teachers acted as recruiters of sorts suggesting Northern as a school to young aspiring teachers.

But as interest in the program and the number of high-tech instructors has dried up, so has the word-of-mouth recruiting that brought a steady stream of teaching hopefuls.

Enrollment

Overall there has been a drop in students in Northern. According to a nonofficial count from early 2015 the number of full-time student enrollees fell from 1,146.31 in 2014 to 1,103. 79  earlier this year.

Kegel says the numbers aren’t just a Northern problem, but are reflective of a larger trend. Despite the increasing number of students attending college and going for a bachelor’s degree, many who are college ready are still not attending, resulting in a shortage of skilled employees.

Kegel has tried to tap into that pool of potential enrollees. Several months ago, as the school year was drawing to an end, Kiegel sent letters to 150 superintendents across the state of Montana offering to pay the tuition of any student they can recruit to come to Northern who have not already signed up for college.

“I got six students out of that, and I should have got 60.”

Kegel said he is going to send another round of letters to superintendents soon, as he continues his slow but persistent effort to grow Northern’s student body.

Student-life component

Having come from a background in technical education one may think all of Kegel’s energies are being devoted to Northern’s academic infrastructure, but he says is well aware that what he calls ‘”the student life component” of the campus.

When the campaign to raise funds for the new automotive and diesel technologies building comes to an end in a few months, Kegel hopes to use the apparatus that made that push so successful to start a student needs campaign to improve student life on campus.

Already, he says, he is active in a push to make repairs to the campus food court, refashion the campus’s two dormitories and redo its commons bathrooms.

If he wants to take on the many challenges facing the university and take it in a new direction, though, Kegel knows it will come about not overnight but in the persistent, often frustratingly slow, increments that change comes to large institutions.

Over the course of his career, the former teacher, administrator and now chancellor said his successes have come not through large victories but through the accumulation of small achievable goals.

He refers back to his 13 years as dean of the College of Technical Sciences, where each year he aimed to make the campus a little better than it was.

“We didn’t do it all at one time, but we did a little all the time,” said Kegel. “If everybody starts kind of pulling on the rope the same way, over time this year and maybe the next year, as the years go by we’ll be able to look back and say ‘we’ve got something going on here.’”

 

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