Regents hear of progress at Northern

Greg Kegel, chancellor of Montana State University Northern, spoke to the Board of Regents at its meeting in Northern’s Vande Bogart Library Wednesday, telling the board of all the current plans for the campus and students.

Kegel said the goals for the university are to provide quality and efficient education for their students and to increase the amount of students that complete their degrees and certificates on time. This can be achieved by further engaging the student body and with collaborations and partnerships with employers that are available through the university, he said.

The university is working on a recruitment and retention campaign, holding meetings with all faculty and staff members, collaborating on how to improve the education for their students, Kegel said. The univetsity also is increasing its marketing efforts with improvements to the university’s website, involving more students in programs and videos and increasing the university’s social media presence, Kegel added.

The university is also putting additional effort in teaching their students soft skills, such as conduct in the workplace, face-to-face interactions and customer service, he said, so that the students who attend the university won’t have just the educational background and skills but also the people skills.

Kegel said he was proud to announce the completion of the Diesel Technology Center, the doors of which opened for the first time Wednesday to the public for an open house that was from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Kegel said this is the first of many new improvements to the university in the years to come.

The university is also creating a sports complex, with the regents already approving it and the project ready to begin, he said, with the matching money in place.

Staff of the university is scheduled to meet with an engineering firm in the near future, Kegel said, adding that this coming fall there will be a field to play on.

Kegel also mentioned Northern’s proposed minor in equine studies, which the university is proposing to extend the programs in Montana State University in Bozeman and complement programs at University of Montana Western in Dillon and community colleges in the state.

Erica McKeon-Hanson, director of the Little River Institute and advisor of the Sweetgrass Society, spoke on the American Indian Cultural Center. The program, which reaches out to the Milk River communities, has three major goals, she said. At Northern, 15 percent of the student body is Native American, and the goal for the next couple years is to increase that number to 20 percent while doubling the completion rate, she said.

She said American Indian student retention data show that full-time students, between the fall and spring semester in 2015, had a 57 percent retention rate, but in 2017 that number had increased to 81 percent. A similar rise was also seen with the fall to fall semesters, with 2015’s retention rate being 36 percent and 2017’s retention rate rising to 52 percent.

McKeon-Hanson also wants to increase the social engagement of tribal students, creating a place and a community for them to thrive and interact, she said.

In addition to creating culturally responsive mentoring that is available to their Native American students. Hanson said another one of her goals is to increase academic engagement, putting in place culturally responsive tutoring and holding Indigenous lecture

The Little River Institute and Sweetgrass Society were proud of the 33 Native American students that graduated this year, McKeon-Hanson said.

TRAILS, Treasure State Academic Information and Library Services, was another topic brought up during the board meeting. Kenning Arlitsch, dean of the Montana State University library, and Pamela Benjamin, TRAILS coordinator told the board about the proposal.

TRAILS is shared service program that spans across all academic libraries; because of this shared data intelligence there is greater cooperation and infrastructure Benjamin said. Shared purchasing of research journals and databases provide leverage buying power for the program.

TRAILS, if implemented would save more than $6 million and provide more access than ever before Benjamin said. With the cost of textbooks for students rising almost 812 percent to 1,041 percent over the last three decades, many students have opted out of purchasing books. Many of them believe that if there was free online access to textbooks they would do significantly better in their courses, Benjamin added.

With open educational resources teaching, learning and research materials will be under public domain or have an open license that will permit no-cost access with no or minimal restrictions, said Benjamin.

Many textbooks are already available online in digital form, but they are still controlled by commercial presses and usually still charge students for using them, she said. With open educational resource E-textbooks, students, in addition to the rest of the community, will be permitted to use the materials at no cost, having the materials fall under public domain with an open license, Benjamin said.

She said a national study found the program saves students an average of $134 per course or 22 percent of annual student textbook cost.

The University of Massachusetts grant program disbursed 40 grants of $1,000 each over the course of four years, and students were able to save almost $1.5 million collectively, Benjamin said.

Benjamin and Arlitsch told the board that TRAILS is prepared to do the same, saying that the program is ready to establish an open educational resource standing committee, and collate, organize and vet content to best support Montana, adding that they also plan to educate the educators on the program and its benefits.

This Board of Regents agreed to vote on it today.