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Montana State University alumni are playing an important role in the emergency response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, aiding in the construction of field hospitals in New York, where the number of COVID-19 patients is straining the medical system.

AAON, the company founded by the MSU engineering alumnus Norm Asbjornson, expedited design and manufacturing of 80 large, custom cooling and ventilation units for new, temporary hospitals being built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Stony Brook University and SUNY Old Westbury.

After being contacted early last week by consulting engineers who knew of AAON from previous New York projects, the company designed a custom air conditioning unit configured for the tent-like hospitals, then dedicated a production line at the company's Tulsa, Oklahoma, plant to make roughly 14 of the units per 24 hours — more than double the normal production rate.

"A lot of people would say you couldn't possibly do that, but we did it, and we were able to do it because we have a lot of talented people here," said Asbjornson, who earned his bachelor's in mechanical engineering from MSU and gave $50 million in 2014 to fund design and construction of MSU's Norm Asbjornson Hall.

Whereas a typical AC unit would sit on the flat roof of a hospital, circulating air through inlets and outlets on top and bottom, the temporary tent hospitals required AC units that would sit on the ground and circulate air sideways. The AAON units were also optimized to handle humidity and filter air.

"We didn't just take these things off the shelf," said Asbjornson, who grew up on a small farm in the Montana town of Winifred during the Great Depression. He graduated from MSU in 1960 and worked in the HVAC business for 28 years before founding AAON. "We are known for being able to customize our product."

Loaded four per semi-truck, the finished units made the 30-hour trek to New York in a straight shot, arriving days ahead of schedule — less than a week after AAON was first contacted about the project.

"I don't know of any other company that can do that," said Brett Gunnink, dean of MSU's Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering. "They are in a unique position to be able to support these (pandemic response) efforts," because their manufacturing is located in the U.S. and is done in an innovative, integrated way, he said.

"In these challenging times, when we're all searching for ways to help, it's exciting to hear how our Bobcat engineers are able to contribute," Gunnink said.

"I'm proud as can be of all the people who worked on this," Asbjornson said. "Quite a few other MSU people were involved."

Overseeing the project was AAON Director of Manufacturing Doug Wichman, who attended MSU for business classes after earning his bachelor's in engineering from Montana Tech and before earning an MBA from University of Montana. Wichman, a native of Big Timber, estimated that more than half a dozen MSU engineering alumni were involved in the design and manufacturing effort.

"What it boiled down to was: What could we get done, and how quickly could we do it for this emergency situation?" Wichman said, noting that each of the units was affixed with a special sticker reading "United We Stand" as it rolled down the production line. "We had a lot of pride in building these," he said. "It was a company-wide undertaking."

AAON also offered the AC units to the Army at their standard price, rather than charging extra for the custom, expedited work. "We didn't want to make extra money just because the government wanted these,” said Asbjornson. “We wanted to help."

MSU's engineering college was named for Asbjornson after his 2014 gift of $50 million rounded out the university’s South Campus project of $70 million.

•     Full semester, 12-week session: May 18–Aug. 7
•     May four-week session: May 18–June 12
•     May six-week session: May 18–June 26
•     June four-week session: June 15–July 10
•     June eight-week session: June 15–Aug. 7
•     June six-week session: June 29–Aug. 7
•     July four-week session: July 13–Aug. 7

ONLINE PROGRAMS | April 13-17

Join our online community for virtual science education! Hop on to our Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube channel to begin the fun! 

Monday, April 13 | Virtual Preschool Science 
This week's topic: The Earth's rotation 

Tuesday, April 14 | Virtual Science Station
This week's topic: Firework's in a Jar

Tuesday, April 14 | 3D Printer Naming Contest
Voting begins!

Wednesday, April 15 | Eat Well Play Well Series
Learn about capillary action with this colorful celery experiment.

Thursday, April 16 | 30 Seconds of STEM
Interview with: Rebecca Spitz, Director of In Focus Astronomy & Space Naturalist 

Friday, April 17 | Virtual Science Station
This week's experiment: Sound waves (and music!)

facebook.com/MontanaScienceCenter
instagram.com/montanasciencecenter
MSC YouTube Channel

An article written by health workforce leaders and published today in the New England Journal of Medicine calls for health care delivery organizations, educators and government leaders to “cut through bureaucratic barriers and adapt regulations to rapidly expand the U.S. health care workforce and sustain it” for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The article was written by eight leaders of public and private research centers who interact with and study the U.S. health workforce, including Peter Buerhaus, director of the Montana State University Center for Interdisciplinary Health Workforce Studies and professor in the MSU College of Nursing. Additional authors are Erin P. Fraher, Patricia Pittman, Bianca K. Frogner, Joanne Spetz, Jean Moore, Angela J. Beck and David Armstrong.

“Current efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic aim to slow viral spread and increase testing, protect health care workers from infection, and obtain ventilators and other equipment to prepare for a surge of critically ill patients. But additional actions are needed to rapidly increase health workforce capacity and to replenish it when personnel are quarantined or need time off to rest or care for sick family members,” Buerhaus and the other authors wrote in “Ensuring and Sustaining a Pandemic Workforce.”

The authors of the article, which was published in the Perspective section of the journal, recommended a number of measures that could expand and sustain the health care workforce. Among their suggestions:

• Having governors remove barriers to expand capacity by enacting emergency orders that modify or temporarily rescind medical malpractice policies that inhibit health professionals’ ability to expand their scope of practice.

• Changing internal policies such as workflows, task-delegation protocols or union agreements in hospitals and nursing homes to allow health workers to fully use their knowledge and skills.

• Expanding the types of services that can be covered by insurance, broadening the number and types of providers eligible for insurance payments and allowing services to be provided in a wider range of settings.

• Allowing hospitals to provide benefits to support staff, such as multiple daily meals, laundry service for personal clothing or child care services.

• Sending respiratory therapists to hospitals most in need and developing programs to quickly train workers who can operate ventilators competently.

• Allowing medical students in their third and fourth years who are no longer in clinical rotations to perform various medical tasks to free up clinicians for COVID-19 care.

• Identifying health care professionals who have either retired or temporarily left the workforce and encouraging them to return to work.

• Training dentists, optometrists, chiropractors and other health professionals whose practices have temporarily closed because of COVID-19 to conduct screenings, take vital signs, provide telephone follow-up, collect epidemiologic data and provide community education.

• Planning for the needs of millions of people in the U.S. who require treatment for mental health disorders.

• Allowing health care workers to offer telehealth services across state lines, even if they’re not part of interstate licensing compacts.

• Examining regulations to determine whether health professionals’ scope of practice is being unnecessarily restricted.

“How well the country handles the COVID-19 crisis depends largely on how effectively our health workforce is used,” the authors wrote. “Much can be done to ensure that the workforce is prepared to defeat the pandemic.”

The full article is available at nejm.org.

A second article by Buerhaus and colleagues David I. Auerbach and Douglas O. Staiger, “Older Clinicians and the Surge in Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19),” was published March 30 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Among other points, the authors noted that hospitals and other care delivery organizations should carefully consider how best to protect and preserve their workforce, with careful consideration involving older physicians and nurses.

The older nurses and physicians caring for patients today are “an essential and vitally important component of many organizations,” Buerhaus and his colleagues wrote, especially because many older nurses and physicians have experience with disasters, triaging, decision making, and managing staff and resources under times of great stress.

“While hospitals and other organizations ramp up their preparations, this is the time to determine whether there may be different roles for older clinicians that ensure they are able to contribute over the long-term course of the pandemic,” the authors wrote in the article, which appeared in the journal’s Viewpoint section. “This is not to suggest that these older nurses and physicians should necessarily be precluded from providing clinical care or should be isolated, but rather to consider if their direct clinical duties can be shifted to emphasize roles with less risk of exposure.”

In light of closures across the state due to the novel coronavirus, Montana State University’s Museum of the Rockies has launched a new, free online learning resource for community members.

The online library of resources comprises lessons, curriculum guides, games and videos intended for school-aged children, families, museum members, caregivers and the community to help stay engaged with the collections, exhibits and programs the museum has to offer. The resources are contributed by every department in the museum and will be updated weekly.

Highlights from the resource library include:

• More than 30 videos where audiences can learn from the museum’s educators, curators, staff, research associates and program partners, as well as go behind the scenes for special programs in the collections.
• Fourteen lesson and activity guides that offer original content, including “Our Home, Our World: Discovering Earth and Space Science in Kumamoto and Montana,” an educator’s guide created with museum partners in Montana and Japan.
• More than 50 audio recordings of evening lectures from the museum and its program partners, sponsored by Gallatin Valley Community Radio.
• Access to digital collections from the museum, including its photo archive and the new Marlene Saccoccia Quilt Heritage Project with the Montana Memory Project.
• An archive of the museum’s social media posts from 2020 with educational information about its collections and exhibitions.

Later in April, the museum will launch MOR AT HOME, a members-only virtual programming initiative. The museum will also offer free, online streaming programs for Montana schoolchildren through its partnership with Streamable Learning later this spring.

To access the online resources, visit museumoftherockies.org/learn.

Montana Tip Jar was created to enable support of friends and neighbors who work in our state's service industries and have lost income due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Montana's restaurants, coffee shops, guide services, salons, and pubs (& more!) are places we go to connect; places that are important to the fabric of our communities; places where we meet friends, regardless on which "side of the counter" we sit.

Anyone working in one of Montana's service industries can register (2 min max) using the form below, allowing you to receive tips directly into your Venmo account.

Don’t forget, virtual tips are like hugs, though with a bit of social distancing!

Fishtail, MT  — On Friday, April 10, at 6:00 PM MDT, Tippet Rise Art Center will present a webcast of music, film and photography. With an introduction by the art center’s cofounder, Peter Halstead, the 90-minute online event will feature a recording of a full concert by the pianist Pedja Muzijevic playing works by Scarlatti, Satie, Schumann, and others in the Olivier Music Barn in July 2018. The concert’s intermission will include a greeting from Mr. Muzijevic from his home in Manhattan and a showing of the art center’s newest film, Xylem, The Heart of the Tree, by Emily Rund. The film follows the making of Xylem, the newest sculptural structure at Tippet Rise, designed by the internationally celebrated architect Francis Kéré.

 
To attend, please visit the art center’s Facebook page or YouTube channel, or  navigate to tippetrise.org.
 
Other offerings on the Tippet Rise website
No matter the time of day, visitors can access a variety of arts and entertainment on the Tippet Rise website, including:
•              Concert videos from the art center’s first four seasons of classical music, as well as other films, available on both the Tippet Rise website and the art center’s YouTube channel
•              Program Books for each concert season with essays, interviews, program notes and photographs
•              A collection of films of sculptor Mark di Suvero reading poetry by Friedrich Hölderlin, Rainer Maria Rilke, and others.
•              Insights on the artists behind the land art at Tippet Rise
•              The Tippet Rise Podcast
•              Links to a few of the many artists sharing their beautiful music with the world through online performances
•              A virtual tour of the Tippet Rise landscape, art and architecture via Google Arts & Culture and Google Street View
 
About Tippet Rise Art Center
Located on a 12,000-acre working ranch nestled at the foot of Montana’s Beartooth Mountains, Tippet Rise celebrates the union of music, land, art, and architecture. For more information about Tippet Rise, please visit www.tippetrise.org

BIG SKY – A collection of Big Sky organizations and community leaders have joined forces to bring ongoing behavioral and mental health services and community forum opportunities to community residents as the Covid-19 pandemic calls for social distancing and shelter in place ordinances.

Together, Women in Action, Bozeman Health Big Sky Medical Center, the Big Sky Community Organization (BSCO), in conjunction with educators and members of various community foundations are addressing the increased need for mental and behavioral health, wellness, education, attention to addiction, and social connectivity needs that are inevitable in our ever changing landscape.

The impacts of Covid-19 are far-reaching across our community, creating the need for expanded programming and resources designed to meet the broad demographic found in Big Sky.  “We are looking to provide something for everyone based on the diverse needs of the community”, shared Ciara Wolfe, CEO of BSCO.

“As in all communities, the needs associated with mental, behavioral and social health must be addressed in Big Sky.  Covid-19 is accelerating the need for us to address it more quickly, taking immediate action where we can while still planning the long-term goals”, said Maureen Womack, System Director of Behavioral Health, Big Sky Medical Center. “We want to continue serving those who have health needs, counseling needs, and generally those who are feeling alone, overwhelmed and potentially underserved through this difficult time”, added Jean Behr, Executive Director of Women in Action.

At this critical time, Both WIA and Bozeman Health are offering counseling and behavioral health support at no cost. Bozeman Health through the Help Center (dial 211) and WIA via their ongoing counseling services.

Offering virtual services and sharing those resources via community outlets like the newly established BigSkyRelief.org becomes critical as people are being instructed not to leave their homes.  The hope is that this collective effort will establish a central portal where health, wellness, education, social forums and resources will be available and accessible to anyone, at any time.  

The goal is to address the needs of the Big Sky community, in terms of physical and mental health, feelings of isolation or being overwhelmed whether in a physical, emotional, or social sense.   The collaboration plans to launch online resources as soon as possible, to meet the growing needs presented by the coronavirus pandemic.  Services will include financial assistance for virtual counseling sessions, access to public and community forums that serve a spectrum of age groups and interests, ideas for educational assistance during virtual learning for school-aged children, and attention to both ongoing and emergency physical and mental health needs.  

For emergency and behavioral needs, please call 911 or go to the Emergency Department at Big Sky Medical Center. For urgent and non-emergent behavioral health needs, please call The Help Center at 211. The Help Center (211) will make sure to help you receive the care you need.  Both WIA and The Help Center are able to offer counseling and behavioral health support at no cost. For a complete list of local resources, please visit www.bigskywia.org.

Original release date: April 2, 2020

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released an article on defending against video-teleconferencing (VTC) hijacking (referred to as “Zoom-bombing” when attacks are to the Zoom VTC platform).  Many organizations and individuals are increasingly dependent on VTC platforms, such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, to stay connected during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The FBI has released this guidance in response to an increase in reports of VTC hijacking.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency encourages users and administrators to review the FBI article as well as the following steps to improve VTC cybersecurity:
    •    Ensure meetings are private, either by requiring a password for entry or controlling guest access from a waiting room.
    •    Consider security requirements when selecting vendors. For example, if end-to-end encryption is necessary, does the vendor offer it?
    •    Ensure VTC software is up to date. See Understanding Patches and Software Updates.

CISA also recommends the following VTC cybersecurity resources:
    •    FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) Alert: Cyber Actors Take Advantage of COVID-19 Pandemic to Exploit Increased Use of Virtual Environments

    •    Zoom blog on recent cybersecurity measures

    •    Microsoft Teams security guide


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