November 25, 2020 Minutes

A printable PDF of this information can be found here.

Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes

November 25^th, 2020

3:10pm-4:30pm

Webex

1.       Approval of FS Minutes from November 18, 2020

a.       Tomas Gedeon moves to approve. Julie Ruff seconds. None opposed. No abstentions. Approved.

2.       Information Updates

a.       Potential for Faculty Senate meeting to be called in December and January

b.       Update on Faculty Concerns: continuing conversations

3.       Business

a.       Course and Program Approvals https://www.montana.edu/facultysenate/upcoming_meeting.html

i.      Undergraduate Courses (Second Reading)

1.       Spring 2021

a.       BIOB 104: Scientific Thinking (11/10/2020)

b.       EFIN 305: R Lab for Financial Engineering I (11/10/2020)

c.       GDSN 265: Quickfire Course (11/13/2020)

2.       Fall 2021

a.       CHMY 332: Honors Organic Chemistry I Lab (11/6/2020)

b.       LSCI 111: Informatics: The Human Side of Information (11/10/2020)

c.       LSCI 121:Digital Information Literacy: Library Research Skills (11/10/2020)

d.       LSCI 151: Algorithmic Awareness: Media Literacy in the Age of Algorithms (11/10/2020)

e.       LSCI 235: Service Design: A Human-Centered Framework for Empathy and Innovation (11/10/2020)

f.        LSCI 321: Metaliteracy: Critical thinking and collaboration in a digital age (11/10/2020)

g.       LSCI 342: Data Curation for a Data-Driven World (11/10/2020)

h.       LSCI 410: Data Modeling and Databases for Cultural Heritage and Non-Profits (11/10/2020)

i.         LSCI 470: Ethics and Privacy in the Age of Big Data (11/10/2020)

j.         LSCI 496: Applied Informatics: A Service Learning Practicum (11/10/2020)

ii.      Graduate Courses (Second Reading)

1.       Spring 2021

a.       AGSC 541: Plant Breeding & Genetics (11/9/2020)

b.       BIOE 585: Exploring Biology for Teachers (11/10/2020)

c.       BIOO 560: Plant Metabolism (11/11/2020)

d.       ENGL 560: Foundations of English Education (11/9/2020)

2.       Spring 2022

a.       BIOB 530: Plant Biotechnology (11/9/2020)

b.       ENGL 561: Introduction to Research in English & Literacy Studies (11/9/2020)

4.       Senators Discussion: COVID Now and the Future-Keeping the Community and Campus Safe

a.       Guest Speakers

i.      Matt Kelley, Gallatin Health Department

1.       6 deaths have occurred in the last couple of weeks

2.       Many challenges

3.       Multifaceted

4.       In the process of working through enforcement of many of the board of health’s actions

5.       Important that we build capacity at MSU to do contact tracing, quarantining, and case management. Essential to a cohesive response.

6.       Today we have 5 contact tracers that are MSU employees but work side by side with our tracers at the Health Department. In addition to 3 staff hired to support people in isolation and quarantine.

7.       Cannot afford to have two parallel systems going.

8.       MSU cases are also Gallatin County cases.

9.       May have been a misconception that they are counted separately or differently, but that is not the truth. It is a cohesive operation.

10.   Significant challenges

a.       Isolation and quarantine housing

b.       Will be starting from a challenging point next semester.

11.   Want to acknowledge the difficulty position this puts students and faculty in

12.   There are no clear easy answers to getting out of this situation.

13.   This will all get more complex next month when the vaccine arrives, and everyone wants it all at once.

14.   Questions

a.       Tomas Gedeon: January will be starting with higher numbers. What are the issues with increasing testing? Money? Why is it a problem? It’s a challenge. It isn’t just administering the tests, it’s also what happens afterwards. You have to contact trace. Coordinate testing. The testing we do have is fragile. We’ve gone from having to ship our tests out to other states to be determined. People are still waiting for up to a week for their results. Has to do with lab capacity. National problem, not just Montana. We are getting so many cases right now that local health depts cannot keep up with the contact tracing. Without contact tracing the value of testing is diminished.

b.       Ron Stowers: At what percentage of COVID would you suggest going all on-line with courses? There is no secret number. Will we get to the point where we run out of isolation place and cannot keep people separated? Maybe. Students are still in the community. The activity of going to class, we can stop that, but that will not stop the spread of the disease. We could get to the point where the spread on campus is outnumbering that of the rest of the county, we may go all on-line. What will the intervention accomplish? I know that people want certainty. Am open to it but it is not my decision. There are many levels involved in making that decision.

c.       Andrew Hill: How are the numbers of MSU vs County calculated? When we get an MSU case it is forever associated with MSU. We can go in and look at the rate of growth of those cases on MSU and break it down in age groups. It’s hard to equate it to a ‘rate’ because of the age differences. Rate of growth of cases is very similar to what we see among the same age bracket that are not MSU related. K-12, we are not seeing a rate of growth there that is outpacing the community. We are in a region with rapid and expanding uncontrolled grown of this disease, across the board. Where are we seeing risks? Are there certain areas where we can push? It is social settings, bars, house parties, etc. We are trying to reduce exposure in those settings. Tracers are not seeing anything out of whack with the rest of the community. However, the community is experiencing rapid growth of the disease.

d.       Julia Haggerty: What should faculty know about how often you meet and who you meet with etc.? President Cruzado reached out to me and gave me full access to her whenever I need it. Twice a week, incident command meets virtually with Sam and Jim Mitchell. Nurse was hired who used to work at Bozeman Health. Works to get tracers hired and communicates with them daily. Board members. Those I know at the university. Variety of ways, both formal and informal, we communicate with MSU on a regular basis.

e.       Tomas Gedeon: I feel pretty safe in the classroom, but do you have data from tracing on how much of the spread was due to in class interaction between students, etc.? Experience of contact tracers is key. When we get a case, we interview that person and try to figure out where they’ve been and where they were more likely picked it up. If an MSU student, we would ask them about their classroom habits. If in a classroom and you are masked and social distant, that is a relatively low risk compared to the overall environment. Pass through campus every day, twice a day. See people taking it seriously.

f.        Megan Van Emon: Based on tracing and they go into quarantine, how many of those come up positive? Do not have those numbers, but I can try and get it.

g.       We will be leaning on MSU and you are free to lean on us as well. We are busy, but we want to be available and we want to be a partner. Thank you all for what you are doing.

ii.      Seth Walk, Microbiology & Immunology

1.       Began wastewater surveillance with the County in May. Out of that came some expertise in our lab to do virus testing. Use CDC approved test kits. Set up to help the state with testing. Testing capacity in state because limited in July. Supply chain issues, lag time in results. Local experts were asked to help. They answered. Testing contract with the state to do 30,000 tests by the end of the year. Have done 80,000 as of now and will do over 100,000 by the end of the year.

iii.      Mari Eggers, , Microbiology & Immunology

1.       Serve on board of health. Lived on Crow reservation for many years. Work with them on community issues. They are up to 40-50 deaths out of 7,000 tribal members so far. This could get horrendous.

iv.      Raina Plowright, Microbiology & Immunology

1.       Work in the past has been to try and AVOID this type of outbreak

2.       At MSU, working to get CARES money for testing. Did modeling to show the value of testing.

3.       Now involved in accuracy, how many tests we need, now much space do we need, etc. High frequency testing can have a significant effect.

4.       Key is that every test has to be followed by some kind of intervention. Tracing, isolating, etc.

v.      Alix Adams, Center for American Indian and Rural Health Equity

1.       Sociology and Anthropology

2.       We are a sum of the research team at MSU to try and make things better.

3.       New we were going to have a hard hit rural and tribal communities. Many elders are being lost. One student at MSU lost three family members this semester.

4.       I have been doing work to increase testing. Writing grants. Working with those who do test positive and what to do next. Getting home testing for reservations set up.

vi.      Connie Chang, Chemical and Biological Engineering

1.       Research involves viruses

2.       Jason Carter called all of those who work on viruses together to start work on this.

3.       Large grant from the state to increase testing capacity with saliva-based testing.

4.       Large group that is integrating all of the parts that would allow us to increase testing on campus.

5.       Testing is just a part of it. Also important is integrating with DPHHS. Figuring out who to test and what our capacity is.

6.       Reporting system is also important. What do you do? What communication materials are necessary to deal with that.

vii.      Matthew Fields, Microbiology & Immunology, Center for Biofilm Engineering

1.       CARES project, testing easily sampled sample from humans and saliva will help us get to a cheaper and quicker testing.

2.       More important to get more testing and not worry so much about it being accurate. Want to get to testing more students. Would be great to test every student once a week, but there are a lot of logistics. HIPPA, etc. More backend issues need to be worked out.

viii.      Questions

1.       Matthew Walter: Amount is more important than accuracy? When thinking of surveillance. What about false positives and negatives, do those skew your data? Matt Fields: We had high specificity. False negatives are more important than false positives. We would still catch more than we are right now. If you can increase surveillance and get your positives down, then you can get testing under control.

2.       Tomas Gedeon: Duke did massive asymptomatic testing for each student twice a week. Had 20-30 cases for entire semester. Used a different testing machine. Contact tracers. Specific data structures. Targeted populations for testing. Came out last week. Matt Fields: We are happy to look at anything you want to share. Seth Walk: (slides) Positivity rate compared to number of tests. If you start a program like was mentioned when your positivity is 30% you have a really big problem. Need triage, room to isolate them, etc. Over the past two weeks we have students going home. Many students were savvy, and many wanted to get tested before they went home to their loved ones. That put the testing numbers way up. Other universities started at a much lower positivity rate. Our rates right now would make it very hard for us to handle this type of thing.

3.       Cat Dale: Testing priority. Students are getting their tests back in 3-4 days, but I had to wait 10 days. Is there a strategy there? Seth Walk: All student who go to the symptomatic center, the majority are done at MSU, some are done at Student Health Services. IF they go to the symptomatic center it comes straight to MSU’s lab. It does take some time, but it is about 3-4 days. For staff, or faculty who go to Deaconess, those tests go somewhere else. Those places are at capacity, so it may even get sent somewhere else.

4.       Andrew Hill: One contract is ending at the end of December. What does funding look like going forward? Seth Walk: Jason Carter has been discussing with Major General Quinn about another contract being in place before the end of the current one. Hasn’t happened yet, but the expectation is high.

5.       Alix Adams: Our symptomatic testing will have funding, but the asymptomatic may be harder.

6.       Rob Maher: What is the cost needed? Connie Change: $1million per week. Matt Fields: Trying to work through high capacity and robotic liquid handling. Think we are in the ballpark. With some investment we may be about to do 15,000 a week. LAMP is inexpensive. We think we could get it down in a surveillance way, 50-100 per student for entire spring semester. Rob Maher: Can’t you do what Illinois is doing now? We are doing what they are doing. We have options if we want an FDA tests, or massive cheap rapid testing. LAMP is 45 minutes. QPCR other is 2-3 hours. We are also using robotics. Tomas Gedeon: The price is very encouraging. Raina Plowright: We need to convince OCHE that it is more costly NOT to test than it is to test. Cost of isolation, PCR for symptomatic testing. If we test, we can isolate and have less spread. Putting some dollars into making an argument for this. Tomas Gedeon: Worry about all of the students coming back in next semester that should be tested. This possibly is exciting. Raina Plowright: Duke was capturing their asymptomatic cases, which we are not. Our 1,000 cases should be multiplied by at least 2 to capture the asymptomatic, 2-5.

7.       Julia Haggerty: What can we as faculty do to make sure we keep ourselves and high-risk colleagues safe when we come back to campus? Are we doing everything we can? What should we be asking for? Mari Eggers: Would be nice to get students to come in batches the weeks before classes start and be tested. All online is less risk. In person labs is next level of risks. Blended is next, etc. OCHA is not requiring masks in the country, but Foucci thinks we can do more. Current research shows that going to a restaurant triples your risk of getting COVID. Going to get coffee, same thing. Raina Plowright: For faculty, our high-risk setting is our contact with students. We need to have a high degree of care. Keep your distance, wear masks. Ventilation is very important and may be the faculty’s highest risk. Mari Eggers: We need to make sure that all we are asking to teach, or put themselves at risk, have health insurance.

8.       Seth Walk: Plans for moving discussion on upcoming semester. Alix Adams: We need to be advocates in the classroom for our students and form increased testing. Seth Walk: We have amazing resources. If we make it a priority to test every student on campus, we will make it happen. Public health interface gives us all pause. There are some tough things to do there. Frequency at which we can do it, and what do we do after a positive with isolation, etc.

9.       Hongwei Gao: AT MSU, are there some areas where more cases occurred, like dining halls, or dorms? Seth Walk: The time that tracers have to work each case is very limited right now. List of questions form CDC guidelines. They don’t have the time to do the back-end work after a positive test, but we need them doing what they’re doing right now. Raina Plowright: We only do forwards contact training and not backwards. Hard to find clusters that way. It’s a shame and I hope it changes over time.

5.       Public Comment

a.       Ryan Anderson: Susan Dana is retiring and want to personally thank her for everything she’s done. Bringing up sensitive conversations. Thank you for being there for the tough moments. Susan Dana: Thank you, Ryan. Serving on senate and steering has been a great experience.

6.       How can we communicate and support each other in COVID time?

a.       Senators’ Hours in Webex:

i.      Tuesdays 1-2 PM and Thursdays 11 AM to 12PM

b.       Faculty Senate D2L Brightspace: discussion area for topics of interest

c.       Faculty Senate Email Group: msufacultysenate@montanaedu.onmicrosoft.com

7.       Adjourn

a.       Tomas Gedeon moves to approve. Ryan Anderson seconded. None opposed. No abstentions. Approved. Meeting was adjourned at 4:38.