Responsive Engagement 2018-2019
Expand Mutually Beneficial and Responsive Engagement for the Advancement of Montana
Art installations exploring compassion to open at locations across Bozeman
MARCH 26, 2019
BOZEMAN — More than 6,000 locally made artworks will be displayed at five different installations around Bozeman beginning April 16 in a collaborative effort to define, explore and practice compassion. The installations will be open through June 30.
The installations are part of The Compassion Project, an arts-based educational outreach program managed by Montana State University’s College of Education, Health and Human Development. Each installation will consist of a mosaic-like pattern of individual artworks created on 7-by-7-inch blocks of wood. Local K-12 students and others throughout the community created the art on each block.
The installations will be located at the Emerson Center’s Weaver Room, West wing and second floor hallways; Sola Cafe; Red Tractor Pizza; Fork and Spoon Homestyle Kitchen; and the Bozeman Public Library. Viewers can interact with the artwork via a mobile app created by MSU students in the Software Factory, a project in MSU’s Gianforte School of Computing in which a small team of students works on a software development project for a collaborating sponsor.
MSU, local health department collaborate to provide more access to mental health care services
JULY 25, 2018
BOZEMAN — Access to mental health care services is available to more individuals in the Gallatin Valley thanks to a grant from the Montana Healthcare Foundation and a partnership between Montana State University and the Gallatin City County Health Department.
With the grant, which is worth nearly $70,000, MSU counseling professors Anna Elliott and Rebecca Koltz from the MSU Department of Health and Human Development in the College of Education, Health and Human Development have partnered with the Gallatin City County Health Department’s Healthy Gallatin Home Visiting program. Through the collaboration, health department home visitors with the program may refer individuals and families to an MSU clinic for counseling services.
“Currently in the Gallatin Valley, there is a shortage of services for low-income residents to receive counseling services, so our grant aims to help attend to this gap,” Koltz said. “We hope that we can increase our ability to provide meaningful mental health services to an underserved population in the Gallatin Valley.”
Northwest Troops to Teachers program at MSU lands five-year grant
NOVEMBER 9, 2018
BOZEMAN — A program based at Montana State University that helps veterans and active military members transition to careers as public school teachers recently won a $3.4 million, five-year grant, funds that will enable the program to continue and expand its reach.
The Northwest Troops to Teachers program based at MSU previously served veterans in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Washington. With the new grant, the program will continue to serve veterans in those states, and it will also serve veterans in Oregon and Alaska. The grant is from the U.S. Department of Defense and is awarded through the Montana Office of Public Instruction and the Washington Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.
“We’re very pleased to receive this grant. This program benefits every stakeholder, from the military members and veterans who are looking to begin a new career to states who have shortages of teachers in certain subjects and in certain geographic areas, to the communities where these new teachers choose to live,” said Retired Army Col. LeRoy Gaub, Northwest Troops to Teachers program manager.
MSU hosts more than 100 junior high and high school teams at annual Montana Science Olympiad
NOVEMBER 20, 2018
BOZEMAN — The mission of one competition in the 34th annual Montana Science Olympiad held Tuesday at Montana State University: create a roller coaster for a marble to roll down from top to bottom in as close to 47 seconds as possible.
Teams of students from middle schools across Montana spent weeks leading up to the Olympiad designing their ideas to meet the challenge and then building and tweaking their roller coasters. But there was a catch – the target time wouldn’t be announced until the day of the competition. Before Tuesday, students knew only that the target time would be somewhere between 10 and 60 seconds. That meant that a portion of the work could be done in advance, but the teams’ roller coasters would need to be adjusted before the competition.
MSU, Gallatin County Detention enter team up to provide counseling services for inmates
DECEMBER 13, 2018
BOZEMAN — When Holly Priscu worked as a criminal defense attorney, she quickly realized that legal motions and briefs weren’t going to provide enough help for her clients in the long run. Instead, she said, what her clients needed the most was mental health help.
“Through that work, I realized that substance use disorders were very common,” she said. “It was hard for me to try to do all these legal things when I could see that these people just needed to go to treatment, or needed someone to talk to, or needed counseling,” she said.
Priscu decided to approach the issue from a different angle and quit her job as a lawyer. Now a graduate student in mental health counseling at Montana State University, she provides counseling services to inmates at the Gallatin County Detention Center as an intern with Building Good Neighbors, a program that the university and the detention center recently established.
Building Good Neighbors is supported by a $20,000 seed grant from the MSU College of Education, Health and Human Development, which houses the counseling program.
MSU to host March 6 screening of documentary about individuals living with intellectual disabilities
FEBRUARY 20, 2019
BOZEMAN — Registration is now open for a screening of “Intelligent Lives,” a documentary that explores the lives of three American young adults with intellectual disabilities.
Free and open to the public, the screening will take place Wednesday, March 6, in Inspiration Hall within Montana State University’s Norm Asbjornson Hall. Doors will open at 6 p.m., with the film beginning at 6:30 p.m. Heavy appetizers will be provided.
The event will include a facilitated discussion with the audience after the film. It is sponsored by MSU’s LIFE Scholars program and the College of Education, Health, and Human Development as part of a national effort known as the Opening Doors Campaign, designed to share the possibilities of creating a more inclusive world.
MSU partnership with tribal communities brings digital storytelling to life
JULY 2, 2018
BOZEMAN — A team of faculty and students from Montana State University is working with several American Indian tribes across the state to provide tools to help those communities record important oral histories and bring digital storytelling to life.
MSU professors Christine Stanton, Lucia Ricciardelli and Jioanna Carjuzaa, along with MSU students and other partners, are part of the Digital Storywork Partnership, an MSU project offering a series of filmmaking and research workshops to members of tribal communities who request them. Stanton and Carjuzaa are both professors in the Department of Education in the College of Education, Health and Human Development, while Ricciardelli is a film professor in the School of Film and Photography in the College of Arts and Architecture.
“This is a really exciting partnership,” Stanton said. “We’re thrilled to be working with these tribal communities to help their stories to be told.”
The partnership started in 2012 when Brad Hall, an MSU graduate who was then a social studies teacher in Heart Butte, reached out to Stanton to see if MSU could help his students learn how to use audio-visual equipment so that they could document information about repatriated artifacts that were important to the Blackfeet tribe.
