Posted Friday, April 3, 2020 5:37 pm

FRANKFORT, Ky. (KT) – Despite not holding in-person classes due to the coronavirus pandemic, some Kentucky postsecondary institutions have found ways to help fight the spread of the disease.

At the University of Louisville, the Speed School of Engineering is contributing something vital to the pandemic—protective face shields for health care workers, an item in a critical shortage due to tightening of hospital supply chain lines. The original impetus for the project was a request for 100 of the shields from the Internal Medicine Department at UofL Health.

Created with state of the art 3-D printing technology, the Speed School team has been printing face shields at their core facility, increasing their production output to 55 shields per day by running continuous shifts from 8 a.m. to midnight daily.

“We asked ourselves, what can we do right now? How do we protect our most vulnerable citizens and how can the university play a positive role in making that happen?” said Ed Tackett, who is coordinating the COVID-19 Speed School Response Team. “We have medical professionals literally on the front lines, and if we can help them be safer or keep them from getting sick, we’re going to do whatever we need to do to make that happen.”

Nearly 200 miles away at Ashland Community and Technical College, Chris Boggs, project coordinator for new and expanding business and industry, and Tyler Stevens, coordinator for the Computer-Aided Drafting and Design program, have set up a similar operation in the college’s 3D printing lab.

Boggs said they received a request for face shields from the local hospital and were able to deliver just under 100 units within a week. Requests soon surged from other health care workers, nursing homes and long-term care facilities. Now the pair are looking to add shifts and expand production to include respirator-style masks.

“It’s just the right thing to do if you can help your fellow man if you can help your neighbor,” Boggs said. “This is really our family out there on the front lines trying to battle this.”

Other Kentucky campuses have also seized opportunities to round up and donate unused gear.

Eastern Kentucky University, for instance, donated more than 55,000 pairs of gloves, 679 gowns, and 2,400 surgical masks to local health care workers and first responders.

At the University of Pikeville, the colleges for nursing and medicine have both tapped their teaching stockpiles, lending out thermometers and sending out boxes of gloves, masks, gowns and shoe covers.

“We had in our storage rooms literally cases of examination gloves,” said Dr. Dana Shaffer, dean of UPIKE’s College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Some colleges are also employing more traditional methods to produce protective equipment.

Matthew Hallock, professor of dramatic arts and chair of the Dramatic Arts Program at Centre College, said faculty and staff have used materials from the costume shop to sew together reusable masks for the local hospital. He said the effort to sew masks was already underway in Boyle County, and the college wanted to add support.

U of L’s Tackett said the experience is teaching students about business and production flow.

“My engineering students here have learned how production works, and all the things you have to take into account,” he said. “You have incoming supply lines, outgoing supply lines, and all the secondary processes. In a situation like this, you actually have to set up a small company—in three days.”