A journey from respiratory therapy to real-time air quality innovation: the UMR roots that shaped a family committed to healing and environmental health.
Air quality is a growing concern. In Minnesota, many experience firsthand the harmful effects of wildfire smoke in the summer months. Throughout the nation and the world, air pollution and chronic smog can negatively impact the health of entire populations.
University of Minnesota Rochester (UMR) graduate Matthew Spiten ’18 is working to change that. The Air Quality Alliance in Rochester (formerly Rochester Air Network), the company he aided in founding in 2019, measures community air quality and communicates the results in real time to the general public in a model that could extend to other communities. The work builds on an effort he began as a student at UMR.
While he found much more than his future career at UMR, he most importantly found his future life partner, Megan Spiten (nee Zimmerman) ’16, who shares the same passion and interest in service, health care and the environment. Today, they share an active family life in Rochester, contributing to the health and well-being of the greater community in many ways.
“UMR was a pivotal point in our life, the launch pad for finding our passion for what we wanted to do in life,” says Matthew.
From the first time she toured campus, Megan knew it was right for her. “It seemed like a great opportunity to be part of the Mayo Clinic community — learning and growing.” She discovered her interest in physical therapy during her days running cross country at North Branch High School. “I was injured almost every season and spent a lot of time at physical therapy as a patient. I thought it was impactful how they could help athletes returning to fitness, or work with adults returning to their passion, or help relieve pain with something as simple as walking.” Shadowing a PT sealed the deal for her. When her cousin, a social worker at Mayo Clinic, told her about UMR and its focus on health sciences, she came for a tour and knew the integrated curriculum approach was right for her.
In her junior year at UMR, she was leading a new student orientation group when one of the incoming students — Matthew — talked about a recent Boundary Waters trip. “I was super excited to hear that,” says Megan. “You don’t often find people who enjoy the Boundary Waters as much as I do. We met because I was brave enough to talk to him after.”
Matthew was a nontraditional student who found his way to UMR through a surprising connection. After high school, he entered what he calls a “stagnant” period of his life. He had gone to tech school but nothing really stuck, he says. He then started working a third shift job in the computer operations department at Fastenal. It was during an evening shift, after walking up two flights of stairs to his work area, that he found himself out of breath. He describes it as one of those seemingly benign moments in life that set in motion a series of transformational decisions and experiences over the next decade. He decided it was time to return to something that had been foundational to his childhood — basketball. He grew up playing basketball but had stopped by his senior year in high school. His third shift work schedule completing his prerequisite courses, he enrolled at UMR. gave him the perfect opportunity for a comeback. “Returning to basketball after not playing for four years, it was really difficult to breathe running up and down the court.” But after a year of showing up at noonball every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at his local YMCA in Winona, he finally started to catch his breath, he says. “I started to really enjoy the game again. I felt better about myself, too. I had confidence, and my vigor for life came back when I found myself in motion again.”
Through this experience he also came to realize the important things a person is capable of when they can breathe well — how devastating it can be for a person who can’t breathe. With a deeper and more personal understanding of respiratory health, Matthew decided to quit his job at Fastenal and enroll again at a technical school in Winona. His goal was to complete a series of prerequisite STEM courses and eventually apply to a cardiopulmonary program. Not long after, he met a fellow noonball player, a professor emeritus of English literature at Winona State University. Matthew shared that he was returning to school. A month later over coffee, the professor told him about the respiratory care program at UMR. Matthew was hooked. After a year of completing his prerequisite courses, he enrolled at UMR.
While on campus, Matthew’s interest in the respiratory system merged with a passion for the environment that he and Megan shared. He wanted to investigate the connection between the air we breathe and our health and reached out to local organizations to collaborate on community-based field research. He wanted to learn if the one permanent air quality sensor in Rochester was sufficient. Partnerships with private, public and governmental organizations — including Mayo Clinic clinicians and researchers, civil servants and community leaders — led to purchasing affordable air quality sensors and conducting a feasibility study at eight different sites throughout the city to measure particulate pollution. This was the beginning of the Rochester Air Network.
The effort, now called the Air Quality Alliance, has a robust network of more than 15 sensors installed throughout Rochester that measure air quality and upload the information in real time to a website the public can access. “Hopefully in time we can use this data to explore how the air we breathe and the environment we live in impacts our health,” he says. A big part of this effort is informing and engaging the community about air quality.
After graduating in 2018, Matthew worked as a respiratory therapist at St. Marys hospital in the inpatient pulmonary diagnostic lab. Three years later, he took a position as a program coordinator in the Precision Population Science Lab, working with the researchers who helped him establish the Rochester Air Network when he was a student. When the director of the lab was named the chair of research at Mayo Clinic Health System (MCHS), Matthew transitioned to a senior program coordinator role in the MCHS Office of Research where he is helping build the MCHS Artificial Intelligence Validation and Rural Health research programs.
He credits his UMR experience for helping launch him in this role. “The support to pursue your passion at UMR is one of the big benefits of the school. They have a footprint in the community and want their students to engage in the community. I was inspired to follow this path.” He acknowledges that it was not quick or easy. “It took time. The first five years were a lot of work, but the support and resources were there.”
Megan agrees. While at UMR, she shadowed in acute care physical therapy and completed an internship at EA Therapeutic Health (formerly ExercisABILITIES), where she fell in love with Neuro-Rehab PT. She graduated from the Mayo Clinic School of Health Sciences, Doctor of Physical Therapy Program in 2019. Today, she is an acute care physical therapist at St. Marys Hospital at Mayo Clinic. She works with patients at the bedside, helping improve their mobility, which has been lost for a variety of reasons ranging from weakness due to a prolonged ICU stay or heart or orthopedic surgery.
“I love acute care because when people are suffering the most, struggling the most, we can help them have some measure of control and influence how they recover and heal from surgery or a life-threatening illness.”
Her favorite patients are those recovering from an organ transplant. “They are so grateful to have a second chance at life, so motivated to get the most out of the opportunity — they’re really a joy to work with.”
Like Matthew, Megan sees firsthand the importance of being able to breathe freely. “For a patient who has had a lung transplant, the first time they breathe off the equipment — just the look on their faces. They’re so joyful and so grateful. It’s so fun to work with them and see their progress.”
And that shared love of the outdoors? After about two years of dating, Megan and Matthew set out on a 31-day trip in the Boundary Waters. It was so successful they decided to make their partnership permanent. They married in 2019 and today have three children: Simon, 4, Paul, 2, and their newest family member, Lucille, born this year.
Together, they’re passing their passion for health care and the environment along to their kids.
“Simon hears me talking about my work all the time,” Matthew says. “He plays pretend ‘air qualities’ and walks around with a little piece of paper, talking to his co-workers.”
The outdoors is a focal point in their family in many ways, they both agree.
“It has been fun to see how everything has come together,” says Matthew.
Written by Felicia Schneiderhan
Read more stories from the Fall 2025 Alumni Magazine: The Kettle.