Montana State University Informations

Montana State University (MSU) is a public land-grant research university in Bozeman, Montana. It is the state's largest university and flagship campus of the Montana State University System, which is part of the Montana University System. MSU offers baccalaureate degrees in 51 fields, master's degrees in 41 fields, and doctoral degrees in 18 fields through its nine colleges. The university regularly reports annual research expenditures in excess of $100 million, including a record $130.8 million in 2017.

More than 16,900 students attend MSU, and the university faculty numbers, including department heads, are 602 full-time and 460 part-time. The university's main campus in Bozeman is home to KUSM television, KGLT radio, and the Museum of the Rockies. MSU provides outreach services to citizens and communities statewide through its agricultural experiment station and 60 county and reservation extension offices.

Montana became a state on November 8, 1889. Several cities competed intensely to be the state capital, the city of Bozeman among them. In time, the city of Helena was named the state capital. As a consolation, the state legislature agreed to put the state's land-grant college in Bozeman. Gallatin County donated half of its 160-acre poor farm for the campus, and money for an additional 40 acres, which had been planned to hold a state capital, was raised by the community, including a $1,500 donation from rancher and businessman Nelson Story, Sr. This land, as well as additional property and monetary contributions, was now turned over to the state for the new college.

MSU was founded in 1893 as the Agricultural College of the State of Montana. It opened on February 16 with five male and three female students. The first classes were held in rooms in the county high school, and later that year in the shuttered Bozeman Academy (a private preparatory school). The first students were from Bozeman Academy, and were forced to transfer to the college. Only two faculty existed on opening day: Luther Foster, a horticulturalist from South Dakota who was also Acting President, and Homer G. Phelps, who taught business. Within weeks, they were joined by S.M. Emery (who ran the agricultural experiment station) and Benjamin F. Maiden (an English teacher from the former Bozeman Academy). Augustus M. Ryon, a coal mine owner, was named the first president of the college on April 17, 1893. Ryon immediately clashed with the board of trustees and faculty. Where the trustees wanted the college to focus on agriculture, Ryon pointed out that few of its students intended to go back to farming. While the rapidly expanding faculty wanted to establish a remedial education program to assist unprepared undergraduates (Montana's elementary and secondary public education system was in dire shape at the time), Ryon refused. The donation of the Story land to the college occurred in 1894, but Ryon was forced out in 1895 and replaced by the Rev. Dr. James R. Reid, a Presbyterian minister who had been president of the Montana College at Deer Lodge since 1890.

The college grew quickly under Reid, who provided 10 years of stability and harmony. The student body grew so fast that the high school building was completely taken over by the college. A vacant store on Main Street was rented to provide additional classroom space. Both the Agricultural Experiment Station (now known as Taylor Hall) and the Main Building (now known as Montana Hall) were constructed in 1896, although the agricultural building was the first to open. Both structures were occupied in 1898. The university football team was established in 1897, and the college graduated its first four students that same year. The curriculum expanded into civil and electrical engineering in 1898.

Reid resigned for health reasons in 1905, and was succeeded by Dr. James M. Hamilton, an economist. Determined to make the college into a school of technology, he rapidly expanded the curriculum areas such as biology, chemistry, engineering, geology, and physics. Hamilton also devised the university motto, "Education for Efficiency", which the college continued to use until the 1990s. Further marking this change in direction, the school was officially renamed the Montana College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in 1913 (although that name was in widespread use as early as 1894). The college's first great rapid expansion of physical plant also began under Hamilton. Constructed during this time were Linfield Hall (1908), Hamilton Hall (1910), and Traphagen Hall (1919). The giant whitewashed "M" on the side of the Mount Baldy in the foothills of the Bridger Range was first built in 1916, and in 1917 ROTC came to campus for the first time.

Hamilton resigned in 1919 to become Dean of Men, and his successor was agricultural expert Alfred Atkinson. Atkinson's tenure lasted 17 years (1920 to 1937). A firm believer in Hamilton's vision for the school, Atkinson worked hard to continue the rapid expansion of the campus. The iconic, domed Gymnasium Building (now Romney Gym) was built in 1922, replacing a dilapidated "drill hall" and giving the school's men's basketball team its first home court. The Heating Plant, Lewis Hall, and Roberts Hall followed in 1923. By the 1920s, the school was commonly referred to as Montana State College (MSC). Herrick Hall followed in 1926. The college was justifiably proud of its academic accomplishments, but its sports teams entered a golden age as well. In 1922, Atkinson hired George Ott Romney and Schubert Dyche as co-head coaches of the football and men's basketball teams. Between 1922 and 1928 (the year he departed Montana for Brigham Young University), Romney's football teams compiled a 28–20–1 record. This included the 1924 season in which his team went undefeated until the final game of the year. As co-head basketball coach, Romney's teams compiled a 144–31 record and invented the fast break. After Romney left, Schubert Dyche coached the "Golden Bobcats" team of 1928, which had a 36–2 record and won the national championship. In his seven years as basketball coach, Dyche's teams compiled a 110–93 record (this included the dismal 1932–33 and 1933–34 seasons), but won their conference championship twice. In 1930, the college built Gatton Field, a football field on what is now the site of the Marga Hosaeus Fitness Center. In one of President Atkinson's last accomplishments, the Dormitory Quadrangle (now Atkinson Quadrangle) was built.

The first three decades of the 20th century were rowdy ones on the college campus. Bozeman had a large red-light district by 1900, alcohol was plentiful and cheap, and there was little in the way of organized entertainment such as theaters to occupy the student body. President Reid spent much of his presidency cracking down on dancing, drinking, gambling, and prostitution by students. President Hamilton sought to improve the atmosphere for women by building Hamilton Hall, which was not only the first on-campus housing for students but also the first all-women's housing on campus. Access by men to Hamilton Hall was strictly limited to young teenage boys (who acted as servants); adult males were permitted only in the first floor lounge, and only on Sundays. Atkinson Quadrangle was built on the location of the College Inn, also known as the "Bobcat Lair," a popular student drinking and dancing hangout.

The college suffered greatly during the Great Depression. The price of agricultural products (Montana's economic mainstay) soared during World War I, as European and Russian farms were devastated by military campaigns and American and European armies demanded food. For a few years after the war, these prices stayed high. But as European agriculture got back on its feet, an agricultural depression swamped the United States beginning about 1923. State tax revenues plunged, and fewer buildings were constructed on campus after 1923. The United States entered the Great Depression in 1929. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Public Works Administration (PWA) in 1933 to provide federal funding for public works construction as a means of economic stimulus. But President Atkinson was strongly opposed to Roosevelt's New Deal, and refused to accept PWA funds to expand the college. With the state unable to assist, Montana State College stagnated through the 1930s.

President Atkinson resigned in 1937 to become president of the University of Arizona. A. L. Strand, an entomologist who had discovered ways of controlling the devastating locust invasions in Montana, was named the new president. Strand was the first graduate of the college to become its president. An upsurge in campus drinking occurred after the end of Prohibition, and in 1940 the Student Union Building (now Strand Union Building) was built to provide students with a gathering spot on campus that (it was hoped) would keep them away from the saloons downtown.

President Strand resigned his office in 1942 to accept the presidency of Oregon State University. (He remained there for 19 years, turning Oregon State into a world-class research and teaching institution.) With Montana still not yet having emerged from the Great Depression, the college struggled to find a new president. Engineering professor William Cobleigh took over as Acting President until from 1942 to 1943 while a replacement for Strand was found. During Cobleigh's year as president, college enrollment plunged as young men entered the armed forces or left to work in war industry plants on the West Coast. Nonetheless, federal funding increased as the United States Department of War sought rapid, significant increases in the number of chemical, engineering, and physics graduates to feed the war effort.

In 1943, the state board of higher education appointed MSC economist Roland "Rollie" Renne to be the new acting president of the college. Renne was a protege of nationally known liberal economists Richard T. Ely and John R. Commons and a strong proponent of the New Deal. He'd taught at MSC since 1930, although he'd taken a leave of absence in 1942 to become the director of Montana's Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply (a federal wartime agency). Renne was named the permanent president of the college on July 1, 1944.

Renne was president of the college for 21 years, the third-longest of any individual (as of 2013). With the passage of the G.I. Bill just eight days before his appointment and the end of the war in sight, Renne realized that servicemen returning from the war were going to flood college campuses. Renne quickly began hiring additional faculty and recycled wartime wooden buildings from around the state to build temporary classroom and housing space. His foresight helped the college survive the rapid rise in enrollment, which doubled from 1,155 in 1945 to 2,014 in 1946 and then nearly doubled again in 1947 to 3,591. Faculty numbers also skyrocketed, from 132 in 1945 to 257 in 1950. Believing that a college education was as much about instilling democratic values as teaching skills and trades, Renne rapidly changed the curriculum to emphasize liberal arts such as anthropology, archeology, history, political science, psychology, and sociology. Although the University of Montana (long considered the state's "liberal arts college", while MSC was the "ag school") opposed much expansion in this area, Renne successfully established a Department of Education, reconstituted the School of Business, and established new undergraduate and graduate programs in architecture, geography, geology, military science, and other disciplines.

Throughout the 1950s, Renne worked to rapidly expand the college's physical plant. During his presidency, 18 major buildings were constructed on campus — more than double the number that had been built between 1893 and 1944, and almost as many as were built between 1966 and 2013. These included the 1949 Library Building (now Renne Library), the campus' first dedicated library (it had previously been housed in a few rooms on the second floor of Montana Hall), and the 1958 Brick Breeden Fieldhouse (which supplemented the aging, outdated Romney Gym). The construction program included a chapel (Danforth Chapel in 1950), five large classroom buildings (McCall Hall in 1952, A.J.M. Johnson Hall in 1954, Reid Hall in 1959, Cooley Laboratory in 1960, and Gaines Hall in 1961), and seven residential and dining halls (Hannon Hall in 1954; Johnstone Hall in 1955; Culbertson Hall, Harrison Dining Hall, Mullan Hall, and Langford Hall in 1955; and Hapner Hall in 1959). Begun under his presidency but completed the year after he left were three more residential and dining halls (North Hedges, South Hedges, and Miller Dining Hall).

There was some criticism that Renne did not pay full attention to the college in the 1950s. His governance style was somewhat authoritarian, and his extended absences led to leadership vacuums. He agreed to consulting roles with the Water Resources Policy Commission, Mutual Security Agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the United States Department of State, and the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare throughout the 1950s that often took him away from campus for weeks at a time. He took a leave of absence from the college to become Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for International Affairs from 1963 to 1964.

Dr. Renne resigned as president of Montana State College effective January 1, 1964, to run for Governor of Montana. He lost the election, 51.4 to 48.6 percent, to incumbent governor Tim Babcock.

Campus life was not without its controversy during Renne's tenure, either. With McCarthyism and anti-communist feeling running high in the country, Renne sought to protect the campus from political investigations by restricting student speech and assembly. He also restricted the kind of speakers who visited the campus, most famously denying former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and literary critic Leslie Fiedler the right to speak on campus. Other incidents also brought notoriety to campus. On March 7, 1957, 1,000 male students engaged in a "panty raid" on Hannon Hall. It turned into a riot that took all night to control.

In February 1964, Dr. Leon H. Johnson was appointed president of MSC. A research chemist who joined the college in 1943, he had most recently been the Executive Director of school's Endowed and Research Foundation (at the time, MSC's largest research unit) and Dean of the Graduate Division. Deeply committed to the college's research function, he pushed for MSC to be named a university — a change Renne had since the early 1950s, and which the Montana state legislature approved on July 1, 1965. At that time, the school received its new name, Montana State University (MSU). Bachelor's degree programs in economics, English, history, music, political science, and other disciplines were quickly established, as was the first university honors program. Johnson was a devoted admirer of the arts, and MSU's art and music programs blossomed. Johnson quickly worked to end the acrimonious relationship with the University of Montana, and the two schools began to present a united front to the state legislature.

In 1966, Johnson altered and enlarged the university's administrative structure to help cope with increasing enrollment and increasing campus complexity. These changes included creating a 12-member executive council to advise him. The council included newly created vice presidents — overseeing areas such as academic affairs, administration, finance and research.

Complete article available at this page.