Montana State University
Montana State University is a public land-grant research university in Bozeman, Montana, United States. It enrolls more students than any other college or university in the state. MSU offers baccalaureate degrees in 60 fields, master's degrees in 68, and doctoral degrees in 35 through its nine colleges. More than 16,700 students attended MSU in fall 2019, taught by 796 full-time and 547 part-time faculty. In the Carnegie Classification, MSU is placed among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity", one of only two universities in Montana to receive this distinction with a "very high undergraduate" enrollment profile. The university had research expenditures of $257.9 million in 2024.
Located on the south side of Bozeman, the university's campus is the largest in the state. 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. The elevation of the campus is above mean sea level.
History
Establishment of the college
Montana became a state on 8 November 1889. Several cities competed intensely to be the state capital, Bozeman among them. In time, Helena was named the state capital. As a consolation, the state legislature 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 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 16 February 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. 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 horticulturist from South Dakota who was also acting president, and Homer G. Phelps, who taught business. Within weeks, they were joined by S. M. Emery and Benjamin F. Maiden. Augustus M. Ryon, a coal mine owner, was named the college's first president on 17 April 1893. He immediately clashed with the board of trustees and faculty. The trustees wanted the college to focus on agriculture, but Ryon pointed out that few of its students intended to go back to farming. The rapidly expanding faculty wanted to establish a remedial education program to assist unprepared undergraduates, but Ryon refused. The Story land was donated to the college in 1894, but Ryon was forced out in 1895 and replaced by 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 college took over the high school building completely. A vacant store on Main Street was rented for additional classroom space. The Agricultural Experiment Station and the Main Building were constructed in 1896, and the agricultural building was the first to open. Both structures were occupied in 1898. The 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.
Expansion and growth under Hamilton and Atkinson
Reid resigned for health reasons in 1905 and was succeeded by 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. The college's first great rapid expansion of physical plants also began under Hamilton. Constructed during this time were Linfield Hall, Hamilton Hall, and Traphagen Hall. The giant whitewashed "M" on the side of 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. A firm believer in Hamilton's vision for the school, Atkinson worked hard to continue the rapid expansion of the campus. The iconic, barrel-vaulted Gymnasium Building 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. 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, 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 a 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 a basketball coach, Dyche's teams compiled a 110–93 record, 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 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 ; 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.
Depression and World War II
The college suffered greatly during the Great Depression. The price of agricultural products soared during World War I, as European and Russian farms were devastated by military campaigns, in which American and European armies demanded food. For a few years after the war, these prices remained high. But as European agriculture began to improve, an agricultural depression swamped the United States beginning in about 1923. State tax revenues plunged, and fewer buildings were constructed on campus after 1923.The Renne years
In 1943, the state board of higher education appointed MSC economist Roland "Rollie" Renne to be the new acting president of the college; he was named the permanent president on 1 July 1944 and served until 1964.University status and campus conservatism
In February 1964, 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 the school's Endowed and Research Foundation 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 1 July 1965. At that time, the school received its new name, Montana State University. 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.
Johnson was deeply conservative—fiscally, socially, and politically. He was deeply committed to continuing Renne's educational plan but declined to spend money on new buildings. He also continued Renne's policies largely barring from campus speakers who were not clearly in the political mainstream. Johnson's policies were largely supported by the student body and the taxpaying public. MSU practiced a policy known as in loco parentis, in which it acted as a "parent" of the "children" studying there. To that end, Johnson instituted dress codes, required adult chaperones at dances, banned alcohol, and instituted mandatory military training for freshmen and sophomores. Many U.S. college campuses were engulfed by student radicalism, but MSU's student body was as conservative as Johnson and accepted these restrictions. For many years, the biggest issues on campus were ending Saturday morning classes and building student parking lots.
There were some campus protests. The first protest against the Vietnam War occurred in 1966, two underground student newspapers briefly appeared, and some students organized clubs to debate issues. There were minor faculty and student protests when Johnson attempted to prevent English professor James Myers from assigning students James Baldwin's novel Another Country, and in the summer of 1968 a few faculty organized a symposium on the war. When about 150 students rallied in front of Montana Hall in 1969 to ask for co-ed and "open visitation" dorms, Johnson threatened to call out the city police.
MSU's Bobcat Stadium saw its genesis during the Johnson years. Growing student unrest over the football team's use of decrepit Gatton Field led Johnson in April 1968 to propose a 16,000-seat stadium funded by student fees. The proposal failed in December, after students argued that the university should concurrently build a new fitness center.
Johnson died of a heart attack on 18 June 1969. He'd suffered a heart attack in October 1968 and then underwent surgery out of state in April 1969.
William Johnstone, a professor of education and Vice President for Administration at MSU, took over as Acting President. He was the first and only Montanan to become president of MSU. Johnstone pledged to build the fitness center first, and in December 1969 the student body approved the finance plan for the new football stadium. On 2 April 1970, about 250 students engaged in a sit-in in Montana Hall to protest Myers's termination, but it ended peacefully a day later. Myers was terminated, and another eight faculty resigned in protest. But during his year in office, the university completed Cobleigh Hall.