President Seth Bodnar

Seth Bodnar currently serves as the 19th president of the University of Montana. Since his arrival in 2018, he has focused on promoting inclusive prosperity through access to higher education, which has led to applicants to UM more than doubling, to the largest freshman class in 6 years, and to a student retention increase of nearly 7 percentage points. These efforts have also led to a 24% rise in Native American student enrollment and a 14-point improvement in Native American student retention. President Bodnar has expanded UM’s educational opportunities to include more robust workforce development and career training programs that empower learners at all stages of their lives.

President Bodnar has also overseen the most successful private fundraising campaign in the history of UM, an increase in net tuition revenue, and the largest infrastructure overhaul in the history of the University. During this same period, the University of Montana reached the status of a Carnegie very high research activity (R1) university and topped over $125 million in annual research expenditures. 

President Bodnar is an innovative and collaborative leader who works tirelessly to make steady, tangible progress toward his vision for UM. His experience building effective teams has proven especially beneficial in strengthening UM’s ability to deliver on its mission of fostering inclusive prosperity.  

The son of two educators, President Bodnar believes in the power of higher education to transform lives and communities. He graduated first in his class from West Point, received both the Rhodes and Truman scholarships, and earned two graduate degrees from the University of Oxford. He served as an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point where he taught economics, published research on economic development in conflict areas, mentored cadets applying for postgraduate scholarships and led field training courses on leadership.

Bodnar has had a distinguished military career, serving in the 101^st Airborne Division and the U.S. Army’s First Special Forces Group. As a member of the Army’s elite Green Berets, he commanded a Special Forces detachment on multiple deployments around the world and later served as a special assistant to the Commanding General in Iraq. President Bodnar currently holds the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Montana National Guard.  

Before joining the University of Montana, Bodnar was a senior executive at the General Electric Company. He served as GE Transportation’s first-ever Chief Digital Officer and was the president of GE Transportation’s Digital Solutions business, where he and his colleagues developed software and technology to optimize the global rail industry. 

A compelling communicator and impressive thinker, Bodnar speaks at conferences globally and has been an invited speaker to the United States Congress on technology and innovation. He has written and spoken widely the role of higher education in both sustaining a healthy democracy and supporting our national security. He sees higher education as not only an engine for social mobility and economic growth but also a vital ingredient in our country’s global competitiveness.   

Bodnar’s love for Montana bloomed while studying at Oxford, where he met fellow Rhodes scholar and his future wife, Chelsea Elander, a fifth-generation Montanan and native of Missoula. Chelsea is a pediatrician and a graduate of Hellgate High School, MSU-Bozeman, Oxford, and Harvard Medical School. They have three children.