The University of Montana-Missoula President's Report 2001-2002

What is a university?

At the end of the day, how does one characterize a university? Certainly, the very name evokes the feeling of a forum possible only through the free exchange of ideas. It also fairly exudes the tension and difficulty of real learning — an experience that invariably challenges one’s unquestioned assumptions about life and self. Other images come to mind, some disturbing and others more comforting. H. G. Merriam in his history of The University of Montana quoted Professor Edmund L. Freeman who once likened the University to “a pine tree on a mountainside, tall and tough, but with many narrow growth rings and a number of gnarled limbs.” The power and resilience, even the majesty, suggested by those words characterize the University to this day, derived wholly from the dedication, resourcefulness and creativity of all who surround it. After all, a university is its faculty, staff and students assembled in a place made useful and interesting because of their presence, and cherished by its alumni who have been called to other venues.

In the predictions of futurists, the “virtual university” will soon render the “seminaries of higher learning” — as universities were called in the late nineteenth century — obsolete, as dysfunctional and irrelevant as the dinosaurs. I for one doubt the cogency of the prediction. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once put it, “I cannot help but believe that human beings will always seek the joy and satisfaction of involvement in the life of the mind that makes a university such a splendid place.”

This annual report provides a glimpse of the dedication, resourcefulness and creativity of the alumni, faculty, staff and students. Because of these people, the image of the University becomes ever more resplendent with every passing year. Having spent my undergraduate years here and devoted the years after in the nomadic life of a faculty member and university administrator, I find the fierce loyalty of the alumni, faculty, staff and students inspiring and completely understandable. The vignettes that follow will perhaps assure everyone who reads them that the enduring toast of UM’s first president, Oscar John Craig, remains appropriate: “The University – It Shall Prosper!”

George M. Dennison
President