As we approach the end of 2023, we are thankful for a lot of things here on Confluence podcast. This past year confirmed our sense of the vibrant, thriving ecosystem of graduate education at the University of Montana, where faculty and student researchers bring their talent, ingenuity, and creativity to bear every day on fascinating problems and innovative possibilities.

We believe deeply in the power of the human imagination to change the world, whether through compelling stories that galvanize attention to the depth of human experience, or through the research breakthroughs that come from novel approaches to scientific inquiry or human social problems. Our graduate students come here brimming with talent and eager for growth, and they leave with new tools, new horizons, and new opportunities to share that talent with the world.

The world is messy right now in a way that few of us could have predicted five, 10, or 15 years ago. There are problems besetting our world at every level: from the cellular invasion of our bodies to the invasion of our minds with misinformation and clutter; from the battles for the heart and soul and future of the American enterprise to the battle for land in distant countries whose reverberations we feel across the globe.

But we remain firmly committed to one foundational premise: institutions of learning have always contributed powerfully to the advancement of society in every era of tumult and change. We need these institutions, now more than ever, to double down on their core mission of generating new knowledge, and disseminating that knowledge through every outlet we can, whether through the actions of our faculty and students, or the publications, artistic forms, and media we generate to compel attention.

This premise has been the animating force of this podcast from the outset: to provide listeners a way to experience the journeys of our faculty and students, to hear their stories of resilience and triumph, of difficulty and challenge, but also breakthrough and innovation. We have aimed to elevate the importance of graduate education, while telling authentic stories about the challenges graduate students face. Our faculty segments on what they are looking for in graduate students consistently focus on traits that are not associated with high-flying academic CVs: they are personal dispositions: hard work, resilience, the ability to rebound from setbacks, and, more than anything, curiosity.

Confluence podcast is going on hiatus: this will be our last published episode for some time, as we re-think the future of the podcast. But in the meantime, we encourage you to explore the 95 episodes we have already published. On our website and podcast platforms, you’ll find content that covers most of our programs, a dynamic sample of student achievement in arts, humanities, social sciences and STEM, as well as our professional Masters programs. You’ll also hear compelling stories of graduate faculty, known for their mentorship abilities, who have taken on tough challenges and had significant research accomplishments. But the podcast also introduces you to an archive of human experience within the world of graduate education and research, which is driven by the powerful ideas that attract people to this strange but essential quest to understand the world.

Thank you for listening to Confluence, where great ideas flow together, and the river is always with us.