Dear Campus Community:
Tonight, at the annual Charter Day event, we will we celebrate 126 years of the University of Montana’s transformative impact on the state of Montana and on the tens of thousands of students who have chosen this great institution. We will honor 12 incredible individuals for their contributions to the University of Montana and the Missoula community.
After just over a year as your president, I readily admit that at last year’s Charter Day celebration I could not have fully grasped the University of Montana’s tremendous impact. As I have come to better understand the incredible work happening on this campus, I stand in awe of your impact on students, our state and our world. And I am deeply humbled by what our students teach us and go on to do as citizens in a very complex world.
Charter Day is a day to take stock. To look at where we are, what we face and where we can go — together. And as impressive and sometimes challenging as our past has been, I am unabashedly optimistic that the best days of this University are in front of us. We are a family of determined, hard-working, dedicated, kindred spirits who have chosen the University of Montana as a home to study, work and play. You are why I am so optimistic.
From its earliest days, before the first campus buildings were erected, our state’s leaders laid the groundwork for what would become Montana’s flagship university at the base of Mount Sentinel in the aboriginal territories of the Salish and Kalispel people. In 1893, Montana’s Legislative Assembly, in its third regular session, decided to “establish in this State at the City of Missoula, an institution of learning under the name and style of ‘The University of Montana.’” They went on to describe our first mission statement, writing “The object of the University of Montana shall be to provide the best and most efficient manner of imparting to young men and women, on equal terms, a liberal education and thorough knowledge of the different branches of literature, science and the arts...”
One hundred twenty-six years later, we have built our state’s flagship research university into a model for innovation, research, student engagement, experiential learning and excellence. But at its core, the University of Montana remains committed to providing a world-class education for students from all backgrounds and walks of life. It is no secret that this institution we all love so dearly continues to face some significant challenges that will not be solved overnight. But the long hours and extensive rebuilding are already resulting in small, hopeful gains. And we will continue to see those small gains each day. We are moving in the right direction. And we will gain momentum.
As we celebrate the University’s 126th birthday, I ask you to be proud of the singular purpose driving our efforts: We place student success at the center of all we do. We should take pride in the fact that we are tasking ourselves with institutional transformations that will allow us to both better serve the students who entrust their dreams to us and better serve Montana communities. Just as we support our students in their journeys to transform their own lives, we are an institution that will continually transform and improve to meet our students’ changing needs and dreams.
In response to the challenges and opportunities we face, we developed the five Priorities for Action that will move UM forward into the next decade. They are simple: Place student success at the center of all we do; drive excellence and innovation in teaching, learning and research; embody the principle of “mission first, people always;” partner with place; and proudly tell the UM story.
In the case of Priority No. 1 — place student success at the center of all we do — we have asked the entire campus community to place students’ well-being at the center of every decision, every statement, every action. This past week, a student’s mom reached out to my office because her daughter was not getting the answers she needed. Our frontline person, who has a heart as big as Montana and a desire to help everyone he meets, immediately worked to calm the mom, glean as much information as he could and assure her he would get the right people working on a solution. Within 24 hours, the student was re-enrolled in the University, and she had all the classes she needed to graduate, financial aid in place, books purchased and a short-term loan to help pay for her immediate needs. The offices of the Provost, the Vice President for Enrollment Management, the Registrar, Student Financial Services, Financial Aid, Undergraduate Admissions and her home academic department collaborated to do whatever needed to be done to help the student. Silos were disrupted, and the student became everyone’s priority. She and her mom can now plan for her May graduation party without worry.
These efforts are not limited to our service offices. Faculty members such as Daisy Rooks and Jessica Dougherty McMichael have worked across sectors and with student affairs staff such as Adrianne Donald and Karen Schlatter in collaboration with amazing student leaders such as Kat Cowley to address students’ basic needs. Just this month, this work resulted in the opening of UM’s Food Pantry, a powerful expression of the fact that students’ well-being sits at the center of all we do.
We are not defined by the significant challenges we have and do face. What defines us is how we respond to those challenges. We are defined by our uncompromising commitment to students, to community, to impactful research and to boundary-blurring efforts for the good of our students and state.
Among our greatest opportunities is the chance to demonstrate, and to better articulate, the tremendous value and distinction of a University of Montana education for a world that sorely needs it. We provide an education that fosters the analytical skills, ethical thinking and complex problem-solving abilities needed to help our graduates adapt to an unpredictable world and the rapid-fire pace of change, automation and artificial intelligence. Ours is a tomorrow-proof education that leads to lifetimes of impact and creative solutions to the needs of our communities. Underpinning our academic quality and benefiting our students is the University’s substantial research and creative scholarship portfolio that tackles the grand societal and environmental challenges of our time.
Our students will graduate and inherit a world ripe with opportunity and challenges. It is our job to provide an education that empowers them to meet those head-on. To do this, we will place students at the center of all we do, knowing that this is our obligation, privilege and opportunity.
Happy birthday to our wonderful University.
Seth Bodnar