Mountains and Minds - Spring 2016

The Montana State University Magazine

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MOVING DAY

MSU cattle drive near Havre promotes better beef

MO N TAN A STATE U N I V E R SI TY · M O U N TA I N S

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PAUL BARDAGJY

CONTENTS 12 MOV ING DAY Northern Agricultural Research

Center winter cattle drive

22 ONE ME DICINE MSU studies diseases that

cross from animals to humans

30 T HE F OUND WORLD OF OPLON T IS

An elaborate Roman fresco painted in around 50 B.C. once graced a luxurious dining room in Villa Oplontis until buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Learn more about the Villa Oplontis exhibit, coming to MSU’s Museum of the Rockies in June, on page 30.

On the cover: An annual rite of passage at MSU research facilities near Havre produces better beef. See page 12.

PHOTO BY KELLY GORHAM

Exhibit provides rare glimpse of ancient Rome’s ‘1 percenters’

38 M A K ING I T HIS MIS SION

Andrew Raduly

4 4 W H Y HE C A ME W E S T Rick Bass 4 8 W IRE D F OR MUSIC Beth and Evin Groves 52 E VOLV ING Jack Horner 58 FA MILY VA LUE S Walter Fleming 60 E NGINE E RING A PE RF EC T F I T Abigail Richards 62 W H AT I T TA K E S Building for the future 66 W H AT I T TA K E S The impact of giving 70 P OS T SCRIP T Books, Bass excerpt 72 E X PL A IN I T T O ME

Marsha Goetting

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FROM THE HILL

The Montana State University Magazine

MINDS

CRUZADO KELLY GORHAM

MOUNTAINS

Spring 2016 · Volume 10, Number 1 President Waded Cruzado Publisher Tracy Ellig Managing Editor Carol Schmidt Art Director Bridget Ashcraft Photographer Kelly Gorham Assistant Editor Anne Cantrell Creative Services Director Ron Lambert Graphic Designers K risten Drumheller, Alison Gauthier M arketing Director Julie Kipfer Production Manager Caroline Zimmerman Writers Denise Hoepfner, Sepp Jannotta, Alison Reidmohr Contributing writers: Michael Becker, Evelyn Boswell, Michele Corriel, Amy Stix Contributing photographer: Sepp Jannotta, Paul Bardagjy Mountains & Minds is published by Montana State University. Copyright © 2016 by Montana State University.

All rights reserved. Excerpts from this magazine may be reprinted with permission. Please provide appropriate credit to Montana State University and supply copies of reprinted materials to the editor. Opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the university administration. Montana State University is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution.

Subscriptions: $12/year Editorial offices are located at: Montana State University 431 Culbertson Hall · P.O. Box 172220 Bozeman, MT 59717–2220 Telephone: (406) 994-1966 mountainsandminds@montana.edu Mountains and Minds is printed on post-consumer recycled paper.

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Dear friends, Long before I came to Montana, I was introduced to this beautiful state by one of the most eloquent books I have ever read, This House of Sky: Landscapes of the Western Mind. Written by Ivan Doig, who died just last year, the memoir describes in the most exquisite prose what it was like to grow up in rural Montana and how one man carved out a life of excellence on the bedrock of the values of cherished loved ones who came before him.

You may have read that several months ago, Carol Doig, Ivan’s widow, selected Montana State University as the repository for Ivan’s collection. She said, simply, that his papers needed to come home. It is a tremendous honor for all of us at MSU to be the recipient of this collection that belonged to one of our country’s most beloved writers. And, since that announcement I have been reading and rereading many of Ivan’s books. I recommend them all if you are looking for something wonderful to read this summer. But one quote of Ivan’s has been particularly resonant as I go about my daily work, and that is a quote that appeared in this very magazine in an interview published seven years ago.

“Education is an investment,” Ivan said. “In my case, a college scholarship took me from being a $150-a-month ranch hand to a guy …who has put a million books into the commerce of the era, a lot of those through Montana bookstores. I’m not savvy enough about the future to know specifically what Montana’s universities ought to be focusing on, except to say those institutions absolutely must keep being the tickets for the state’s young people to get on in life.”

This issue of Mountains and Minds includes stories of several of these students who are getting on in their lives in extraordinary ways. We hope that you are inspired by their stories as well as other stories of how the programs here at MSU are elevating life in Montana and beyond. As always, we thank you for helping us be the ticket for this generation of young people and those that will come after.

Sincerely,

Waded Cruzado, president Montana State University

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MSU WOMEN’S BASKETBALL, RODEO, MILLER KELLY GORHAM

MSU WOMEN WIN BIG SKY TITLE

NBA Hall of Famer John Stockton, second from left, served as an assistant coach for the MSU women’s basketball program for the 2015–16 campaign. Lindsay Stockton, number 11, daughter of the 10-time NBA All Star, was a senior for the Bobcats this year. It was a banner year for the team, which won the Big Sky Conference regular-season title for the first time since 2003. The Bobcats’ championship season ended with a berth in the Women’s National Invitation Tournament, where Utah edged out MSU. MSU Head Coach Tricia Binford was voted Big Sky Coach of the Year and Jasmine Hommes, senior forward, was named MVP for the conference.

MSU RODEO

Jesse Holt, a freshman majoring in business management from Conifer, Colorado, takes a turn on a bull during this year’s competition.

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NCAA CHAMPION

Junior Anika Miller became the first Bobcat skier since 1978 to win an individual title at the NCAA Skiing Championships when she won the 5K Nordic freestyle. The product of McCall, Idaho, Miller is the first female MSU skier to win an individual title.

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3 1 GLACIER MARK SKIDMORE 2 CORNISH KELLY GORHAM 3 FOWLER SEPP JANNOTTA 4 WIEDENHEFT & VAN ERP SEPP JANNOTTA 5 VIRUS TEAM KELLY GORHAM

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AT MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY

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MSU PROFESSORS STUDY CHEMICAL PROCESS THAT SUSTAINS MICROBIAL LIFE UNDER GLACIERS

The grinding action of glaciers and ice sheets against silicate rocks, when combined with water, releases enough hydrogen gas to sustain methanogenic archaea, or microorganisms that produce methane, according to research by Montana State University professors and others appearing in Nature Geoscience. Mark Skidmore, geology, and Eric Boyd, environmental microbiology, co-authored the study.

Pictured: Robertson Glacier near Canmore, Alberta, in 2013.

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MSU PART OF INTERNATIONAL TEAM THAT DETECTS GRAVITATIONAL WAVES

MSU researchers, including physics professor Neil Cornish (pictured) and several of his graduate students, were part of the international team of scientists that recently detected ripples in the fabric of spacetime, called gravitational waves, caused by the collision of two black holes in the distant universe.

The event confirmed a major prediction of Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity and opened a new window onto the cosmos.

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MSU TEAM FINDS NEW DINOSAUR SPECIES, EVOLUTIONARY LINK

A previously undiscovered dinosaur species, first uncovered and documented

by MSU adjunct professor Elizabeth Freedman Fowler (pictured), showcases an evolutionary transition from an earlier duckbilled species to that group’s descendants.

Her findings highlight how the new species of duck-billed dinosaur fills a gap that had existed between an ancestral form with no crest and a descendant with a larger crest, providing key insight into the evolution of elaborate display structures in these gigantic extinct herbivores.

A paper authored by Freedman Fowler and MSU paleontologist Jack Horner detailing the findings appeared recently in the journal PLOS ONE.

BACTERIA GET VIRUSES, TOO

MSU professor Blake Wiedenheft, microbiology and immunology, and graduate student Paul B.G. van Erp joined researchers from Cornell and Johns Hopkins universities to co-author a paper published in the journal Nature about how bacteria fend off attacks from viruses. Wiedenheft explained that bacteria get viral infections, just as humans do. Wiedenheft said that the scientists discovered that bacteria have sophisticated immune systems, called CRISPRs, and their research seeks to understand how those immune systems work. For more information, see One Medicine on pp. 22–29.

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COMPETITION BETWEEN VIRUSES MAY TRIGGER NEW TREATMENTS

MSU researchers have gained new understanding about a phenomenon called superinfection exclusion by introducing prepared viruses into host cells and timing how long it took for one to establish dominance.

The finding has implications for potential therapies for viral infections by activating exclusion before infection occurs. A paper about the phenomenon authored by a team that included MSU undergraduate microbiology major and genetics minor AnneMarie Criddle and Matt Taylor, MSU professor of microbiology and immunology, appeared recently in the Journal of Virology.

Pictured: MSU professor Matt Taylor, left, and his team including Theresa Thornburg, Irina Kochetkova, Max DePartee, Alix Herr and Gabby Law (not pictured).

BOZEMAN NAMED ONE OF BEST COLLEGE TOWNS FOR 2015 Bozeman has been ranked number four on a list of the 25 best college towns in which to live. The second annual rankings by SmartAsset, a financial technology company, evaluated each community according to the overall highest quality of life as determined by the researchers.

Pictured: Blake Wiedenheft, MSU assistant professor of microbiology and immunology, right, and MSU graduate student Paul B.G. van Erp.

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STOY WINS NSF CAREER AWARD

Paul Stoy, pictured, an MSU researcher studying farming practices that may decrease summertime temperatures, recently received a $500,000 CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. The CAREER Award is the NSF’s most prestigious award to support early career development of faculty researchers. Stoy, an professor of land resources and environmental sciences in the College of Agriculture, studies the exchange of water, energy and trace gases between the land surface and the atmosphere. His work quantifies how land-use change and land management, including conservation, impact climate. Stoy’s current research focuses upon the benefits believed to be brought about through planting crops instead of leaving fields unplanted for a growing season, a practice known as fallowing.

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DRAWINGS OF HISTORIC LOCAL HOMESTEAD EARN MSU STUDENTS NATIONAL PRIZE

Seven MSU students won second place in the National Park Service’s Peterson Prize competition for drawings of the Damon Gabriel Homestead on the Gallatin River. Graduate students taking professor Maire O’Neill’s course in architecture documentation won the award for their drawings.

Pictured: MSU architecture student Urvi Shah works on drawings at the Damon Gabriel Homestead near Bozeman.

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JABS HALL, MILLER DINING HALL RECOGNIZED WITH TOP PROJECT EXCELLENCE AWARDS

MSU’s Jabs Hall and Miller Dining Hall were recently recognized with top project excellence awards from the Montana chapter of the American Council of Engineering Companies. Miller Dining Hall was selected as the top project in the structural systems category, and Jabs Hall—home of the MSU Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship—was selected as the top project in the building/technology systems category. MSU also announced it would build a new $15 million dining hall to serve the north side residence halls and center of campus.

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ASMSU PRESIDENT WINS TRUMAN

Levi Birky, a junior from Kalispell majoring in broadfield secondary education, was named a 2016 Truman Scholar, one of the country’s most prestigious undergraduate scholarships.

The outgoing ASMSU president was recognized for his academic success and leadership accomplishments. He wins $30,000 for graduate studies.

Pictured: President Waded Cruzado, right, surprises Birky with news he won Truman Scholarship.

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MOUNTAINS AND MINDS TOPS CASE DISTRICT 8 MAGAZINE CATEGORY MSU’s Mountains and Minds magazine won a grand gold for the top magazine in all magazine categories in the 2016 CASE District VIII competition. CASE is a professional support organization for higher education. CASE District VIII includes colleges and universities in the Pacific Northwest and western Canada. The magazine is created entirely in-house by a team from MSU University Communications.

STUDY FINDS NURSE PRACTITIONERS MORE LIKELY THAN DOCTORS TO WORK IN RURAL AREAS New research by MSU nursing professor Peter Buerhaus and others has shown that nurse practitioners are more likely than doctors to practice in rural areas.

Researchers were investigating public access to primary care based on geographic location when they made the discovery.

The study, published in the January issue of Medical Care, the Journal of the American Public Health Association, also found that medical doctors who provide primary care services made up the largest share of the workforce, but were more concentrated in urban settings.

MSU RESEARCH FEATURED ON AMY POEHLER’S SMART GIRLS BLOG A hiring method that researchers at MSU devised to significantly increase gender diversity in science, technology, engineering and math faculty was featured on Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls blog. Reporter Micah Nielsen noted that MSU is “paving the way towards a more equitable future in STEM careers,” in part because of the new hiring method. A paper on the approach, written

by MSU psychology professor Jessi Smith and the four other members of MSU faculty and administration who serve as codirectors of ADVANCE Project TRACS, was published in the journal BioScience.

WEAVER, SWEENEY TO RECEIVE HONORARY DEGREES

Willard “Will” Weaver, former head of Great Falls College MSU, and Jean Bennington Sweeney, a vice president of the global innovation company 3M, will receive honorary doctorate degrees during MSU’s 2016 spring commencement set May 7. Michael McFaul, the Montanan who served as the former U.S. ambassador to Russia and is recognized as one of the top experts on that country, received an honorary doctorate degree from MSU during the university’s fall commencement.

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CUBAN EXCHANGE

MSU nursing students visited Cuba to learn about the island country’s famed healthcare system over winter break. Led by MSU nursing professor Steven Glow, the students who made the pioneering trip gained an appreciation of the culture and environment while studying how the country delivers healthcare in both urban and rural settings.

MSU BEGINS NEW MONTANA HALL LIGHTING TRADITION

MSU launched the “Lights On Montana Hall” holiday ceremony in which Montana Hall is lit for the winter holidays and other special occasions. The new, annual tradition is designed to build a sense of community among students, faculty, staff, alumni, neighbors and friends, according to MSU President Waded Cruzado.

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6 STOY SEPP JANNOTTA 7 SHAH COURTESY OF MAIRE O’NEILL 10 MILLER DINING KELLY GORHAM 9 TRUMAN SCHOLAR SEPP JANNOTTA 10 CUBA STEVEN GLOW

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MSU AND STANFORD FIND ANCIENT VIRAL MOLECULES ESSENTIAL FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

Stem cell scientists at MSU and Stanford University have shown that certain noncoding RNA molecules, which are genetic remnants of an ancient virus, play a critical role in balancing decisions in early human development. Renee Reijo Pera, who came to MSU in 2014 as vice president for research and economic development and also heads up a stem cell research laboratory, is the senior author of the work. The findings were detailed in a paper published online in the journal Nature Genetics.

Pictured: Renee Reijo Pera, right, MSU Vice President for Research and Economic Development, works in her lab in the MSU Molecular Bioscience facility.

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PALEONTOLOGISTS DISCOVER NEW TYPES OF DINOSAURS IN IDAHO

MSU paleontologists have identified several new types of dinosaurs from fossil evidence discovered in eastern Idaho, demonstrating the presence of a much more diverse group of theropods in the area than was previously known. The fossils, found in the Wayan Formation, represent at least three newly discovered types of theropod, which date back about 95 million years. The team, led by MSU Earth Sciences doctoral student L.J. Krumenacker, published their findings in Historical Biology: An International Journal of Paleobiology.

Pictured: L.J. Krumenacker is a doctoral candidate and paleontologist in the Department of Earth Sciences at MSU.

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MSU STUDENT AWARDED PRESTIGIOUS SCHOLARSHIP TO STUDY ABROAD

Adriana Leal (pictured), a sophomore majoring in chemical engineering and international studies, won a prestigious Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Gilman scholars receive up to $5,000 to apply toward their study abroad or internship program costs. Leal is using her award to study in Buenos Aires at Pontificia Universidad Catolica Argentina.

MSU STUDENTS WIN GOLDWATERS Three MSU students have received 2016 Goldwater Scholarships, the nation’s premier scholarship for undergraduates studying math, natural sciences and engineering.

Josh Carter from Watertown, South Dakota, Zane Huttinga from Amsterdam, Montana, and John Ryter from Hamilton, Montana, each received the prestigious scholarship, which gives each student up to $7,500 a year for tuition, fees, books, and room and board. MSU has now produced 67 Goldwater scholars, keeping the university one of the nation’s top institutions for number of recipients.

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JESSI SMITH NAMED FELLOW

Psychology professor Jessi Smith (pictured), known for her work in diversity, gender studies, motivation and performance, was recently named a fellow in both the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. Fellow status in both organizations is awarded for outstanding contributions to the field of psychology.

Smith is the first person to be elected an APA fellow while at MSU, and the second person in the Department of Psychology to be selected as an APS fellow.

JUNE RECEIVES NSF CAREER AWARD

Ron June, professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, recently received a $500,000 CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation.

The CAREER Award is the NSF’s most prestigious award to support early career development of teacher-researchers.

June hopes his research will lead to advanced treatments for osteoarthritis, an aging-related disease in which cartilage deteriorates, resulting in painful joints and decreased mobility.

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BARNARDS PLEDGE $6 MILLION TO MSU

Bozeman residents Tim and Mary Barnard (pictured) have pledged $6 million to MSU. About $5 million of the Barnards’ gift will help fund the university’s South Campus, which includes the Norm Asbjornson Innovation Center, while $1 million will be earmarked for the College of Engineering.

Also, the members of the Montana Board of Regents have approved the renaming of MSU’s EPS Building to Barnard Hall.

Tim Barnard is founder and chairman of Bozeman-based Barnard Companies, Inc., one of the country’s largest heavy civil contracting firms.

MSU LIBRARY, YELLOWSTONE PARK LAUNCH ‘ YELLOWSTONE COLLECTION’ The Acoustic Atlas at the MSU Library and Yellowstone National Park recently launched the Yellowstone Collection, a curated compilation of field recordings and a developing podcast series highlighting America’s first national park. The growing audio collection aims to create new ways to experience the animals, landscapes and people of the area by offering a freely accessible online archive of natural sounds, interviews and radio stories focused on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

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CHOATE NAMED BOBCAT HEAD COACH

Jeff Choate was named the MSU Bobcat football team’s 32nd head coach. The native of St. Maries, Idaho, played at the University of Montana Western prior to a long coaching career that included stops at Utah State, Eastern Illinois, Boise State, Washington State, Florida and, most recently, the University of Washington.

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SOUND AND COLOR Two young participants venture onto the dance floor at the 41st Annual MSU American Indian Council Pow Wow. The pow wow— Montana’s largest—is an annual rite of spring on the MSU campus.

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CALENDAR

A P R I L

29 BobcatFest on Main Downtown Bozeman M AY 5 MSU Library Trout Lecture

Featuring Thomas McGuane

6 Gallatin College, MSU student recognition 7 Spring Commencement Reunion weekend for classes of 1966, 1956 and 1946

12 Women’s Circle of Excellence Conference 16 Summer session begins

J U N E 15–18 Richard III Montana Shakespeare in the Parks

18 Villas of Oplontis near Pompeii exhibit Museum of the Rockies

22–25 The Comedy of Errors Montana Shakespeare in the Parks

27 Summer session 2nd six-week session begins

J U LY

7 MSU Campus Farms Field Tour

9 Wine and Culinary Classic Museum of the Rockies 13–16 Montana 4-H Congress

A U G U S T

10 Bobcat Brews Big Yellow Barn 24 Move-In Day

25–26 Catapalooza

26 Community Cat Walk Downtown Bozeman

29 First day of fall semester S E P T E M B E R

1 Freshman Convocation Wes Moore, author of The Work: My Search for a Life that Matters

Sonny Holland Golf Classic Gold Rush Game Bobcat Stadium Blue and Gold Fall Party Bobcat Athletics Homecoming Week Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship Golf Tournament 24 Homecoming Parade and Football Game

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For a complete MSU calendar of events, visit W W W . M O N TA N A . E D U/ C A L E N D A R

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MOVING DAY photos and text by Kelly Gorham

The annual rite of passage at the historic Northern Agricultural Research Center near Havre results in better beef A horse, a rider, a herd of mooing cows and the weather are four components of Montana ranching.

Twice a year, on nearly every ranch in the state, wranglers move their herds from summer range to winter range. Then, in the spring, they move them back in the other direction.

This January, Mountains and Minds went along as cowboys and researchers at MSU’s historic Northern Agricultural Research Center near Havre moved a herd of 400 cows from summer range in the Bears Paw Mountains near Havre 13 miles to NARC winter pastures. There, they wintered, calved and were studied for a variety of things, including the effects of nutrition on calves and the quality of beef.

Results from the research at the center are used to improve the quality of commercially raised beef throughout Montana.

Here is a glimpse into this northern Montana litany. 

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Before morning breaks, a tractor drops round bales of hay at a rendezvous point on the Thackeray Ranch, the summer range for a herd of 400 cows that will be moved 13 miles to the Northern Agricultural Research Center where they will graze, calve and be studied. The lead cow follows the slow-moving tractor, and the rest of the cows fall in line.

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January might seem like an odd time for a cattle drive, but Darrin Boss, superintendent of the NARC and MSU research professor of beef cattle nutrition, says that frequent Chinook winds on the property clear the 3,960 acres of grazing land of snow and ice on the ranch and provide ample forage into January.

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The NARC cattle drive is held each January, so wind can make a real difference. A head wind can quickly turn an eight-hour day into an 18-hour day. Fortunately for wranglers such as Delyn Jenson, caretaker at MSU’s Thackeray Ranch in the Bears Paw Mountains that serves as summer range for the MSU herd, the wind came from the side the day the crew moved roughly 400 head of cattle from summer range at 5,000 feet elevation to their winter home at the NARC. The favorable wind was welcome for the time savings, but it also felt, somehow, warmer than 6 degrees.

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Once the cattle are at the NARC, they spend the next few months, through calving season, at the 3,000-acre facility that is part of MSU’s College of Agriculture and Montana Agricultural Experiment Station where they are extensively studied. The research ranges from the effect of particular types of feed on the growth of calves to an examination of the permeability of blood vessels to determine if nutrients are reaching cell nuclei. Data from the research is used to improve cattle throughout Montana.

The 100-year-old center also researches crops grown in northern Montana, the only one of MSU’s seven research centers to study agronomy, soils, precision ag and livestock. The center is credited with making many agricultural advancements through the years and has influenced a majority of current agricultural practices in the region. Some of these include adoption of no-till farming, GPS use in cropping systems, seeding and fertilizing, increasing calf weaning weights, increase of yields in drought years, irrigation practices, nutrient application techniques, range renovation, grazing practices, breeding and genetic development of heterosis in cattle and soil physics research.

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Because the NARC is a working cattle ranch, the twice-yearly cattle drives are a necessity. In order to make them happen, researchers at the center trade their lab coats for oiled dusters to join other ranch personnel to bring the cattle in. For all involved, the drives are a matter of pride and a beloved tradition. 

To see more from the 2016 cattle drive visit W W W . M O N TA N A . E D U/ M O U N TA I N S A N D M I N D S

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BISON, WOMAN WITH MICROSCOPE, SHEEP KELLY GORHAM COW, MOSQUITO, BAT THINKSTOCK

RES EA R CH

MSU scientists lead efforts to study diseases that cross from animals to humans

by Denise Hoepfner

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We’re in a unique position here at MSU because we have people who study animal health and human health, so we can tap into those resources on each side and make some progress using the knowledge we have of human health and applying it to animals and vice versa. —Jovanka Voyich-Kane

In May 2011, a Montana child tested positive for Coxiella burnetii, the bacteria that causes Q fever. The source of infection was traced back to goats the family bought from a Washington farm seven months earlier. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found goats from the same farm were sold to 21 other farms in Washington, Montana and Oregon, with 16 of 17 goat herds testing positive for Coxiella burnetii infection. In animals like goats, cattle and sheep, the bacteria can cause aborted fetuses, stillbirths or births of weak calves, according to the CDC. Some

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people in contact with infected animals will contract chronic Q fever, which can show up weeks after an acute infection or years later. While most people with acute Q fever recover, some may experience pneumonia, central nervous system complications or inflammation of the lungs or heart tissue.

In 2003 and 2007, more than 200 human cases of West Nile virus in Montana were reported to the CDC. Of those reported cases, 75 in 2003 and 37 in 2007 were neuroinvasive, meaning the virus either reached the brain or the spinal cord, resulting in viral encephalitis or

meningitis. Four people died in each of those years from complications of the disease. A virus spread by mosquitoes that contract it from infected birds, West Nile also affects horses. Thirty-two cases of West Nile in equines were reported in Montana in 2013, the third highest total in the nation for that year, according to the Montana Livestock Department.

Every year, outbreaks of infectious diseases originating in the animal kingdom occur in humans around the world.

Scientists cite deforestation, changing weather patterns and the ease of air travel as reasons for these sometimes

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RES EA R CH

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BIGHORN SHEEP, LAB KELLY GORHAM

Samples in the Jutila lab are placed in a centrifuge in preparation for microscopic study. The Jutila group studies the RNA of bone marrow cells to better understand their immune response to an infection.

new and sometimes recurring threats.

Whether these diseases target people or animals or both, the consequences can be devastating, leading to loss of life or, as among agricultural communities in Montana, loss of livelihood.

At Montana State University, researchers in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, a department shared by the Colleges of Agriculture and Letters and Science, are working across the disciplines of human and veterinary medicine on infectious disease projects that focus on animal and human health.

Mark Jutila, head of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, said that emerging and reemerging infectious disease agents are an ongoing problem in both animal and human health.

“The estimate is 60 to 70 percent of infectious diseases in humans come from animals; that is what we focus on,” Jutila said.

A world-renowned immunologist, Jutila is an instructor in both the WWAMI (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho) cooperative medical program and the WIMU (Washington, Idaho, Montana and Utah) cooperative veterinary medicine program, making him one of a number of faculty members with expertise in both animal and human health.

An indication of the success of this cross-over work is a recent $1.5 million grant from the state of Montana’s new large-scale research initiative that has paved the way for a number of projects to reduce the impacts of infectious and inflammatory diseases on human and animal health, all under the umbrella of MSU’s “One Medicine” grant.

One medicine Rudolf Virchow, known as the father of cellular pathology, is credited as saying, “Between animal and human medicine there are no dividing lines, nor should there be.”

More than a century after Virchow’s death, there is a growing worldwide shift in medicine to consider the correlation

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between human and animal health by adopting a “one medicine” approach to research. By employing faculty with expertise in either the WWAMI or WIMU programs, and by conducting research in both animal and human medicine, MSU is doing just that.

“We’re in a unique position here at MSU because we have people who study animal health and human health, so we can tap into those resources on each side and make some progress using the knowledge we have of human health and applying it to animals and vice versa,” said Jovanka Voyich-Kane, associate professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. “In some respects, we are so much more advanced with our animal research…. We can learn from our successes in the animal world and apply them to human medicine.”

Jutila noted that some program research focuses on infectious agents that can be transmitted from animals to humans, such as Coxiella burnetii. The department also is starting a new project on brucellosis, a bacterial disease that affects cattle, bison and elk and which financially threatens Montana’s livestock industry.

And Voyich-Kane is working on ways to counter the antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains that can cause infections in both humans and animals.

Jutila also is working on a project that uses immune modulators called adjuvants to control bovine scours, a disease that is the major cause of death

in newborn calves and results in significant financial losses for cattle producers.

Jutila explained that adjuvants can be as simple as dietary or plant products or substances injected into humans or animals to make their immune systems work better.

Jutila’s research has applications to Voyich-Kane’s work in antimicrobial resistance in bacteria.

“Potentially, if you treat scours with adjuvants that promote an immune response that clears the infection, you could reduce the dependence on antibiotics and therefore decrease the pressure for bacteria to develop resistance,” Voyich-Kane said. “It all links together.”

Raina Plowright, an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, said her research of how a pathogen crosses from one species to another puts “one medicine” at the heart of her work.

“One medicine is necessary while you have pathogens crossing species barriers,” Plowright said. “Wildlife or domestic animals into humans—it’s important we understand the pathogen and host relationship at all its various interfaces, and the environment.”

While research is often thought of as a solitary pursuit, Plowright says it is becoming more important to connect the experts in different disciplines and areas of research and pull their findings together.

“To understand pathogen spillover from animals to humans, you have to be 25

RES EA R CH

able to understand what is happening in the animal reservoir hosts, how the pathogen is surviving in the environment, how human behavior facilitates exposure to the pathogens, and how pathogens overcome a series of barriers within humans, such as the immune system,” she said. “That requires animal ecologists, disease ecologists, epidemiologists, psychologists, social scientists and a diverse group of disease biologists from microbiologists to immunologists. You can study all these processes in isolation, but if you don’t bring them together, then it’s very difficult to make the appropriate public health intervention.

The one medicine approach is trying to bring in all those various perspectives to understand the big picture and make sensible interventions.”

Here are a few MSU researchers and the work they are doing to learn more about one medicine.

Pathogen spillover While scientists know that the majority of emerging diseases are zoonotic, meaning they can be passed to humans through an animal reservoir, not much is known about the way a pathogen crosses from one species to another.

Through her work on Hendra virus, one of several fatal zoonotic viruses spread from bats to humans in other parts of the world, Plowright studies the phenomenon known as spillover. While the bat-borne Hendra virus is not a large threat in the United States, Plowright’s research could lead to an understanding of spillover, something crucial to all human and animal health.

“Although we have huge public health challenges from zoonoses such as Ebola, H1N1 influenza, or SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), there are also ongoing challenges from endemic zoonoses, like salmonella, E. coli 0157 and leptospirosis,” Plowright said. “These pathogens affect people and livelihoods on a dayto-day basis in many parts of the world.

Even though zoonotic pathogens are a

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The one medicine approach is trying to bring in all those various perspectives to understand the big picture and make sensible interventions.

—Raina Plowright

big public health threat, we know very little about how pathogens filter through the ecological systems to infect humans.”

Plowright says understanding the dynamic of these pathogens within the animal reservoir populations (such as bats for Hendra virus) is essential to attaining a better understanding of how they spill over to domestic animals and humans.

Some pathogens can even survive for a period of time in the environment, making it possible for humans and animals to become infected without direct contact from the original source. Understanding how these pathogens survive outside the host is especially important to controlling outbreaks.

Plowright mentions Q fever and leptospirosis, a disease that can survive in water up to a year and is spread by rats.

Outbreaks of both have occurred when pathogens from a livestock source miles away were carried by wind.

Spillover threatens not only human health; the transmission of disease between species is also a profound issue for livestock and wildlife heath.

Plowright studies pathogens that spill over from domestic animals to wildlife, causing conservation and livestock management challenges. An example is her ongoing study of bighorn sheep pneumonia, a disease that jumps from domestic sheep into wild sheep and suppresses wild sheep populations in Montana and across the West.

“The phenomenon of spillover is really important to Montana and in understanding zoonotic diseases,” Plowright said. “We have all sorts of zoonotic infections we need to be concerned about—many of them are studied in this department.”

West Nile virus Why do some people who contract West Nile virus experience minor flu-like symptoms, while others suffer potentially deadly illnesses such as encephalitis and meningitis?

That’s the question behind Matt Taylor’s research of the virus, which is spread to humans through infected mosquitoes.

“What we’re trying to do is understand one of the basic principles behind (the virus’) ability to cause diseases,” said Taylor, an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. “West Nile oftentimes causes very benign illness in most healthy people, but in some individuals it can invade the brain.”

The virus first crossed the Mississippi River in 2003 and was a strong epidemic throughout the Dakotas, also making its way into Montana. Although Montana hasn’t had many cases, some of the cases were severe. Taylor said that while Montana has the potential to support an epidemic, it is unlikely that it will become endemic, which is when the virus is seen every year.

Taylor began researching West Nile after some surprising findings during his research on the Herpes Simplex 1 virus.

“We observed in our Herpes virus work that in one direction of spread, very few particles are transmitted between cells, so there’s this bottleneck on the size of the population that’s transmitted to the brain,” Taylor said.

Taylor explained that the West Nile researchers are trying to make similar observations as they track the population of viruses that move between cells in the nervous system because, like herpes, West Nile has the potential to cause

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PLOWRIGHT  SHIRLEY PLOWRIGHT

Raina Plowright researches diseases carried by bats.

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PHOTOS KELLY GORHAM

Jutila lab research associates Kelly Christensen, left, and Deann Snyder store cell lines in canisters cooled by liquid nitrogen.

severe infection of the brain in the central nervous system.

He said the scientists also are examining the basics of West Nile virus and how it activates the immune system and whether the immune system activation can be changed to alter the spread of infection.

A West Nile vaccine isn’t currently an option for people, Taylor said, because the risk of a bad reaction from a vaccine is greater than the odds of contracting the virus.

More at risk of West Nile virus in Montana are horses, and a spike of equine deaths from the virus was reported in the state in 2014. However, a vaccine for horses is available and is recommended by the American Association of Equine Practitioners.

“If we can just understand in general how this virus transmits within neurons, we can understand the human disease and the equine disease,” Taylor said.

He also points out that many of the viruses in the news today share a common denominator.

“A lot of these viruses—Zika, West Nile, Chickungunya, even herpes, for that matter—all have the same capability of infecting the nervous system and causing dramatic illness and disease,” he said. “This is a very understudied aspect of their pathogenesis.”

individuals without any underlying health issues.”

Voyich-Kane studies how Staphylococcus aureus initiates infection in an attempt to identify targets for vaccines and therapeutics. Her lab focuses on community-associated methicillinresistant strains of S. aureus, commonly known as MRSA. MRSA causes more than 12 million skin and soft-tissue infections per year in the United States.

MRSA is also a predominant cause of mastitis in cows, the most costly disease of the dairy industry, and one that has been a problem in Montana. It also can be transmitted between animals and humans.

The observation that healthy individuals were contracting S. aureus infections prompted the research into how S. aureus gets past a healthy immune system to cause disease.

“If we fully understand how S. aureus initiates infection by identifying the vulnerabilities of our early immune response to the bacterium, we can exploit this information to develop therapeutics that give the immune system the advantage,” Voyich-Kane said.

Voyich-Kane explained there is a form

of reciprocal communication between organisms and S. aureus and how they respond to each other.

“For a long time we were mammaliancentric and thought the host was choosing how to respond to the bug, and in reality pathogens are just as attuned to us as we are to them,” she said. “They sense us to a great level of specificity, and they respond with precision to the host challenge.”

One area of Voyich-Kane’s research investigates “blinding” S. aureus by removing a sensory system that it uses to sense a predominant innate cell called the neutrophil.

“Basically, you catch S. aureus off guard, with its defenses down, and when it can’t sense this cell, the host has the advantage and can respond appropriately to clear the infection,” she said.

Voyich-Kane said such research may help fight the problem of antibiotic resistance in S. aureus.

“If we don’t have to use antibiotics as frequently—for humans or livestock— the pressure on the pathogen to develop resistance decreases.” 

‘Blinding’ infections Once thought to be a problem specific to hospitals and nursing homes, infections caused by drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus are now being picked up in the day care, the locker room and other places that involve skin-to-skin contact or where people share equipment and supplies. These community-associated strains cause a variety of diseases ranging from mild skin and soft-tissue infections to invasive diseases such as sepsis and endocarditis, said Voyich-Kane.

“Twenty years ago, S. aureus was really a problem occurring in hospitalized patients,” Voyich-Kane said. “Now, it is a common infection occurring in healthy

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MSU scientists are studying brucellosis, an infectious disease caused by the Brucella bacteria, which can spread from animals to humans. The disease affects cattle, bison and elk.

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Centaur with boar.

A small and elegant white marble statue of Aphrodite (or Venus) fastening her sandal had been placed in a storeroom at the time of the eruption. right

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Oplontis the found world of

by Michele Corriel

Regina Gee brings a priceless exhibit to MSU that provides a rare glimpse into the lives of ancient Rome’s ‘1 percenters’

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GEE & ANDERSON, FRESCO DETAIL PAUL BARDAGJY

Gee works with Erin Anderson, MSU graduate student, to prepare fresco fragments of a small landscape panel to be photographed and entered into the project database. The fresco will be in the Villa Oplontis exhibit coming to MSU’s Museum of the Rockies in June.

le f t

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etween the first century B.C. and the first century A.D., Rome transformed itself from a small republic into an empire with resources and a grasp of power that defined its status as the center of Western civilization. It was a world that encompassed the green hills of England and the pyramids of Egypt. Elite Roman senators spent money from their conquests developing luxurious getaways.

The lifestyles of those ancient Romans, as revealed through the art and architecture of their era, have long fascinated the contemporary world. A particularly A fresco detail in a much larger wall design features a female sphinx crouched on a length of enlightening glimpse into the life of exarchitecture. The fresco, painted in about 50 B.C., is part of an entire luxurious dining room travagantly affluent Roman society was that will be recreated to scale by the Museum of the Rockies for the Oplontis exhibit. revealed just in the last few decades as archeologists excavated ancient sites on The Villas of Oplontis near Pompeii. The The exhibit currently is at the Kelsey the Bay of Naples, once the location of exhibit is coming to Bozeman because Museum at the University of Michigan. villas that were second homes to Rome’s one of its curators, Regina Gee, MSU art After its time at MSU, it will travel to wealthiest citizens. These sites have history professor specializing in ancient the Smith College Museum of Art in revealed priceless treasures buried for art, is a contributing scholar for the proj- Northampton, Mass., before returning centuries in the ashes of Mount Vesuvius, ect. Gee, who has a doctorate in Roman to Torre Annunziata, Italy. And since which erupted in 79 A.D. art and architecture from the University the MOR exhibit is larger than the Villa Oplontis, one of the many great of Texas, became involved in Oplontis as other two museum spaces, the show in seaside villas strung around the coastline a graduate student, and she is now one of Bozeman will really be a one-of-a-kind of the Bay of Naples like a pearl necklace, the world’s experts on the paintings and experience, Gee said. attracted the wealthy from all over the frescoes found at the site. “(The Oplontis exhibit will) draw empire. It was, in essence, a “Yellowstone Many of the artifacts coming to the crowds and be a teaching platform,” said Club” for the Roman upper crust. As Museum of the Rockies are those Gee said Sheldon McKamey, executive director of these elite patrons located their villas she fell in love with while on-site in Naples the Museum of the Rockies, who credaround the breathtaking landscapes, during seven summer seasons working on ited the vision and talent of Pat Leiggi, they made sure every architecturally the excavation. They range from marble director of exhibits and the exhibits team framed vista opened up to magnificent sculptures and paintings to objects from of Dave Kinsey and Jeff Holloway with views of both the mountains and the daily life, such as dice and oil lamps. creating the display. sea. It is even believed that Nero’s second wife, Augusta Sabina Poppaea, owned the Villa Oplontis for a time before she met her early death in 65 A.D. at the emperor’s hand.

An exhibit of more than 140 artifacts curated from the exquisite Villa Oplontis will visit Montana State University’s Museum of the Rockies from June 18 until Dec. 31. MSU is one of just three locations in the U.S., and the only one west of the Mississippi, to be visited by Leisure and Luxury in the Age of Nero:

MONTA NA STATE UNIV ERSIT Y IS ONE OF JUST THREE LOC ATIONS IN T HE UN I T ED S T AT E S T O BE VISITED BY THE OPLONTIS EXHIBIT.

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Gee works high on the wall to identify and describe a fresco on one of the more faded passages of a corridor wall at the Oplontis site. The fresco dates to 50 B.C. As the scholar in charge of writing the publication on the Villa Oplontis site, Gee has the responsibility of documenting all surviving frescoes, which remain in about 60 rooms and are in various stages of preservation.

ROME’S ‘1-PERCENTERS’ To really understand the historical importance of Villa Oplontis, it is important to take a step back to the era of the Roman Empire—the time of Nero, of Cleopatra and of Christ.

Located in the lush and temperate area the Italians still call Campania, the neighboring town of Pompeii had its origins as a settlement—a multicultural trading post next to the Sarno River, populated by Greeks, Etruscans and indigenous peoples like the Samnites and the Oscans. Gee explains that once the Roman general Sulla annexed the city (and renamed it, partially after his own family, the Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum), it was absorbed into Roman Italy. Within 30 years, the Villa Oplontis was built outside of Pompeii. Gee said the owner would have been a wealthy Roman of the senatorial class taking advantage of the new and very scenic real estate available for luxury consumption.

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“Pompeii was an upper-middle-class town. Oplontis was where the wealthiest of Romans went to get away from the dust and the politics of Rome,” Gee explained. “This is the 1 percent.”

Although it was known from an ancient Roman road map, the site was deeply buried following the historic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Near the current day town of Torre Annunziata, the site of the ancient, opulent villa was first discovered by accident in 1590 when the Count of Sarno built a canal and discovered the ruins, but he didn’t do anything with them.

In 1734, Charles of Bourbon, Prince of Naples, wanted to create his own collection of artifacts from the ancient ruins—statues mostly—and attempted to treasure hunt the site. In a happy circumstance, his tunnelers hit the slave quarters and the kitchen, in one case missing a marble sculpture by mere inches, so the most precious finds remained undiscovered.

Finally in 1964, the Italian Ministry of

Culture funded restoration to reconstruct Villa Oplontis, uncovering the luxury villa, swimming pool, carefully designed gardens, frescoes, mosaics and an array of sculptures. After extensive excavation and restoration by the Italian archaeological team, Villa Oplontis was opened to the public, becoming a destination for those tourists already on the Bay of Naples to visit Pompeii.

In 2005, John R. Clarke, an art historian and expert on Roman antiquities based at the University of Texas, approached Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei, about resuming the scholarly work begun by the Italians and expanding it to include the publication of all aspects of the Villa, such as building history, decoration and all related finds. Clarke became co-director of the Oplontis Project, and he invited Gee, once his graduate student, to participate in the project as the Roman wall painting/ fresco specialist. She has been involved

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GEE PAUL BARDAGJY EARRINGS COURTESY OF REGINA GEE

in the project since 2007.

“When I walked into the villa … I was completely overwhelmed,” Gee said of her initial research season.

Gee explained that the design of Villa Oplontis “Villa A,” an expansive resort compound boasting 60 rooms and 99 spaces, was designed to entertain its guests with sumptuous delights—food, birds, flowers, architecture, water features and painted fresco walls.

Examples of the over-the-top indulgences enjoyed at the Villa Oplontis include alabaster thresholds, intricate mosaic floors, display fountains, marble statues and even what the Oplontis team believes to be an infinity pool, where water from the 60-meter swimming pool dropped off the 40-foot cliff at the edge of the villa. A series of large-scale marble sculptures, including portraits of the family, mythological gods and creatures, lined the edge of the swimming pool to reflect in the water. Among the statues coming to Bozeman is Nike, her once bronze wings now gone.

“At the time of the eruption, we believe the villa was in the midst of a renovation,” Gee said. “While we have objects relating to daily life, including things like oil lamps, we do not have the material remains of occupation: food left in cooking pots, etc., like you sometimes see at Pompeii.”

STYLE HISTORY It was Gee’s responsibility to document the opulent paintings and frescoes, which were found on walls, ceilings and even columns. Many used trompe l’œil, or trick of the eye, to create illusionary images on the wall: shelves with birds on the ledges, sumptuous curtains parting to reveal a window to legendary scenes, or bowls of fruit so real one might try to pick one. The frescoes are vital because the vast majority of ancient Roman frescoes in existence are the ones from Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as Villa Oplontis, Gee said. In fact, with three of the four successive styles of frescoes present, the Villa Oplontis contains the history of Roman wall painting in a sort of “style history” that extends for

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more than a century.

Gee began her research by making sketches, taking notes and filming the walls, trying to find her way into a world that disappeared nearly two millennia ago. Each time she sat down she’d learn something new, she said. The more she studied the paintings, the more she came to understand how they worked in the villa, “and how they were a mechanism that connected with the viewers by engaging, entertaining and even directing them as part of the leisurely experience.”

Gee said she “listened” for the human voice in the paintings, not the edicts handed down from ruler to ruler, which is a unique perspective.

“It is the cultural context that will let you retrieve a human voice,” she said. “Understanding that context means embracing the role of ‘history detective’ to research and explore many different categories of evidence in a painting, sculpture or building. Art history was always the discipline that I loved absolutely and fiercely because of the power of the connection to human perception, emotion and experience. Art history is history, after all—one where visual material forms the principal object of study for a given culture.”

Clarke commends Gee’s work on the project.

“On any given work day, I would find (Gee) studying and describing in precise detail the beautiful but dizzyingly complex frescoes throughout the villa,” Clarke said. “Her descriptive catalogue, soon to be published in the second volume of the Oplontis Villa A series, surpasses all earlier attempts to capture the beauty and complexity of these dazzling frescoes.”

R EACHING ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES Dean Adams, MSU studio art professor, and Regina Gee, MSU art history professor who was a curator of the Villa Oplontis exhibit, felt that the exhibit could serve as a thread to weave together multiple MSU disciplines through such courses as agriculture, geology, cultural identity, architecture, real and painted landscapes, sacred topographies and mythological landscapes, tourism and infrastructure, and the privileged “consumption” of exquisite landscapes as a leisure activity. With that idea in mind, they put together a successful proposal for a grant from the MSU Office of the Provost to cover the costs for nine faculty during the 2015 study season to visit the Villa Oplontis and related archaeological sites of Pompeii, Stabia and Herculaneum. There they met with the Oplontis Project directors and archaeologists to develop coursework for MSU students, as well as Montana elementary school students, incorporating the exhibit across disciplines.

“Arts are the shell that defines a culture,” Adams said. “Art history by nature is interdisciplinary, and this project in particular involves many of the hard sciences. Regina and I wanted to find a way to engage the community, to make the museum a classroom.”

Gee and Adams spoke to as many departments as they could, ending up with 13 proposals and the funding for nine.

“Most of the ideas tie the Bay of Naples, Vesuvius and Roman culture to the here and now,” Adams said. “The exhibit will offer a variety of ways for students to explore their identities.”

Vaughan Judge, director of the MSU School of Art, said the related coursework speaks to the quality of faculty at MSU. “Regina Gee’s work, along with (that of) Dean Adams, is going to afford the university the framework for real interdisciplinary studies,” Judge said. “It’s going to be a blockbuster of a show.”

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urrently, the Oplontis team is working on exploring a second and possibly related site with the modern name of “Villa B.” It is located near the first villa and a bit closer to the coastline, most likely for purposes of trade. At Villa B, many large

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A fresco about Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides was painted in the last few decades (A.D. 45–79) of the Villa Oplontis’ existence before it was buried by the 79 A.D. eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It decorated the wall of what was a multi-room private bathing complex.

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HERCULES FRESCO PAUL BARDAGJY ARTEMIS/DIANA COURTESY OF REGINA GEE

transport containers were found in the courtyard, apparently waiting to be filled.

They are thought to be strong evidence for commerce in wine. The wine itself may well have been produced from grapes grown in vineyards belonging to Villa A. This trade could have supplied a steady income for the owners of both establishments. Other foodstuffs found in Villa B include large quantities of pomegranates, hay and walnuts.

The most important and poignant finds from Villa B are the skeletal remains of 54 people who died while trying to escape the eruption. They huddled as a group in a vaulted storage space, waiting, it seems, for a rescue from the direction of the sea, Gee explained. Many pieces of gold jewelry and more than 300 gold and silver coins found with the skeletons speak to the wealth that they carried with them in their futile bid for safety and flight. Some of those artifacts will be on display at the Museum of the Rockies show.

Gee said that the Italian government granted special permission for the exhibit.

Once the artifacts leave the United States, they will not leave Italy again because of Italian cultural property laws surrounding any artifacts discovered in Italy and the country’s long history of stolen art.

Clarke said that it was Gee who first proposed the idea of the exhibition in the summer of 2009, as the researchers were winding down from their longest excavation season at Oplontis.

“We had already made major discoveries among the thousands of fragments of wall painting that we were cleaning, photographing and cataloging,” Clarke recalled. “I found her proposal compelling, and immediately drafted a letter to the representative of the Italian Ministry of Culture requesting permission to bring the glories of Oplontis to the United States in a major loan exhibition.

I thank Regina for her vision and for her steadfast devotion to the Oplontis Project over these past 10 years.” 

THE OPLONTIS EXHIBIT Leisure and Luxury in the Age of Nero: The Villas of Oplontis near Pompeii will be on display at MSU’s Museum of the Rockies from June 18–Dec. 31. Since the Museum of the Rockies is the largest venue for this exhibit, which will also visit the University of Michigan and Smith College, there are extras at MSU that won’t be seen anywhere else.

Shelley McKamey, executive director of the Museum of the Rockies, said the exhibit will feature three actual-size re-created rooms from the villa, complete with the same height walls, floor mosaics and wall frescoes, so the viewer will be immersed in the experience.

One of the rooms will have a four-sided kiosk where gaming technology will allow visitors to take a virtual tour of the entire villa.

“It will be as if you could snap your fingers and go to Oplontis,” McKamey said. “My favorite part is the fact that you are looking at objects that were in use in the time of Christ—2,000 years ago—so it’s not too far-fetched to think they were talking about the rise of Christianity and the problems it was posing for Rome. This is something that’s never been done before in Montana.”

McKamey credits the vision and creative skill of Pat Leiggi, the museum’s director of exhibits, and the exhibits team of Dave Kinsey and Jeff Holloway with creating what she said will be a true blockbuster exhibit.

McKamey said the exhibit also will offer programs for area schools, and that the museum has never before had an exhibit integrated so closely with the campus.

“We’re combining the research Regina Gee is doing with the actual objects and community engagement, which are all tenets of MSU’s strategic plan. Getting those integrated is a pretty cool thing.”

A life-size white marble statue of Artemis/Diana, goddess of the hunt, will be one of the sculptures that will travel from Italy to Bozeman for the Museum of the Rockies Villa Oplontis exhibit.

Created in the Neronian period (first century A.D.), she stood along the reflective surface of the very large pool at the villa.

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I KNEW THAT AN INTELLIGENT, EDUCATED PERSON WILL HAVE A DIFFERENT WINDOW ON THE WORLD. THAT PERSON WILL BE MORE TOLERANT, MORE ACCEPTING OF OTHER CULTURES. —Andrew Raduly

MAKING IT HIS MISSION

story by Anne Cantrell · photos by Kelly Gorham

From Romanian tailor’s apprentice to rural Montana pastor, MSU graduate student hopes to improve his parishioners’ spiritual and financial health Andrew Raduly regularly reads articles from America’s leading financial journals to his newborn triplets, sons Maximilian Theodore and Christopher William, and daughter Sophie Victoria. He does so because he knows first-hand the importance of education, and also because Raduly—a Seventh Day Adventist pastor who is studying for a master’s degree in family financial planning in order to help his parishioners— realizes the importance of language.

“I’m reading Forbes and The Wall Street Journal to our children,” said Raduly, who speaks four languages.

“At 8 weeks old, I know they don’t understand anything, but they will have that language from a very young age.”

Raduly’s own view of the importance of education has been shaped by his life that began as a tailor’s apprentice in Romania and has led him to earn several degrees.

An ethnic Hungarian from

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Transylvania, an area that was ceded to Romania after World War II, Raduly’s formative years were spent in Romania under communist rule.

Raduly said he saw how the government repressed intelligentsia. As a child, he was told that he would go to a trade school rather than high school. He simultaneously witnessed his mother—who had a job in an armaments procurement factory and who was raising Raduly and his brother on her own—work hard, yet struggle to get by.

But Raduly loved to learn, and as a teenager he decided that he would emigrate from Romania when possible. By 18, he was living in Hungary. Just a few years later, he moved to the United States. He went on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees without going into debt, and he has since dedicated more than 16 years to his chosen profession.

Now Raduly, 39, is again seeking additional education, this time moti-

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vated by a desire to improve others’ lives.

Raduly valued knowledge—even as a As a pastor at two Seventh Day Adventist youth—for two reasons. churches in eastern Montana, Raduly “One, I knew that an intelligent, said he often works with people of limited educated person will have a different means who would benefit from financial window on the world,” Raduly said. counseling. However, when Raduly di“That person will be more tolerant, more rects his parishioners to a financial adviser, accepting of other cultures. Hungarians he said the response is always the same: and Romanians always had tensions that they cannot afford one. between (one another). It was a bigoted “Financial planning is often expensive view of life to some extent. I realized to the detriment of those who need it the more (they were) educated, the more most,” Raduly said. tolerant they (became). I wanted to have Raduly decided to do something peaceful cohabitation with other people. about it. He found an online Montana I didn’t want conflict.”

State University graduate program in The second reason was simply because family financial planning and enrolled he had always enjoyed reading and last fall. After graduation, he plans to studying. He said his love of learning become a certified financial planner and was solidified during childhood sumoffer his services to those who need it mers when he lived with an aunt who the most—for free. had a huge library. There, he said, he “The goal with my MSU education is would read from morning to evening.

“She did not ask me to do anything to make sure I have the knowledge to but read. I was reading ferociously, book help people who cannot afford financial after book,” Raduly said. “It solidified counseling,” Raduly said. “I’ve made it my mission that people who are listening my desire for more books and education.”

However, his mother, who herself will not go broke anymore.” did not go to school beyond the eighth

grade, believed that jobs, rather than books, were the future. So, after his eighth-grade graduation from a boarding academy, Raduly enrolled in a trade school for tailoring. He then went on to apprentice with a tailor.

Though being a tailor was considered a “lowly” position, Raduly said, the man with whom he apprenticed earned a good living. Still, Raduly knew he wanted to continue to learn, and when communism dissolved in Romania in 1989, Raduly decided to go to high school. He enrolled in a program where students could work in the morning and attend high school in the evening. The days were long: Raduly would work as a tailor from 6 a.m. until 2:30 p.m., then he would go to school until 9 p.m.

But Raduly felt fortunate to have the freedom to learn. A few days after earning a high school degree, he immigrated to Hungary to continue to further his studies, this time intending to earn a bachelor’s degree in a subject that he likely wouldn’t have considered even a few years earlier: theology.

Although he grew up in a Catholic environment, Raduly said he didn’t believe in God until a teacher came to his boarding academy when he was about 13 and in the seventh grade. She was a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Although she was not allowed to talk much about her religion, one day she asked Raduly, “Why don’t you try God out?”

“I was always up for a good challenge,” he said, laughing. “I told her, ‘If there is a God, I want this professor to give me an A without ever opening a book.’”

Raduly hosts a weekly call-in program on a low frequency FM station to answer spiritual and financial questions.

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Judith and Andrew Raduly and their triplets, (left to right) Christopher, Sophie and Maximilian. Raduly said his children will know the language of financial planning at a young age.

Remarkably, Raduly said, it happened.

Contradicting his previous grading methods, Raduly’s professor came to class the next day and said, “I have one question. If someone answers it, I’ll give him an A.” It was a question about Hungarian literature, and Raduly nailed it.

Raduly was moved. He started going to church and searching for answers to his questions about God and religion.

Another sign soon followed. Raduly said he was very poor when he moved to Hungary and would not have been able to pay the necessary fees to enroll in theology school. When the government gave him a scholarship for a year, he viewed it as a sign from God that he was on the right path.

“From a faith perspective, that was very cool,” he said.

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had just lost his mother in a terrible accident, and he was ready for a break.

When he was awarded a three-month tourist visa, he said it felt like he had been given the world.

“I was just a young Hungarian kid. I went to New York City, to the bottom of the (World) Trade Towers. I had $80, and I wanted to eat at McDonald’s. I wanted to feel American. At the time it was a sense of freedom—a sense that you can do anything you want.”

Raduly said he fully intended to go back to Hungary when his visa expired, but his plans changed when he was offered a scholarship to attend a mission college that was part of the Black Hills Health & Education Center in Hermosa, South Dakota. He was there for about a year, and then in 2001, became a Seventh Day Adventist pastor for several small congregations in Minnesota.

Simultaneously, he started attending a

local community college in Minnesota, and then transferred to Minnesota State University.

“I paid cash for school. Coming from a place where credit cards were nonexistent, and seeing my mom struggle (to make ends meet), this was very personal for me,” he said. “It was a culture shock coming to America to see how you can get so much money for free and you don’t have to do anything for it. But I knew you had to pay it back, so I said no to debt. I self-funded my entire education by saving and working.”

Within three years, Raduly finished a bachelor’s degree in history from Minnesota State University. He decided to enroll in a master’s program at Andrews University in Michigan, the flagship university of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

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Raduly hopes his MSU graduate program will enable him to provide information about financial planning to those who need it most—those who cannot afford it.

garian) while traveling abroad—Raduly landed a job in Montana as pastor of churches in Miles City, Hardin and Custer. Later, in 2013, he became pastor of a district that includes churches in Roundup and Lewistown.

Raduly said he loves the work, particularly in smaller churches, but through his ministry he also sees a large need to help his parishioners learn about financial planning.

“People here have financial issues, but I’ve had an inability to help them,” Raduly said. “As a minister, I can help spiritually, but without formal education and training in financial matters, how do I tell someone to save money other than on an anecdotal level? When people come to the church and the church board and say, ‘Pastor, can I have some money because I can’t make this bill,’ what do you do? Do you satisfy the present need and people keep coming back? Or do you put a system in place where people will have financial literacy? How do you teach someone to be self-sufficient?”

He searched online for family financial planning courses and found MSU’s master’s program in family financial planning. The program—which is designed for working professionals who already have bachelor’s degrees—is offered through the Great Plains Distance Education Alliance, a consortium of eight land-grant universities, including MSU. Students choose one of the eight institutions as their “home” and enroll in that university as a graduate student. Then students take several online courses from each of the participating institutions throughout the course of their degree, benefiting from shared resources and shared intellectual expertise.

At MSU, the program is housed in the College of Education, Health and Human Development.

Raduly also feels fortunate to have received a $1,500 Marie Moebus Scholarship for Family Financial Planning to help finance his MSU degree. The schol-

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WE LIVE IN THE MOST GENEROUS, HARD-WORKING COUNTRY ON THE PLANET. NO AMERICAN FAMILY SHOULD GO BROKE FOR LACK OF FINANCIAL LITERACY. —Andrew Raduly

arship is given to students who demonstrate a desire to help people make households and families healthier.

“It felt phenomenal to get the scholarship,” Raduly said. “Without it, I would not be able to do this program right now. We have lots of extra expenses with triplets. Even with planning, I’ve been anxious to be sure everything is covered.”

Raduly began the program last fall and hopes to complete it by 2018, when he also is scheduled to complete a doctoral program in organizational leadership through Andrews University.

Raduly calls MSU’s people its greatest asset.

“The people are phenomenal,” he said. “They’ve been so genuine and willing to help.”

Deborah Haynes, head of the Department of Health and Human Development at MSU who teaches courses in the family financial planning program, said there is a huge need for personalized information about finances and retirement.

“Any family goal has a money component, whether it be to send your child to college, or to get married or to choose a career,” Haynes said. “Whatever you have as a family goal, there is a money demand and a money consequence. The more people understand that and how to make it more efficient and work toward their own family goals with less financial stress, the better off they’ll be. Financial plan-

ning is very much a helping profession.”

Furthermore, Haynes said, Raduly’s own background gives him credibility.

“He’s been through the school of hard knocks. He’s done a lot of education.

He’s a real go-getter. Life has not handed it to him on a plate. Most people understand that.”

Haynes noted that Raduly will be well-positioned to deliver help to individuals and families in his community.

“One of the things we want in our graduates is a certain sense they are trusted, so that individuals and families can confide in them their deepest concerns and fears and goals,” she said. “Andrew will have both the pastoral trust, along with the fiduciary trust, of the people he serves. By giving them solid information and working with them, he can really help his own community do better.”

Raduly agrees, and has already started a weekly call-in program on a lowfrequency FM station to answer listeners’ spiritual and financial questions.

“Financial literacy is extremely important in any family. The very health and spiritual well-being of the family unit depends on wise, informed, long-term financial decisions,” Raduly said. “We live in the most generous, hard-working country on the planet. No American family should go broke for lack of financial literacy.” 

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WHY HE CAME WEST

story by Michael Becker · photos by Sepp Jannotta

New MSU position allows noted writer Rick Bass to braid his passions for nature, teaching, conservation activism and the landscape of his beloved adopted state Rick Bass is not from Montana.

A Texan by birth, he has as firm a claim on the title “Montanan” as anyone born north of Wyoming and south of the 49th parallel—a claim he has substantiated with undying passion for his adopted home in Montana’s distant, wooded, barely populated Yaak Valley, the place he has been trying to protect almost since the moment he settled there in 1987.

During his nearly three decades in Montana, Bass has honed his reputation as the author of 16 nonfiction books, four novels, dozens of short stories and myriad other writings. Bass’ most recent collection of short stories, “For a Little While,” was published in March. A reviewer in the The New York Times Sunday Book Review said, “What comes into focus in this collection is that Bass hasn’t been writing just to save our wild places, but to save what’s wild and humane and best

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within us.” He has won O. Henry awards and numerous other prizes and has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation and others. He’s a respected writing teacher and coach, too, a skill he has engaged at workshops and seminars across the country.

Critics over the years have written much about how the writer lives in the gaps between the binaries life has built around him. He’s a Texan and a Montanan, a writer and activist, an oil and gas man dedicated to conservation—a man who writes about nature and one who writes for nature.

It’s a unique perspective for anyone to have, and one that Montana State University hopes to capitalize on by naming Bass the university’s first Western Writer in Residence. The position includes teaching duties, where Bass can use his

dual passions for Montana to inspire students.

“Many have told me,” Bass writes in the conclusion to Why I Came West, “that it is my passion, not my ideas, that frightens people, but if I had any of it to do over again, I would have been twice so rather than half as much. It’s not so hard to be passionate and yet still remain civilized, if not dignified. There is almost always room for more passion.”

Bass was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1958, and grew up in the Houston suburbs. His father was a geologist and his mother was an English teacher.

In an afterword to Bass’ book Brown Dog of the Yaak, Scott Slovic, a professor at the University of Idaho who is considered a central scholar in the field of ecological literary criticism, says young Bass’ real love for nature was kindled while out hunting

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Writer Rick Bass in Montana’s Paradise Valley

with his family and during trips to the scrubland hill country 250 miles north of the city, where he learned “his deepest childhood lessons about paying attention to landscape, about loving a place.”

In the late 1970s, Bass attended Utah State University in Logan, studying wildlife science and slipping into the northern Utah wilderness on the weekends, often with little more than a sleeping bag and his books.

He took an internship as a biologist in Arkansas, only to be told by his unhappy boss, “You need to change your major or you’ll be doing what I’m doing—only desk work.”

Bass took the man’s advice and switched to geology, and then after graduating in 1980, he went to work in Mississippi as an oil and gas field geologist.

“A real pivotal experience, perhaps more so than any,” Bass recalled. “It’s

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IT’S NOT SO HARD TO BE PASSIONATE AND YET STILL REMAIN CIVILIZED, IF NOT DIGNIFIED. THERE IS ALMOST ALWAYS ROOM FOR MORE PASSION. —Rick Bass

essentially how I learned to write: by become involved in the wilderness and looking for oil and gas. The process is environmental issues facing his new home. eerily similar.”

The Yaak is as far northwest as people Bass had taken some writing classes in have managed to settle in Montana. The Logan. One of his teachers, Thomas Lyon, census says fewer than 250 people live wrote that Bass had, “Both image-detail there. The valley was only electrified in and playfulness, wit. You dream of seeing 1963, back when it was home to just 83 those qualities in student writing. You families. One resident back then told dream of seeing them in your own writing.” Time magazine, “When I came here in As the ’80s wore on, Bass found himself 1917, it was a wilderness. It is not so good drawn to writing. He published his first now. There are too many people, and book in 1985, a collection of essays called they are making too many roads. They “The Deer Pasture,” and his first major kill all the animals.” piece of fiction two years later in The Closer to Idaho and Canada than Paris Review, Where the Sea Used to Be. pretty much any town in Montana, it’s a It was at that time that another lure place of low elevation and high precipibecame too strong for him to ignore: tation, key to many regional conserva“I was missing the West,” he said. tion initiatives, important in a chain of wetlands running into Canada, and a habitat of recovery for the endangered Rick Bass writes about Montana.

In her book The Lure of the Local, Lucy grizzly bear. Bass and others have said that nothing has gone extinct in the Lippard writes that when people move Yaak since the Ice Age, accounting for its to a place they’ve never been before, they immense biological diversity. become interested in those who went “Here, more so than anywhere else ahead of them.

I have been, the presence of one thing “Having been displaced from their own does not take away from the ability of history,” she writes, “they are ready to other things to be present,” Bass has adopt those of others, or at the very least written of the place. are receptive to their stories.”

A majority of the valley is federally When Bass and his wife (then girlmanaged land, though as the Yaak Valley friend), Elizabeth Hughes, finally Forest Council notes, this is a doublestumbled into the Yaak Valley in 1987 to edged sword, because Forest Service take on, in his words, a “plum” caretaking policies about road building and timber job, there was plenty to adapt to, not least do not always align with conservationists’ of which were the polar differences between a Montana winter and a Mississippi plans. Clashes between environmentalists and the loggers have run particularly summer. But the jump from one extreme to another couldn’t chase him south again. hot at times.

“When I began advocating for protect“With the Yaak, it was very much love ing the Yaak’s last wild places, there was at first sight, an immediate and oververy severe logging damage being done whelming response,” he said. to the forest,” Bass said, adding that After adaptation came adoption. Bass while logging has been somewhat resaid it took only about a year for him to

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duced over time thanks to the advocacy efforts he has helped spearhead, mining remains a threat.

“This landscape has given me a lot, and I want to protect it and give back to it,” he said.

To this day, he remains most proud of working with former Montana U.S. Rep. Pat Williams on a bill that protected six of the Yaak’s roadless areas in the 1990s.

He said the fact that he’s neither Yaak Valley-born nor a native Montanan didn’t hold him back from jumping headlong into the cause.

“I think the depth of engagement and knowledge is what determines a person’s relationship with landscape and not a stamp of approval based on a birth certificate,” he said.

“That said, I’ve been up here longer than most. It’s a hard place,” he said, describing the economic and psychological hardships, the long winters and short days, the “brooding, tight, limited viewscapes, mysterious renegades and outlaws, innumerable biting insects.

Literary critics in particular focus on Bass’ activism. In addition to his pointed writings, he sits on boards dedicated to achieving permanent protection for the Yaak, and many of his essay collections are specifically geared toward presenting a case for the remote valley and involving readers in the fight. But he says his environmental focus extends across his entire adopted state.

“Montana is so often ground zero for major environmental and social battles,” he said. “Mining reform, international water issues, fire policy, endangered species, asbestos contamination, sulfur and heavy metal toxins from open railcar transport, carbon extraction, fracking, oil and gas development in sensitive lands such as the Rocky Mountain Front, wilderness, forest reform…

“Who would have time to work on behalf of any other issues, even if one wanted?”

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Writer Rick Bass is MSU’s first Western Writer in Residence.

Bass’ former Utah State professor Lyon wrote about hearing Bass speak at a late-1990s conference where many in attendance were skeptical about the proper balance between authorship and activism.

“Rick took his audience to where nature writing starts and to why it exists….

He taught, and the English professors listened in flawless silence. They may never have seen a writer so truly claimed by his subject, so in love,” Lyon recalled.

And Slovic, the biographical portraitist, wrote of Bass that he “has demonstrated not only a unique literary and activist voice but virtually unprecedented energy in pursuit of his craft and his causes….

This writer has a bomb in his heart—such is the incandescence within him.”

MSU hopes to bottle some of that energy and raise its profile in the field of creative writing and as a research and educational hub in the study of the American West, said Nicol Rae, dean of the College of Letters and Science.

The Western Writer in Residence program is housed in MSU’s English department. It has put Bass into the classroom teaching creative writing and as a guest

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lecturer, and it will bring him into the Bozeman community through events, such as the reading and discussion that launched his residency in late May at the city’s famed Ellen Theater.

“It highlights our strengths as a center for the study of the region, particularly in its humanities aspect,” Rae said. “I think it also really takes our creative writing program to a new level.”

Kirk Branch, head of MSU’s English department, said Bass was targeted for the residency for the depth and breadth of his experience, for being a Montana writer, and for the range of expertise he can bring to the university and the community.

“To have an activist and writer and novelist like Rick Bass in our department is an extraordinary opportunity for students to work with someone who knows that profession in a deep way,” Branch said.

Bass began his classroom duties in the fall of 2015, living out of a rented cabin south of Pray, at the base of Emigrant Peak in Paradise Valley.

Teaching, he said, has become yet another of his passions.

“It is as gratifying to help shape someone else’s story or essay into something fine and polished and important as it is to labor on one’s own work,” he said.

“Increasingly, there is no difference.

“I love showing up for work knowing, with absolute certainty, that I am going to be surprised by something a student has to offer in each class—that I will learn something more about people who are, after all, the currency of all stories.”

Writing can be painful, he said, but it’s worth pushing through the discomfort because writing, maybe more than the pain of personal discovery, is about learning problem solving, about exercising the imagination and learning how to make things work.

“You learn how to find ways to say yes rather than become trapped in an equation that leads to no,” he said. “You’re making a new world and entering a world of your making, creating logic, rules, consequences, morals. These are good things to kick around in the brain pan as a human being.”  To read an excerpt from Bass’ writing, see page 71.

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ATHLETICS

Beth and Evin Groves run a music company that served 4,000 clients last year.

WIRED FOR MUSIC

story by Alison Reidmohr · photos by Kelly Gorham

Building on MSU experience, former Bobcat athletes Evin and Beth Groves build Studio Linked, a successful hi-tech music company Evin Groves thinks like a running back.

When life presents him with an obstacle, he looks for a clear path past it to his goal. Over the course of a few years, his vision, hard work and strategic thinking have taken the former Bobcat athlete from standing broke in a cow pasture in Wilsall to running a music company that made $700,000 dollars last year serving 4,000 clients.

Groves and his wife, Elizabeth Sager Groves, who played basketball at Montana State University, are co-owners of Studio Linked, a business that is rooted in Groves’ lifelong love for all music and his enrollment in an MSU School of Music class.

“I’m still a running back, but in my new career,” said Groves. “I’m going to find that opportunity and work my way through.”

Growing up in National City, California, a southern suburb of San Diego, Groves found he had an aptitude for two things: football and music. He comes by both through strong family ties.

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His aunt Lani Groves sang back up for Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. Her husband, Steve Groves, wrote famous jingles for nationally recognized brands, and his grandfather had a composition featured in the Disney film Cars.

He also comes from a family of athletes. His mother, Juanita Sewell Groves, was a track star who competed against Olympic champion Gail Devers. His uncle Clyde Sewell played football for Brigham Young University.

During a standout junior year playing football at Sweetwater High School in which he was often compared to his friend from a neighboring school, Reggie Bush, Groves was heavily recruited by some of the best college football programs in the country: Nebraska, UCLA, San Diego State and others. Then came an injury while playing.

“When I tore my knee, some of those bigger schools kind of fell off a little bit,” Groves said.

After a strong senior year, MSU offered

Groves a scholarship to play football. It was around this time that he learned he wasn’t eligible to be an NCAA athlete, but couldn’t figure out why. Coach Rob Christoff, then a linebacker coach at MSU, stepped in to help him through.

By the time the problem was settled, Groves was the last recruit accepted to the Bobcat’s 2004–2005 class. He arrived the second day of school.

It was another injury sustained while playing as a Bobcat that connected Evin with his wife, Beth, a basketball player from Wilsall.

“I tore my PCL (posterior cruciate ligament) in practice, so I was always in the training room,” Groves said.

“And (MSU basketball coach Tricia) Binford loved for us to get our ankles taped every day, so we spent a lot of time in there,” Beth said.

An athletic trainer who knew both of them “played matchmaker,” and they started dating.

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EVIN AND BETH GROVES KELLY GORHAM

EVIN GROVES KELLY GORHAM

ATHLETICS

Studio Linked’s Evin Groves was introduced to professional music software during an MSU music class.

ON ANOTHER NOTE

Lee remembers Groves as a student with great passion and excitement about music, and especially about music technology.

“Evin is a consummate musician: every fiber of his being is wired for music,” Lee said.

It was during her class that Lee laid Groves’ foundation for basic musicality and introduced him to professional music software.

“She was talking about creating the first ever (music technology) course at MSU, and that helped introduce me to the next level of music technology for more serious composers and producers,” Groves said.

Both Evin and Beth credit Lee with seeing Evin’s talent and encouraging him to pursue music production.

“My sole purpose as a teacher is to identify students’ strengths, and then bring it to their attention,” Lee said.

That PCL tear ultimately led Groves to retire from football as a college sophomore.

“Dr. Campbell and (head athletic trainer Rob Higgs) said, ‘When you’re 40, do you want to be able to play with your kids or crawl on the ground with them, or do you want to give it another chance? It could get worse.’”

It was a hard decision, because Groves took real joy in playing football.

“To watch little boys run up to him after games. He was so sweet, he would give them his game gloves and sign them.

I said, ‘Are you sure you want to let go of that?’” Beth recalled.

Ultimately, Groves saw the injury as his chance to pursue music. “When I tore my knee, it hurt because it was the end of my football career. But it was the start for a brand new journey, which was my music production.”

As a liberal studies major, Groves took THE BIRTH OF A COMPANY classes in “a little bit of everything.” His With little else to do other than work interest in music led him to take an introductory class from music professor Ilse-Mari on the computer following his injury, Lee, who is now dean of the Honors College. Groves started his music production

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company right after his injury and while still a student at MSU. “I couldn’t really do much walking at the time, so I was kind of locked in on the computer,” Groves said. “I started uploading some of these compositions I had been making and seeing that there was an opportunity for business online.”

He offered artists easy ways to create songs, by doing the heavy lifting of composing the music and writing the hook, which today is industry standard for production of pop music.

“I was an artist’s best friend,” Groves said. “I was providing the music composition and the lyrics for the hook, which makes your job a lot easier when you have a concept to build off of.”

While he was building an online music production business, he was also creating his own music and distributing it through several channels. For instance, Groves would write an album featuring a few songs specifically about MSU and Bobcat Pride, and go door-to-door in the residence halls selling them. One of his compositions, a song called “Bobcat For-

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WHEN I TORE MY KNEE, IT HURT BECAUSE IT WAS THE END OF MY FOOTBALL CAREER. BUT IT WAS THE START FOR A BRAND NEW JOURNEY, WHICH WAS MY MUSIC PRODUCTION. —Evin Groves

ever,” was played before the 2006 Brawl of the Wild game, and is still available for streaming on KISS FM’s Web page.

GROVES BOBCAT ATHLETICS

BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS After graduation, Groves moved back to San Diego to make his music production company a success. Beth transferred to and graduated from Rocky Mountain College in 2010. They moved together to Nashville briefly to be more involved in the music industry.

At the same time, Groves started an online social community for musicians, which was very popular but wasn’t making money.

After depleting their savings, they moved into Beth’s parents’ house in Wilsall.

“I’m on the Internet … and we’ve got bulls in mating season in the background,” Groves recalled. “Plus, I’m having to drive down a dirt road every single day just to use the phone, because we’re out in the country and we don’t have the best cell service.”

Although the social networking site failed, it gave Groves the idea to transition from producing music to creating the sounds that producers use to write music.

“I created my first ever virtual instrument as a gift for this [online] music community in 2011,” Groves said. “The feedback from it was great. People said this was worth paying for.”

A WORLDWIDE BUSINESS IN BOZEMAN Today, Groves’ virtual instrument company, Studio Linked, builds virtual instruments, or VST plugins, for music producers. Virtual instruments are simulated in the computer via software.

Based in Bozeman, Studio Linked has grown in just a couple of years into a business that employs seven people.

In 2015, Studio Linked forged a partnership with legendary Grammynominated hip-hop producer Michael Crooms, who is known by his stage name, Mr. Collipark. The Atlanta-based artist label Collipark Music produces Soulja Boy and the Ying Yang Twins, who have charted in the top 40.

“I grew up listening to a lot of the music he produced,” Groves said. “It’s fun to not only meet someone you’ve looked up to growing up, but to work with them.”

In January, Studio Linked and Mr. Collipark debuted a new drum machine called Bass-X at the National Association of Music Merchants convention in Anaheim, California. The product will increase Studio Linked’s more than 1.8 million unit sales since 2013.

Mr. Collipark wasn’t the only celebrity endorsing Studio Linked products in Anaheim. Stevie Wonder came to the convention, and when Beth ran into him, she mentioned Evin’s aunt who once sang backup for him, which led to Wonders visiting the Studio Linked booth on the first day of the convention.

Wonder came back on the final day for a jam session using Studio Linked software.

“I feel like I’m a kid still,” said Groves. “I get to play every day.”

VISION FOR THE FUTURE The Groves plan to continue to grow their business in Bozeman while raising their three young children. While Evin focuses on the music, Beth keeps the books and communicates with their employees, clients and partners.

In the next five years, the Groves hope to continue growing through innovation.

“We’re trying to stay ahead of the competition and stay ahead of the trends so we can remain on top,” Groves said.

They also hope to be able to hire some MSU students in the future.

“Being self-employed, you work crazy hours,” Evin said. “But the saying is true.

When you love what you do…”

Beth finishes—“You never work a day in your life.”  You can listen to Evin Groves’ 2006 track of Bobcat Forever at: B O Z E M A N S K I S S F M . C O M / B O B C AT F O R E V E R - M S U - S O N G - AU D I O - D OW N L OA D/

Groves came to MSU as a running back in 2004. An injury opened the door to a successful career in music.

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HORNER KELLY GORHAM

PEOPLE

JACK HORNER, EVOLVING story by Evelyn Boswell

MSU’s famous paleontologist discusses life, dinosaurs and discovery Paleontologist Jack Horner will retire June 30 from Montana State University, but the internationally renowned professor will hardly slow down. Horner said he plans to continue his career indefinitely.

Horner’s reputation grew in the 33 years he was at MSU as he built the largest Tyrannosaurus rex collection in the world and discovered the first dinosaur eggs in the Western Hemisphere, which established him as a leader in the now firmly held belief that dinosaurs were more like birds than reptiles.

Horner took a few minutes to discuss a variety of topics, including highlights of his career, his passion to help young dyslexics and what it’s like to work with filmmaker Steven Spielberg on the Jurassic Park movies.

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What are your plans after you retire from MSU? My plans following retirement from MSU are pretty extensive, and very exciting.

The University of Washington is building a new Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture on its campus and they are interested in expanding their dinosaur collection, and in particular, acquiring specimens from the Hell Creek Formation of Montana. So, I will help with that endeavor as a research scientist.

Collecting from the Hell Creek Formation will, in effect, be an extension of the comprehensive Hell Creek project I initiated back in 1999. I will also be working with some well-known companies in the Seattle area helping to create interesting educational materials for kids.

I am also taking on a part-time position as a presidential scholar at Chapman University in Orange, California, where I will teach an honors class on imagination and creative thinking and work with the university president on initiatives to integrate kids with different learning styles into universities. I will also be working with some of the K–12 schools for dyslexic children in the LA area. It is something I have always wanted to help with.

I’m also hoping to be able to continue team teaching the very special honors class here at MSU called “Origins.” It is a class taught with physics professor Neil Cornish and Mike Miles (retired director of what is now MSU’s Honors College).

It is a class we have been teaching for more than 15 years.

My current book (projects) include my autobiography, a third and final book about my research at the Museum of the Rockies, and a couple children’s books— one on coping with dyslexia and another on new ways of thinking about dinosaurs.

What do you see as your top three discoveries so far?

The funnest discovery I ever made was finding the first egg clutch with embryos.

I had found the egg clutch a month before I discovered they contained baby skeletons. I had first seen the egg clutch on a walk over a hill that I had not gone over before, but it was just another egg clutch at the time, so I didn’t even get down on the ground to look at them in detail. I noted where they were, and thought I’d return the following year to collect them because it was the last day of our field season that year. But … Hugh Downs and the 20/20 crew came out to Montana in October of that year to shoot footage on Egg Mountain. Needless to say, October is not the best month to visit Montana for an outdoor TV shoot, as it was windy with flurries. But they came anyway and took the shots they were interested in, and then also wanted to see an egg clutch. So, I took them out to the one I had found a month earlier. Because of the flurries, I got down on the ground to point out the eggs and saw these tiny little bones around the eggs that had been broken open. I was stunned, but didn’t want to let them know about it, so I just ignored the embryos until they were finished shooting and had left the site. Later that day, I excavated them.

Nineteen eggs with the embryos of what we would much later discover to be the meat-eating dinosaur called Troodon.

Dave Varricchio in the Department of Earth Sciences is the world’s expert on this particular dinosaur because of this

discovery and many others from sites around Montana. Dave was one of my many grad students, and he now carries on the research I initiated at Egg Mountain so many years ago. It’s pretty cool, and quite frankly, I would list my grad students as my best discoveries, well over any fossils. Doctoral students like Dave and Mary Schweitzer and Chris Organ (also here at MSU) and Holly Woodward and John Scannella and Liz Freedman, and many more, all of whom have gone on to become well-known paleontologists. Former students I could not be more proud of.

When you started digging for dinosaurs in Montana, you were a technician for Princeton University, and Montanans were concerned about fossils leaving Montana.

Now that you’ll be working with Washington and California institutions, how can you reassure Montanans about the future of their fossils?

When I was collecting dinosaurs for Princeton University back in the early 1980s, Montana had few dinosaur fossils. There was a pretty nice collection in Ekalaka and a few specimens strewn around other parts of the state, including here in Bozeman. But, all in all, most specimens were leaving the state. The collection that my teams and I have amassed over the past 33 years has fixed that problem, and we now have one of the largest dinosaur collections in America and what I would definitely consider the best dinosaur hall in all the world (at the Museum of the Rockies.)

I WOULD LIST MY GRAD STUDENTS AS MY BEST DISCOVERIES, WELL OVER ANY FOSSILS. —Jack Horner

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HORNER  KELLY GORHAM

Horner and grad students and Museum of the Rockies staff at a dig in Paradise Valley.

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HORNER MSU ARCHIVES

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Horner had been at MSU about five years when, in 1988, he was involved with the excavation of the Wankel T. rex near the Fort Peck Reservoir in northeast Montana. Now on loan to the Smithsonian Institution for 50 years, the 65-million-year old fossil was one of the most complete skeletons of T. rex ever discovered.

It is my contention that Montana can now afford to share its fossils, and there are far more fossils than can ever be stored in Montana, so it’s great that other museums have space and money to care for them. When fossils from Montana are put on display in other states, their labels will state where they came from. We recently gave (long-term loaned) the Smithsonian a T. rex, and it will always say it came from Montana.

We still have the largest T. rex collection in the world. Another thing to keep in mind is that most of these fossils come off of public land, so in effect, they actually belong to all the citizens of the United States, not just us here in Montana where they come from. I think it’s great that we now have an incredible dinosaur display and can share other specimens with the rest of our country.

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You have been digging for dinosaurs for more than 40 years and said it’s time to retire from digging expeditions. Will you tell us about the physical challenges of working in the field?

I will continue to go into the field to collect specimens and data until the day I kick the bucket, because field work is in my blood. The UV rays, rattlesnakes and other physical obstacles have never been a problem, although the heat is beginning to get to me, so I prefer cooler days for my explorations. I have led expeditions since 1979, and from 1987 until 2013 we had concurrent expeditions, with as many as nine field crews out at once during the mid-1990s. I have also led numerous expeditions to other countries such as Mongolia, Argentina, Tanzania, Romania, France and Spain. I have trained a number of students from Mongolia, and I will continue to go there to do what I can to help that program continue to grow. And I will continue to

go out with other institutions like the Burke Museum. I’m definitely not ready to throw in the towel on explorations.

Undiagnosed dyslexia caused you to drop out of college and affected you in other ways. How did your inability to read well affect you as a boy? What gave you the confidence to go on? How do you deal with dyslexia today?

Reading is still the very hardest thing I do in my life, but I’ve been lucky in having some great people around me that either helped me write or edited what I did write. Grade school through high school was tough going for me, since I couldn’t read (past the third-grade level), and I was extremely embarrassed when asked to stand and attempt to read out loud in classes. But, I spent a lot of time exploring the hills around my hometown of Shelby, and I found a whole lot of interesting fossils that I would put in exhibits in our county library. In high school, I

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made science projects, all of which won the local science fairs. So, even though I was doing very poorly in school, I was being given a lot of accolades for my exhibits and knowledge of fossils. I guess it countered the negative side of school.

When I was in college at the University of Montana, I put together a sabertoothed tiger skeleton and organized their fossil collections and collected more stuff for them. That all seemed to counter the bad grades and flunking out, at least in my mind … I still have a terrible time with written material, and have a particularly hard time now that I don’t have people to help me out.

When writing papers, I rely heavily on co-authors or really good editors, and I still to this day depend on people like that to help me out. I know my limitations, and they are many, but fortunately my students are really smart and do some really cool stuff I get to help with, and it often gets published in great journals.

Where do you do your best thinking and why?

I don’t think my mind ever slows down …

I think all the time, regardless of where I am, which can be disconcerting for my friends as I probably always seem like a space cadet. Socially I’m very awkward and really don’t know much about anything other than dinosaurs, evolution and dyslexia … so that’s about all I ever think about or can even talk about. I have a great friend who is an artist, and I have begun to think about the arts in a much different way and have even begun to have an interest in such things. Obviously, it has been a long time coming.

If you had four more decades as a paleontologist, what would you investigate?

I think developmental biology is the future of paleontology and most other evolutionary sciences. I think we are not far from being able to resurrect extinct species, or to even make new kinds of animals. But field paleontology will always yield new kinds of extinct species, so I imagine there will always be plenty of people wandering the badlands in search of cool discoveries.

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OBVIOUSLY A CAREER CAN BE BUILT ANYWHERE, BUT IT’S ALWAYS A LOT EASIER IF YOU ARE IN A PLACE WHERE YOU FEEL AT HOME. ...MONTANA WILL ALWAYS BE HOME.

How fun has it been working as a consultant and extra for the Jurassic Park movies?

What can you tell us about Steven Spielberg and the final movie in the series?

Going to the screenings and premieres of the Jurassic films was a pretty incredible experience as well. My “date,” assigned to me by Steven Spielberg to the first screening of Jurassic Park, was Fay Wray, the movie star who had played in the first King Kong movie back in the ’30s. And then, shortly after that event, Steven, Jeff Goldblum and I accompanied Princess Diana to the Jurassic Park premiere in London. All in all, working with Steven, Joe Johnston (the director of JP-III), and Colin (Trevorrow, director of Jurassic Park World), plus all the other wonderful people involved in these movies, like the producers Kathy Kennedy and Gerald Molen (from Great Falls) has been an incredible experience. And, no, I can’t tell you about the next Jurassic World movie!

Will you continue to live in Bozeman? Will you continue to work in any capacity for the Museum of the Rockies?

I will keep my apartment here in Bozeman and hope to spend all of my summers here, as well as teach the honors “Origins” class at MSU starting in the fall of 2017. I will teach at Chapman University during spring semesters—basically winter and mud seasons—for at least three years starting in 2017. As for work at the Museum of the Rockies, I probably will do more in a few years once a new curator is hired and established, but not right away.

—Jack Horner

You must have had many offers to work elsewhere. What kept you at MSU for 33 years?

Montana is my home, and it was always my dream to have the best dinosaur museum in the world in the state. I dreamt of it as a child. I even made drawings of how I imagined it would look. It actually turned out much better than I had imagined, but my part of it is now finished, and it will be up to future curators to update it with their research. It’s made to evolve with new information.

But, yes, I have had many offers to go other places, including the Smithsonian and the Natural History Museum in London, or back to Ivy League schools in the East. But, I had had enough of the East working at Princeton University in the beginning of my career. I loved the woods and I loved Princeton’s campus, but the East Coast was just not my thing. It had been seven years of constant culture shock for me and I never got used to it.

When I was leaving Princeton, someone asked how I could leave such a prestigious institution as Princeton to go to Montana State, and I didn’t say a word. I just smiled at him and walked away.

Obviously a career can be built anywhere, but it’s always a lot easier if you are in a place where you feel at home. Now, with a career well established, I can make short forays to Seattle and LA to help with other things, but Montana will always be home. Its two incredible universities and my hometown will always be in my heart. 

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FLEMMING SEPP JANNOTTA

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Otto Stein

FAMILY VALUES

MSU’s Native enrollment and programs grow under Walter Fleming’s compassionate care

by Amy Stix

If you land on the homepage for MonFleming, the man who has led NAS for tana State University’s Native American the past 14 years. Fleming propelled Studies Department, one of the first what was once a program that provided links you will notice is “Core Values.” student services and an academic minor The page details the department’s mis- into an academic department that grants sion statement of sorts, a commitment master’s degrees and is recognized to “Honesty,” “Generosity,” “Kindness nationally and internationally for its and Openness,” “Hard Work,” “Famexcellence in teaching and research. ily,” “Spirituality,” “Humor and Respect,” “You walk through the door, we say, and how each of these core values not ‘Welcome. You’re someone worthy of our only guides the department’s relations on attention,’” Fleming said about the acacampus and in the world, but with every demic department he was instrumental person who walks through its doors. in establishing within MSU’s College of These same principles drive Walter Letters and Science in 2002.

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When Fleming, who holds a doctorate in American Studies from the University of Kansas, first began teaching at MSU as an adjunct instructor 37 years ago, the 26-year-old was finishing his master’s in guidance counseling at MSU and was hired to teach a couple of summer classes. At the time, MSU had 52 Native students, he recalls.

Fleming’s home base when he started out in 1979, and for many years after, was MSU’s Center for Native American Studies, which operated as the focal point for Native student support, and as a home away from home for the scant number of American Indian students attending MSU in those days.

“Indian students were somewhat exotic at that time,” Fleming recalled.

In fact, up until the mid-1970s, the MSU academic adviser to Native students was based in the headquarters for international foreign student advising.

When Fleming took over leadership of the Center for Native American Studies

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at age 28, he dreamed of a day when MSU would graduate 100 Native students.

That day came in May 2015, and today MSU has more than 550 Native students enrolled at MSU’s Bozeman campus.

As more Native students matriculated and graduated from MSU, NAS also grew.

Through the department’s evolution, Fleming ensured that the department remained closely connected to its roots as a place where all students are made to feel part of a caring, family-like community.

For students leaving their families and closely knit reservation communities for the first time, this support is critical.

“If we are going to recruit Indian students, we are obliged to make sure they succeed,” Fleming said.

“Our philosophy when we go out to recruit is, ‘If you come to MSU, we promise that we will take care of you.’

We’re promising that not just to the student, but also to his or her parents, grandparents, family and community.”

Fleming works tirelessly to make good on that promise.

“He (Fleming) is very energetic about making sure we’re successful at MSU,” said Montana Wilson, a political science major from Poplar, located on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, and a member of the Gros Ventre, Assiniboine and Sioux tribes. “No problem is too big or too small for him.”

Fleming “has a genuine concern for your welfare and tries to help people in any way he can. And that is reflected in the whole NAS department,” Wilson said. “It’s a really great learning environment because it is based in respect.”

Fleming’s empathy—and his ability to put himself in the shoes of students who have left their families and reservations to pursue their educations—may stem in part from his own experiences growing up. Fleming is an enrolled member of the Kickapoo tribe of Kansas and a descendant of the Oneida Tribe and Cherokee Nation. Both his parents worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in careers that brought the couple to Montana. Fleming was born in Crow Agency and grew up in Lame Deer on

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OUR PHILOSOPHY WHEN WE GO OUT TO RECRUIT IS, ‘IF YOU COME TO MSU, WE PROMISE THAT WE WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU.’ WE’RE PROMISING THAT NOT JUST TO THE STUDENT, BUT ALSO TO HIS OR HER PARENTS, GRANDPARENTS, FAMILY AND COMMUNITY.

the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. He graduated from Colstrip High School, Glendive’s Dawson Community College and MSU Billings.

“I grew up on someone else’s reservation,” said Fleming. “I’ve always been somewhat of an outsider.”

He said his outlander’s view has shaped his perspectives on identity and about what it means to be “Indian.”

“Is it living on a reservation? Is it speaking the language?” asked Fleming. “The most easily identifiable things come down to values, rather than, ‘Does a person dance or sing at a powwow?’ A sense of family. Generosity. Spirituality.

Humor. And cooperation. These are Native values. As a department, we identified these as values of Indian people.”

In addition to his MSU duties, Fleming led efforts to shape Montana legislation that launched “Indian Education for All,” an initiative that provides K–12 students, and all Montana citizens, knowledge and understanding about the heritage, distinct cultures and contributions of American Indian tribes in the state from a Native perspective.

“It is the other side of the story, in that it’s education about Indian people, from an Indian perspective, for all Montana citizens,” Fleming said. “For Indians, it provides access to their culture and history and demonstrates that both are relevant to their education.”

In 2013, Fleming received the Governor’s Humanities Award, the highest honor in the state that recognizes achievement in humanities scholarship, service and enhancement of public

—Walter Fleming

appreciation of the humanities. MSU’s Native American Studies Department is also the only department or program in a mainstream institution accredited by the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium.

Robert Rydell, a professor in MSU’s Department of History, Philosophy and Religious Studies, has known Fleming since he began teaching history at MSU 36 years ago.

Rydell calls Fleming “one of the most outstanding humanists in the state,” adding that Fleming “has a sense of humor that is unsurpassed, and he weds that to a seriousness of purpose that can’t be missed.”

The two worked together on the multi-year “Teaching American History” project, a Department of Education initiative for Bozeman and Gallatin County K–12 classrooms that enhanced teachers’ and students’ understanding of American and Montana history.

Rydell also marvels at Fleming’s ability to shepherd NAS “from something that was part of a university to something that is central to the university’s core mission.

“That is an amazing accomplishment.”

And though he has dedicated nearly four decades to MSU and its students, Fleming is game to accomplish even more.

“I really don’t feel like I’m done.

Because, I still enjoy what I’m doing.

Teaching, administering, and especially helping students. I get so much joy from my work.” ■

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PEOPLE

AFTER MY INITIAL EXPERIENCE, I JUST KNEW I REALLY WANTED TO BE (AT MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY). THE WORK ETHIC OF MSU STUDENTS IS REALLY NOTICEABLE, AND THE FACULTY IS A VERY SUPPORTIVE AND SPECIAL GROUP OF PEOPLE. —Abigail Richards

ENGINEERING A PERFECT FIT

Abigail Richards brings energy and excitement to growing engineering curriculum

by Sepp Jannotta

When Abigail Richards landed at the Cen- here, made it a great place for me.” ter for Biofilm Engineering in Montana MSU was a good fit. So good that State University’s College of Engineering, when a junior faculty position opened up she was sure it was a temporary move. in the Department of Chemical and BioIt was 2002, and she had recently finlogical Engineering, Richards jumped. ished her masters in chemical engineerThe College of Engineering responded ing from Washington State University. in kind, bringing her on as a tenure-track Her mentor for her pending doctorate faculty member in 2007 and tapping the at WSU, Brent Peyton, would also later then 31-year-old Richards to teach the come to MSU on a visiting fellowship rigorous program’s entry-level courses at CBE. Peyton would become a faculty and introduce students to the world of member and director of MSU’s Therchemical engineering. mal Biology Institute. Richards stayed “After my initial experience, I just knew at MSU in a visiting capacity to work I really wanted to be here,” Richards said. through data on microorganisms she had “The work ethic of MSU students is really collected in Soap Lake, Washington. noticeable, and the faculty is a very supThough she was a visiting scholar portive and special group of people.” working with another outsider, RichIn the nine years since, Richards has ards said she felt right at home from the helped transform the Department of beginning. For one thing, the microbes Chemical and Biological Engineering’s she was studying thrived in an extreme introductory level courses during a time environment, much like those discovof unprecedented growth in enrollment. ered by MSU researchers in pools of When she started teaching, Richards highly acidic boiling water found in said the freshmen-level course typically Yellowstone National Park. enrolled 40-some students. This past fall, “It was exciting to be at MSU because I Richards taught the introductory class to wanted to expand my horizons, and I got more than 170 students who had identito meet a whole new group of fabulous fied chemical and biological engineering scientists and interdisciplinary thinkers as their desired major. in my field,” said Richards, who grew up Jeff Heys, the head of the Department in Washington. “That, tied together with of Chemical and Biological Engineering, said Richards’ enthusiasm and energy my exposure to the Yellowstone thermal had been a driving force behind revampbiology research that is so important at MSU, as well to as the whole community ing the major’s introductory courses, as

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well as some senior-year lab courses. She also has been very active in recruiting students who are interested in attending MSU and pursuing the discipline.

Nowhere does she shine more than when she is walking students through their first steps toward a degree in chemical and biological engineering, Heys said.

“She’s worked really hard to turn that into a course that allows every incoming freshman to start off on the same footing and a course that gets them excited about the major,” Heys said. “We have a course now that does that, and she is largely responsible for creating it. On top of that, she wrote a book for the class because one didn’t exist.

“There are a lot of factors driving the growth in this department, but Abbie is certainly one of those factors—from her recruiting efforts to tremendous energy and excitement she brings to those intro courses,” Heys added.

The energy and devotion she brings to improving the student experience is a leading example of how a professor can be more than a person delivering a lecture, said Anne Camper, Montana University System Regents Professor, professor in the MSU Department of Civil Engineering, and associate dean for faculty and administration in the College of Engineering.

Richards is a generous and tireless men-

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tor of students, and she brings out the best in her students, Camper said, pointing out that her mentees have gone on to win an array of awards, including the Marshall Scholarship (an MSU first), several Goldwater Scholarships, as well as National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships.

Her skills as an adviser earned Richards the national Tau Beta Pi Outstanding Adviser, in recognition of her dedication to mentoring students interested in engineering professions. Richards has helped coordinate student-led efforts such as the Engineering Ambassadors Program and Engineering Peer Advising Leaders project, both of which are aimed at raising retention and overall student success in the College of Engineering.

“She has always been one of those easily approachable people, and she’s really dedicated to what she does,” Camper said.

“It’s part of what makes her an extraordinarily good teacher and role model.”

Luis DeSerrano, a doctoral graduate in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology who worked in Richards’

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lab, said she shows incredible loyalty to her students.

“I think she never has no for an answer,” DeSerrano said. “Abbie guided me during my seven years of research. She takes time to explain and see that her students actually understand the concept that she’s trying to communicate.”

Beyond her love of seeing students gaining knowledge and experience in the classroom and lab settings, Richards said she finds great joy in helping students navigate the array of opportunities available beyond MSU’s walls.

“I love to know that they are being exposed to the possibilities that are out there, and that they are getting themselves in a position to succeed when they apply for that internship or grad program.”

As the daughter of an engineer and someone tightly enmeshed in the College of Engineering’s fabric, Richards acknowledges that it might come as surprise to some of her students and colleagues that she didn’t even know for certain she would major in engineering.

An internship with Aera Energy was the big eye opener.

“I got to see how engineers worked together as a team and started each day with a meeting where they would map out the problems they would be working on,” Richards said. “My chemical engineering mentor at Aera was doing work that we didn’t specifically learn about in the classroom—it made me realize that there was more to being a chemical engineer than what’s covered during a four-year education.”

It was during the process of earning her doctorate and having the chance to teach a few classes that Richards realized her calling was in academia.

Both Camper and Sarah Codd, professor of mechanical engineering, said it is MSU’s great gain that Richards took that path.

“When I look at Abbie I see someone who is a perfect fit for MSU,” Codd said.

“Not only because she brings such enthusiasm and work ethic, but also because we do some of our best thinking about work while riding the chairlift.” ■

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Engineering students will have more space to work on real projects in the new Norm Asbjornson Hall.

A BUILDING THAT WILL TEAR DOWN WALLS The planned innovation center, Norm Asbjornson Hall, will be a gamechanger for collaborative education at MSU In 2014, MSU alumnus Norm Asbjornson challenged Montana State University’s students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends to think bigger and bolder than they ever had before. The 1960 engineering graduate pledged $50 million to the university—the largest gift in the history of Montana—if MSU would match it with another $20 million by June 30, 2016.

The $70 million total would be used to launch the South Campus, located across from the Strand Union Building, with a new, 115,000-square-foot

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MSU’s Norm Asbjornson Hall will house the Honors College and encourage interdisciplinary learning.

I THINK EVERYONE SHOULD BALANCE THE BOOKS AND THANK THOSE PEOPLE AND INSTITUTIONS WHO HELPED THEM AND ALSO GIVE TO THE NEXT GENERATION. IT’S A RESPONSIBILITY WE ALL HAVE. —Norm Asbjornson

engineering building as its cornerstone.

The new innovation center would be called Norm Asbjornson Hall and would give MSU much-needed space for its students, but also classrooms and labs embracing the best of architectural design to inspire students to work together across disciplines and to be motivated by each other and their faculty members to innovate in ways previously unavailable.

To date, $18 million has been raised.

Another $2 million is needed by June 30 to meet Asbjornson’s goal. With its many alumni and friends, MSU hopes to break ground this summer on the visionary project.

“I hope my gift challenges and inspires others who are in a position to advance the university that has given us so much.

MSU needs our support now and this is the time to give back,” Asbjornson said when he first made his pledge.

“I think it’s an absolute must for everyone to give back to what made them successful. I had a lot of help from MSU and Winifred. I can’t repay those who helped me, for they’re gone. But I can give to the next generation. I think everyone should balance the books and thank those people and institutions who helped them and also give to the next generation.

“It’s a responsibility we all have.”

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Born and raised in Winifred, Montana, Asbjornson started his entrepreneurial career at the age of 10 when his uncle offered him a Model T in return for watering hundreds of chickens. For a summer, he hauled hundreds of gallons of water to the chickens from a well using two small pails. On payday, he learned the Model T had been covered in a flood and the engine was too rusted to start.

Undeterred, he worked on the car in his father’s garage until it ran. Then he became his own boss and went into business hauling garbage for 25 cents a barrel. It felt like a lot of money to Asbjornson, who grew up during the Great Depression, his family starting in an 800-square-foot house with no indoor plumbing, running water, electricity or telephone.

After earning his degree in mechanical engineering at what was then Montana State College, Asbjornson spent 28 years working in the HVAC business until he founded AAON in 1988 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The company manufactures commercial air conditioning equipment weighing from 200 pounds to 20,000 pounds. Its equipment can be found cooling and heating businesses around Bozeman, throughout Montana and the nation. Traded on the NASDAQ, the company has annual revenues

in excess of $300 million and more than 1,400 employees.

From humble beginnings in small town Montana to leaving a legacy for generations of students to come, Asbjornson has laid out a bold vision for MSU. His career taught him that professional success most often requires skills that cross disciplines. Engineers need to know how to communicate with others and read a spreadsheet. Those who major in the humanities may need some of the skills taught in engineering or business, for example, to be successful.

When Asbjornson talked about the kind of future he wanted MSU students to have, it was this issue of working and thinking across disciplines that was most important to him.

Asbjornson asked the university to think out of the box as it explored the value of interdisciplinary curricula and to address the burgeoning growth in enrollment in the College of Engineering.

He asked MSU to embrace new ideas and push how classrooms, laboratories and common areas were designed into new territory.

MSU believes it has a plan to make that vision a reality in the designs it has for Norm Asbjornson Hall.

In the words of MSU President Waded Cruzado, the innovation center will “transform the lives of generations of students, it will transform this campus, and it will transform the state of Montana in profound ways.”

MSU invites all alumni and friends to join in this transformative project.  Make a gift at M S U A F. O R G / G I V E - S O U T H C A M P U S

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THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO GIVE With philanthropic intention and commitments that suit their finances, these donors have found a variety of ways to make impacts across campus.

DEFERRED ESTATE GIF T FOR AN ENDOWMENT

George McClure confirmed estate plans to endow a scholarship with a bequest Scholarships for marketing and architecture students from Montana or Wyoming

IMPACT

INTENTION + GIFT = IMPACT An equation for change

PLEDGED GIF T AND BEQUEST

M. Jean Setter pledged to establish an endowment with annual payments and documented a bequest IMPACT College of Nursing greatest needs BENEFICIARY DEED OF PROPERTY

Alice Jones and Lloyd Mielke designated MSU as beneficiary of property within their estate (estimated value $250,000) IMPACT Scholarship fund for Land Resources and Environmental Sciences undergraduates GIF T OF CORPORATE STOCK

Lindsay Anderson, vice president, Quality for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, contributed $50,000 IMPACT Engineering and the South Campus Development project LIFE INSURANCE BENEFICIARY GIF T

Anonymous delineated MSU as a life insurance policy beneficiary (estimated value $10,000) IMPACT Scholarships for veterans and their families OUTRIGHT GIF TS OF STOCK AND CASH

Dr. Robert Towers and Dr. Kenneth Younger, retired Bozeman physicians, each committed lead gifts IMPACT Equipment and furnishings for the new WWAMI campus at Bozeman Health IRA BENEFICIARY GIF T

Marilyn Carpenter, a Three Forks native, documented an IRA beneficiary designation (estimated value $118,000) IMPACT College of Nursing greatest needs To be a part of the change and make your own impact, visit

Since Montana State University’s What It Takes comprehensive campaign launched in September, hundreds of people from all walks of life and income levels have given their financial support to MSU students and programs. Here is a sample of how a few of those people are impacting the future of higher education in Montana.

THE IMPACT OF GIVING Every year since 1992, Elaine and Ken Baarson have given to MSU. The two native Montanans—he’s from Helena and she is from Anaconda—met at MSU. Ken graduated with a history degree from MSU in 1969. And Elaine started her degree at MSU, but finished in Arizona. Ken is now a retired middle school and high school guidance counselor and Elaine a retired librarian. They have given consistently to MSU. Their gifts over the past 23 years have mostly benefited library development and ROTC scholarships. They said their giving is a direct reflection of their values and understanding of what makes a difference for students and their success: financial access to higher education and access to information and knowledge through the library.

In 2015 the Baarsons wanted to continue their support of the university, but in a larger way with major gifts support-

ing Acoustic Atlas and ScholarWorks, both MSU Library initiatives, as well as general and ROTC scholarships. Their most recent gifts, given last November, totaled $150,000.

Ken is passionate about the importance of scholarships. “My parents passed away before I went to college, so without the scholarships, college would not have been financially possible for me,” he said.

Elaine said she is enthusiastic about Library Dean Kenning Arlitsch’s desire to utilize technology creatively and to collaborate with other academic libraries so greater access to information resources is available for students and the public.

Longtime residents of Tucson, Arizona, the Baarsons have now retired to Washington state and are happy to be closer to Yellowstone National Park and southwest Montana where they enjoy exploring the natural wonders of the region.

GIF TS LARGE AND SMALL MAKE A DIFFERENCE Individuals, couples and families are inspired to give to MSU for many reasons and with different capacities. Each and every gift is appreciated and has a positive impact, but here are a few stories and notes about the people who have celebrated their faith in MSU through gifts and the ways their gifts are making a big impact on campus.

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Nora and Tom Gerrity have designated a bequest to MSU equal to five percent of their estate. This planned gift honors MSU nursing graduate Hebe Chestnutt, Nora’s mother who graduated in 1971 and who inspired Nora to pursue a career in medicine.

The established endowment will support students enrolled in the Doctor of Nursing Practice program.

In their first year after graduating from MSU in the early 1950s, Otto and Shirley Stevens began their annual practice of giving to MSU with a $100 gift. From year to year, the Stevenses increased their giving modestly. In 2011, though, to celebrate their 60 years as graduates, they made a commemorative gift of $6,000. Since then, the Stevenses have continued to give commemoratively adding $100 each year. While making their 2015 gift of $6,500 to benefit cell biology and neuroscience scholarships, Otto said that he and Shirley appreciate their college educations that led to many wonderful opportunities in their lives. The Stevenses have also committed to supporting MSU through a planned estate gift.

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Janis Rae Clemis, who graduated from MSU in 1979, is a career school teacher who has given nearly every year for the past 22 years to the College of Education, Health and Human Development.

Her annual donations have benefited established pooled scholarship funds.

Clemis thinks of her gifts as investments that will generate good opportunities for students, “a way of paying it forward.”

Her generosity stems from a sense of gratitude for the excellent teacher preparation she received at MSU. Clemis teaches in a remote area of Alberta, Canada, and appreciates MSU’s enlightening courses in Native American studies as well as the exploration of First Nations culture. “I still draw upon that learning in my teaching today.”

Long time host of Montana Ag Live Hayden Ferguson, professor emeritus, and his wife, Marlene, have allocated a percentage of their estate in a bequest to support soils education in the College of Agriculture as well as scholarships for student-athletes.

Education majors will benefit from Ruth Long’s $10,000 deferred charitable gift annuity to support them through their 14-week required student-teaching time.

Long’s commitment will help meet the needs of students devoted to teaching careers who are trying to keep their college debt to a minimum.

With a gift of mutual fund stock, F. Brian Walter established a charitable gift annuity that will support a scholarship in honor of his cousin, Beverly Gross, who died at a young age. Walter inherited some of her estate and invested the inheritance in a mutual fund. Now, many years later, that investment is funding the gift annuity and an endowed scholarship for generations of future MSU students. As a boy and a young man, Walter helped out in his family’s general store in Sheridan, Montana, where he was born and raised. The civil engineering degree he earned from MSU in 1956 took him around the world from London to Saudi Arabia, where he lived and worked. 

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CAMPAIGN GOAL $300 million SECURED $215,421,255

PEOPLE

GOAL $75 million RAISED $74,082,418

PLACES

GOAL $125 million RAISED $53,361,274

PROGRAMS

GOAL $100 million RAISED $87,977,562

CAMPAIGN PROGRESS BY DIVISION (as of April 5, 2016)

ATHLE TICS

GOAL $25 million RAISED $21,048,461

COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE GOAL $22 million RAISED $18,802,236 COLLEGE OF ARTS & ARCHITECTURE GOAL $7 million RAISED $5,102,651

FUNDRAISING PRIORITIES SCHOLARSHIPS & FELLOWSHIPS Ensure access to a wider range of prospective students to help MSU build larger, more talented and more diverse classes of graduate and undergraduate students who will be prepared for their futures.

PROFESSORSHIPS & CHAIRS Secure support to recruit and build an outstanding faculty furthers groundbreaking research and offers our students access to leading experts and opportunities in their fields of interest.

STUDENT SUCCESS FUNDS Mentoring, tutoring and other innovative programs provide our students with vital learning that occurs beyond the classroom, creating opportunities for them to excel academically, become more involved with efforts in their communities and pursue meaningful employment in their chosen fields.

FACULTY RESEARCH & LEADERSHIP GRANTS & AWARDS Increase the number of groundbreaking research and teaching projects initiated by faculty, which enables them to offer more unique learning opportunities to our students that more closely connect MSU to our communities.

LEARNING & LEADERSHIP CENTERS World-class teaching and research demands dynamic and interactive facilities. MSU is committed to creating flexible, high-tech spaces for a growing student body that will drive creativity and innovation in classrooms, studios and labs.

COMMUNITY & GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT FUNDS Service-learning programs help students develop critical traits they can carry with them into their lives after college. Expanding the opportunities for all students and faculty to take part in MSU’s outreach programs will foster powerful engagement experiences that create advantages for these communities and themselves.

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JAKE JABS COLLEGE OF BUSINESS & ENTREPRENEURSHIP GOAL $45 million RAISED $40,197,984 COLLEGE OF EDUCATION, HE ALTH & HUMAN DE VELOPMENT GOAL $3.25 million RAISED $2,340,449 COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING GOAL $110 million RAISED $47,176,590 COLLEGE OF LETTERS & SCIENCE GOAL $30 million RAISED $22,769,064 COLLEGE OF NURSING GOAL $8.5 million EXCEEDED RAISED $9,505,190 MSU LIBRARY

GOAL $1.75 million RAISED $1,490,467

GR ADUATE SCHOOL

GOAL $300,000 RAISED $215,879

HONORS COLLEGE

GOAL $7 million RAISED $2,934,735

DIVISION OF STUDENT SUCCESS GOAL $2.1 million RAISED $2,086,793 GRE AT FALL S COLLEGE–MSU GOAL $2 million RAISED $1,405,205 MUSEUM OF THE ROCKIES GOAL $7 million RAISED $4,451,806

MO N TAN A STATE U N I V E R SI TY · MO U N TA I N S

MI N D S

KELLY GORHAM

SPRING 2016 CAMPAIGN REPORT

IT TAKES YOU. montana.edu/whatittakes P.O. Box 172750 Bozeman, Montana  59717-2750 406-994-2053 | 800-457-1696 info@msuaf.org

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BOOKMARKS For a Little While Rick Bass

MSU’s inaugural Western Writer in Residence and award-winning author published this well-reviewed collection of new and selected stories. See page 44 of this issue for a profile about Bass.

Published Little, Brown and Company

Teaching in the Middle and Secondary Schools instructor’s manual Jioanna Carjuzaa Professor in education and director of the Center for Bilingual and Multicultural Education wrote the manual for this popular textbook.

Published by Pearson Professional and Career Publishing

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All I Want Is What You’ve Got Glen Chamberlain

English lecturer Chamberlain, winner of the Pushcart, Gilcrease and Rona Jaffe awards, publishes her second collection of short stories about the fragility of life in the West.

Published by Dock Street Press

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From Truth to Technique at Trial Philip Gaines

English professor Gaines addresses key questions raised by advocacy advice texts-manuals, handbooks, and other how-to guides written by lawyers for lawyers, both practicing and aspiring, to help them be as effective as possible in trial advocacy.

Published by Oxford University Press

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The Dynamics of Jewish Latino Relationships: Hope and Caution Bridget Kevane

Kevane, professor of modern languages and literatures, writes that Jewish-Latino relationships center around the themes of immigration, race and identity, and faith and religion.

Published by Palgrave Pivot

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Captivating Westerns: The Middle East in the American West Susan Kollin

Tracing the transnational influences of what has been known as a uniquely American genre, “the Western,” English professor Kollin analyzes key moments in the history of multicultural encounters between the Middle East and the American West.

Published by University of Nebraska Press

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The Correspondence of John Tyndall, Volume I and Volume II Michael S. Reidy

History professor Reidy published two volumes of letters from what was one of the most influential scientists of the 19th century.

Published by Routledge

Digital Media Strategies of the Far Right in Europe and the United States Patricia Anne Simpson MSU German professor Simpson co-edited, with Helga Druxes, a book that examines an interdisciplinary and transnational approach that can allow productive comparison of far-right propaganda strategies in Europe and the United States.

Published by Lexington Books 7

Salutations; A Festschrift for Burton Watson Philip Williams

MSU Asian studies professor Williams co-edited, with Jesse Glass, this collection of essays, articles and poems about Chinese and Japanese literature and culture that celebrates the scholarly career of the translator Burton Watson.

Published by Ahadada/Ekleksographia

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MONTANA KELLY GORHAM

JUST-SPRING IN MONTANA

Prize-winning writer Rick Bass, see page 44, is serving as Montana State University’s first Western Writer in Residence.

This excerpt from the short story “Mahatma Joe” is found in the book, Platte River and is used with the author’s permission.

In February, after the chinook blew through, thawing people’s faces into smiles and making the women look happy again, and making the men look like men again, rather than pouting little boys—in February the preacher for the Grass Valley, Mahatma Joe Krag, began a rampage not unlike those of other springs.

It had been a hard winter in northern Montana, so hard that ravens sometimes fell from the sky in midflight, their insides just snapping, it seemed, and like great ragged clumps of black cloth they’d fall into the woods, or into a pasture, landing a few weeks shy of spring.

The stave-ribbed horses—those that the coyotes and wolves had not gotten— would go over and pick the crows up with their teeth and begin eating them, chewing the shiny black feathers.

There was nothing else.

People were so short-tempered that even the saloon closed down. In past winters they’d gone in to gather, socialize, drink and complain collectively, but now

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people got into fights, pistol-pulling duels out in the snow, duels which never killed anyone, not at thirty yards with the .22 pistols the saloon kept on the counter for that purpose. The snow was usually swirling and blowing, which further lessened the risk, though often one of the duelists would injure the other, hitting him in the thigh or the shoulder, and even once, in the case of One-Ball Boyd, in the groin.

It was a bad winter, even for Grass Valley. The valley was long and narrow, and ran northwest-southeast along an old mountain range, the Whiteflesh Mountains, the first inland range off the Pacific. Storms came hauling off of the Siberian Peninsula and crossed the Bering Strait, kicking up eighty- and hundredfoot waves; they crashed into Alaska and then Washington, worked their way over the northwest passes, too strong to be stopped, and hurried over three hundred miles of prairie in eastern Washington, building up speed.

The Grass Valley was the first thing they hit. The valley was shaped like a bottleneck, slightly curved in the middle, and the storms slammed into it and rounded the curve, accelerating.

But it worked the other way during chinooks. Winds from the south raced up the same funnel, blowing hot air through the valley even in winter, melting all the snow in a matter of days, and launching new hatches of insects, buds in the fruit trees, and the smiles of women. Once February came around, the chinook could happen at any time. It became a race between south winds and north winds to see what got to the bottleneck valley first. The temperature could change almost a hundred degrees in twenty-four hours, going from twenty below to sixty or seventy above.

The chinook would last only a week at most, but it was a sign that there would be just one more month of hard freezes left. 

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THE POWER OF PLANNING

If you are a Montanan with a question about wills or how to avoid probate, chances are you have run into Marsha Goetting. In the last year the Montana State University Extension family economics specialist traveled nearly 7,000 miles to 48 communities in the Big Sky state to teach free courses in estate planning to more than 1,378 Montanans.

It’s a labor of love for Goetting, who in nearly 40 years as a MSU Extension specialist has built a national reputation for providing vital information about estate planning.

What are some of the most popular questions about estate planning?

The most popular topic has been what happens to your property if you die without a written will, as do seven out of 10 Montanans.

What is the number one most important piece of advice that you give to those who attend your seminars?

Do your estate planning now. We are all going to die someday, so we might as well be prepared so that those we want to receive our assets do indeed receive them.

What estate planning topics do people seem to know the least about?

Here are three: Right of Representation. Under Montana’s intestacy (dying without a will) statutes, property is distributed by right of representation. Some wills and trusts have similar provisions. I have found that 92 percent of the members of my audience have answered a question incorrectly about how their property would be distributed if they should die.

Death Taxes. When asked what percent of Montanans paid an inheritance tax in 2014, usually from 65 to 90 percent indicate that all those who inherit property have to pay. What a surprise to learn that there is no longer an inheritance tax in Montana! A spouse, children, grandchildren or friends do not pay a Montana inheritance tax when they inherit property. When asked what percent of Montana’s deceased persons’ estates paid a federal estate tax in 2014, again, the majority respond with 65 to 100 percent. They are shocked to learn that less than one percent of Montana’s deceased person’s estates paid a tax in 2014.

Avoiding probate. One of the most popular topics in my presentations has been how property could be distributed without probate by using payable on death designations on checking accounts and certificates of deposit or transfer on death registrations on stocks, bonds or mutual funds.

What actions do people plan to take after attending one of your sessions?

After attending a presentation, here’s what attendees say they will do: 15 PERCENT intend to write a will in their own handwriting 30 PERCENT indicated they are going to review their wills 38 PERCENT will see an attorney about executing a will 94 PERCENT plan to discuss estate planning with a spouse and/ or family members 90 PERCENT indicated they are going to review their property ownership titles 91 PERCENT plan to review their beneficiary designations on their assets And, 99 PERCENT indicate they will recommend my presentation to others. ■

Want to learn more about estate planning? Goetting’s MSU Extension webpage is full of important and free information. To learn more, visit W W W . M O N TA N A . E D U/ E X T E N S I O N E C O N / F A M I LY E C O N O M I C S

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