NEVER STOP IMPROVING Discussing Montana Tech’s Bold New Strategic Plan with Some of Its Architects
By Sherman Cahill
WHAT MAKES BUTTE DIFFERENT? It’s a proud town, but there have been other proud towns. Every town thinks the road starts and stops a few feet outside their city limits. But it might be fair to say that Butte’s got more pride than most and comes by it honestly, too, having provided the lion’s share of the copper that wired America for electricity and enabled us to stop sitting around in chilly, candle-lit gloom. Even with that, however, there’s something extraordinary about Butte’s pride. Here’s an illustrative example.
VISION To be the institution of opportunity and innovation.
In the 1980s, as the town’s economic prospects looked worse than they ever had before in the town’s 120-year history, the Butte Chamber of Commerce considered the question of just how to save the city from what might have seemed insurmountable odds. They hit on a plan that, to me, exemplifies Butte’s chutzpah—the kind of sheer temerity, really, that has saved it from becoming another fading industrial town. They printed thousands and thousands of bumper stickers.
But the truth, somehow both more and less romantic at the same time, is that for all its lovely physical attributes, the thing that makes Montana Tech and Butte what they are are their people. Determined people that Do great things. Montana Technological University’s new strategic plan is a broad set of initiatives aimed at achieving the University’s vision to “be the institution of opportunity and innovation,” in support of which the planning team set three goals: to empower student success however possible, to provide programs of distinction, and to maintain a healthy and vibrant campus ecosystem. In every case, they knew, it would take Determined Doers. I found myself wondering whether I was a Determined Doer. I thought probably not, because would a Determined Doer always wait until all his dishes were dirty to wash them? Sadly, I suspect not. But then, I didn’t attend Montana Tech, to my great and everlasting shame.
Those stickers read, with a kind of defiant dignity, “Butte, America.” You see, Butte, America is now—and always has been—a place full of Determined Doers. “Determined Doers” shows up in number three on Montana Technological University’s new list of values, a part of their new overall strategic plan: “We are ‘Determined Doers.’ Through collaboration, resolve, and fierce determination, we value getting things done.” I think that simple, consonant phrase does describe Butte— and Montana Tech—and what makes them both so cussedly, tenaciously exceptional. Many of us Butte rats like to wax poetic about Butte. The scenery is drop-dead gorgeous, the opportunities for hiking, fishing, and camping are numerous, and, besides that, it’s got a 90-foot virgin mother watching over it from on high! My friend Brian calls it the “Holy City,” and when the whole glittering mess of it is lit up at night, you could see yourself starting to wonder if there isn’t something, well, divine about the place after all.
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MNews Spring 2022
DETERMINED PEOPLE THAT DO GREAT THINGS. Montana Tech has always provided the kinds of hands-on, experiential learning you truly can’t get anywhere else. The result has always been the kinds of students that such education fosters: leaders, innovators, scientists, nurses, people wellequipped to navigate the cutting edge of science and technology. To put it another way, it has always produced the kinds of people who probably wash their dishes after every meal. Maybe they even take them out of the cupboard and wash them once in the late afternoon for good measure. MNews Spring 2022
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