President's Perspective

Dear Griz Family,  

Students arrive on our campus from all over the world, bringing to UM their varied histories and backgrounds. We are privileged that each student brings with them an individual lens for understanding and a unique set of abilities to influence both UM and the wider world. 

My hope is that each student — beyond prestigious accolades, a competitive internship or academic awards — finds at UM a community where they can develop a confident personal voice.  

Our troubling times desperately call forth the next generation, with clear hearts and minds, to solve our biggest challenges. I am renewed by our students choosing to persevere through the pandemic and continue their academic paths.

Many of them have responded to the weight of COVID-19 and devoted themselves to majors like our new public health degree and Missoula College’s respiratory therapy and paramedic medicine programs. UM students are looking across the country, blanketed in wildfire, and committing themselves to climate change studies, forestry, environmental sciences and sustainability. The nation’s reckoning with racial and social justice has motivated a new generation of young people to study law, social work and public policy.

These students are today and tomorrow’s problem-solvers, justice seekers, and builders of inclusive prosperity.

UM has and always will respond to the moment with an academic profile that provides a relevant, robust education, graduating competent students into lives and careers of impact. I can think of no more important or noble work.

I know you all believe in our UM Family, too, and that is reflected in success of the largest and most impactful fundraising effort not only for UM, but in the history of Montana. In seven years, more than $450 million was given to Campaign Montana. The overwhelming philanthropic support was a most humbling gesture and symbol of confidence in our students, our mission and our future.

Our deepest thanks from everyone in the Griz Family. 

Be well,
President Seth Bodnar