NSF grants $300,000 to MSU historians to examine the way humans have used and modified the American West through science and technology

Montana State University’s history department has received a $300,000 boost from the National Science Foundation.

The NSF gave the department a three-year Small Grant for Training and Research — one of three offered in the United States — to examine the way humans have used and modified the American West through science and technology, said department head Robert Rydell. In the process, the grant will enhance MSU’s new Ph.D. program in history. The program was approved last summer by the Montana Board of Regents.

By Evelyn Boswell, MSU News Service

http://www.montana.edu/commserv/csnews/nwview.php?article=1779

"Without the Ph.D. program, we wouldn’t have the NSF dollars," Rydell said. "Without the NSF dollars, we wouldn’t be able to build the program as quickly as we would like."

Michael Reidy, who is overseeing the grant with Rydell, said the grant will be used to recruit and retain graduate students, hire guest scholars to teach at the graduate and undergraduate level, and hold three annual conferences that will provide sustained research opportunities for faculty and students. The grant will allow faculty and students to work together on a three-year research project.

Rydell acknowledged that some people may think it’s strange that a science foundation would give money to a history department.

"But there’s a history to science," he said. "It’s very important."

Reidy said MSU has several historians who focus on science, technology and the environment, and their work is becoming increasingly relevant.

"This is especially true in areas where there exists an obvious social and cultural component to science, be it in weapons research, genetics or our relationship with the land and sea," Reidy said.

The common research project is called "Mile High, Mile Deep: Imagining and Modifying Topographical and Subterranean Environments." The title suggests a focus on Butte, but Rydell said researchers will incorporate findings from Butte, Yellowstone National Park and the entire American West to understand the importance of space and place for the practice of science.

The Ph.D. program will have its first three students this fall, Rydell said. Robert Wilson, the first postdoctoral researcher, will teach contemporary issues in science this fall as part of MSU’s new core curriculum.

Brett Walker, organizer of the upcoming Michael P. Malone Memorial Conference which is supported in part by the grant, said the conference will be held Sept. 23-26 at the 320 Ranch. Its theme will be "Creating Space: Across Histories, Cultures and Disciplines."

"It will investigate how different societies conceived of, defined and constructed space in different times and places," Walker said.

Other institutions receiving the NSF grant were the University of California, San Diego, and Duke University.

Evelyn Boswell, (406) 994-5135 or [email protected]