News

Blue & Gold News from Montana State University President Tessman

April 15, 2026/

Montana State University Office of the President

At the beginning of this month, we had the opportunity to celebrate the inauguration of the 13th president of Montana State University. Now, that happens to be me, but the event was really a celebration of this great university itself — including its 133 years of history and its bright future.

The festivities began Wednesday, April 1, with a reception open to all MSU students and continued the next day with a community gathering and elementary school visit in Three Forks, a stop at the university’s Post farm near Bozeman, and a visit to the home of a longtime Bobcat family, the Aasheims. And that afternoon at the official investiture ceremony, I was honored to share my remarks on the history, strength and momentum of MSU; the “American Experiment” and MSU’s land-grant calling; and the transformations being brought on by artificial intelligence — including why and how MSU will lead during this time of change.

We face challenges, for sure, but I trust that our university is ready to help find solutions for the educational, economic, cultural, ethical and human consequences of artificial intelligence. And I am confident that MSU will lead successfully. That confidence comes, in large part, from our university’s faculty and staff and, especially, our students.

To all of you who joined us for the investiture — either in person or via the livestream — thank you! If you weren’t able to make it that day and you’d like to view the recording, it’s available online at http://www.youtube.com/live/O58plFdqm7g.

And now comes the real fun! I am so excited about the future of Montana State University and look forward to working with all of you in the months and years ahead. Thank you for all you bring to our university, state and world.

IN RECENT NEWS

I’m delighted to share that MSU was named the No. 1 military-friendly school in the country this spring, an esteemed ranking from the website Militaryfriendly.com that recognizes our university’s continued investment in supporting the student veteran community on campus. MSU has consistently placed as a top-five military-friendly school and last year earned a No. 3 ranking. But this is the first year the university tops the rankings in the top tier of national research institutions, which includes schools such as Arizona State, Texas A&M and Purdue. The rankings are determined by public data and a survey filled out by each school gauging the institution’s military student support and retention, graduation and career outcomes, financial aid support, and culture, among other data points.

More than 150 people attended MSU’s Interdisciplinary Institute on Artificial Intelligence Faculty Symposium on March 26, an event designed to explore the possibilities and pitfalls of AI for higher education and research. The event featured four panel discussions comprised of MSU faculty and others from around the Montana University System, tackling AI in research, teaching and learning, putting AI into action, and AI in higher education. The symposium was hosted by MSU’s Interdisciplinary Institute on Artificial Intelligence, which launched last month after more than a year of planning.

Engineering students at MSU can now explore the fundamentals of modern manufacturing management in depth through a new graduate-level course, Manufacturing Management Systems. The class introduces operational improvement strategies widely used in industry and examines how they are applied in real-world manufacturing environments. The course is in its first semester and was developed through a collaboration of MSU’s Montana Manufacturing Extension Center and the Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering. The undergraduates enrolled in the class are majoring in mechanical engineering and mechanical engineering technology who are expected to graduate in May.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at MSU was recently awarded $278,500 by the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust to help purchase equipment that makes the process of digitally capturing movements of human bodies considerably faster and easier than in the past. The equipment has been installed in MSU’s interdisciplinary Neuromuscular Biomechanics Lab, located in the Student Wellness Center, and it results in drastic time savings when collecting and processing data.

In athletics, we have so much to celebrate! Our Bobcat women’s and men’s track and field student-athletes earned victories in several events April 3-4 at the Stanford Invite. We also celebrate our Bobcat women’s tennis team, which enjoyed a victory at home over Northern Arizona on April 3, and our Bobcat men’s tennis team, which defeated Weber State at home on April 5.

We were also proud to cheer on our MSU Rodeo team at our annual MSU Spring Rodeo, held April 9-12 in the Brick. The MSU women’s team dominated the weekend, winning all six women’s individual events in the two rodeos, taking both all-around titles and winning the team championships of both rodeos. Meanwhile, depth on our men’s team helped the program to a comfortable team win. Go ‘Cats!

COMING UP AT MSU

All are invited to participate in an upcoming 5K to help fund scholarships for students in MSU’s College of Education, Health and Human Development. The fifth annual Bobcat Pounce: 5K Run, Walk, Stroll will be held on campus starting at 10 a.m. Saturday, April 18. All proceeds from the event go to the General EHHD Scholarships Fund, which supports merit- and need-based scholarships for students becoming teachers, counselors, physical therapists, food systems leaders, community health professionals and more.

MSU’s Provost’s Distinguished Lecturer Series will wrap up for the 2025-26 academic year on Tuesday, April 21, with a talk by Julia Haggerty, head of the Department of Earth Sciences in the College of Letters and Science. Haggerty, who grew up in Boston, will touch on elements of the personal and academic journey that brought her to MSU in a talk titled “Shared Prosperity in Times of Transition: Resource Regions and the Practice of Neighboring.” The free event will be held in the Museum of the Rockies’ Hager Auditorium and will begin at 7 p.m.

A documentary connecting Yellowstone National Park’s past and present through an immersive visual and musical journey will premiere at 2 p.m. Wednesday, April 22, in the Hager Auditorium at the Museum of the Rockies. The event is free and open to the public. The film, “Yellowstone Wild Through Time,” received several awards of merit from the Cannes Film Festival in the Best Nature/Wildlife Film category and was created by independent filmmaker Carol Amore with scientific guidance from Roland Hatzenpichler, director of MSU’s Thermal Biology Institute and associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Nick Lyons, angler, writer and founder of Lyons Press, will present “Evolution of a Fly Fisherman” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 28, in Inspiration Hall in Norm Asbjornson Hall. The event is part of the MSU Library’s annual Trout and Salmonid Lecture Series and is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

Save the date! Our 2026 spring commencement ceremonies are scheduled for Friday, May 8, in the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse. The morning ceremony — honoring our graduates in agriculture, business, engineering and nursing — begins at 9:40 a.m., and the afternoon ceremony for graduates from the College of Arts and Architecture, College of Education, Health and Human Development, College of Letters and Science and Gallatin College MSU — starts at 2:10 p.m. The ceremonies will also be livestreamed. More information is available at http://www.montana.edu/commencement/.

Montana Shakespeare in the Parks, a part of MSU’s College of Arts and Architecture, will perform Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” and “Much Ado About Nothing” for its annual summer tour across five states. The shows, which are free and open to the public, kick off June 10 at the MSU Duck Pond. The program provides performances for rural communities and grade schools that might not otherwise have access to free theater of MSIP’s quality and scope. It is one of the largest and oldest Shakespeare companies in the United States.

DID YOU KNOW

At the invitation of NASA, a team of seven MSU students will travel to Spain this summer to fly stratospheric balloons while conducting sophisticated experiments during a total solar eclipse. This is the sixth time that MSU’s Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project members will lead student teams from American universities as they investigate eclipse-driven phenomena and share images taken from the edge of space.

In Blue and Gold,