News

Blue & Gold News from Montana State University President Tessman

August 20, 2025/

Montana State University Office of the President

Dear Russ,

Welcome to a new year at Montana State University! I’m honored to be starting my first year as the 13th president of MSU, and our family — my wife, Kristin, and our daughters, 10-year-old Frances and 8-year-old Leona — is so excited to become part of MSU and the Gallatin Valley communities. We look forward to seeing you out and about, whether it is up at Hyalite, downtown at one of the farmers markets, or anywhere in between!

It may be a bit of an understatement, but it’s an exciting time on campus. Students have moved in and are filling our classrooms, studios and laboratories. They’re meeting classmates in the SUB, working out in the Student Wellness Center and grabbing a bite to eat in Rendezvous and Miller.

Watching students return to campus, and also seeing my family settle in and make this special place home, has me thinking of fresh beginnings and the promise of this new year. I’ve been out of state for a few years, serving as president of Northern Michigan University. I loved our time in Michigan, but it is a dream come true for our family to return home to Montana and a tremendous privilege for me to serve as the president of Montana’s land-grant university and the state’s premier institution of higher education.

One of the things that drew me to MSU is how dedicated everyone on this campus is to supporting our students. I’m deeply committed to ensuring our students have the resources to be successful, both in the classroom and beyond as they navigate their career paths after graduation. Montana State has a strong tradition of excellence in teaching, outreach, and research and creative activity, and I look forward to continuing this important work.

MSU is strong not just because of our sense of mission but also because of the extraordinary people who help us achieve that mission. As faculty, staff, alumni, friends and supporters of Montana State University, you play an important role in this! I am deeply grateful for your partnership, and I look forward to spending time with you in the years to come. It’s an honor to serve this community.

IN RECENT NEWS

Our First Year Student Convocation with author and attorney Michael Punke, whose literary work includes the nonfiction “Fire and Brimstone: The North Butte Mining Disaster of 1917,” was held yesterday in the Brick. Punke’s first novel, “The Revenant,” was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller and was published in more than 20 languages. The novel was adapted into an Academy Award-winning movie in 2015. Convocation is the signature event that helps launch our students into the academic year, and we are so grateful to Michael for the thoughtful remarks he shared.

Earlier this week, MSU and Bobcat Athletics held a grand opening ceremony for the university’s newest athletic facility, the Kennedy-Stark Athletic Center. The 120,000-square-foot center is named for Bobcat track and field coaching legends Rob Stark, who coached from 1976-2000, and Dale Kennedy, who began as women’s head coach in 1981 and led both programs from 2000-2018. It features practice facilities for the Bobcat football team and a full slate of competition-ready features for track and field. In addition to a 100-yard turf surface, there is also a six-lane, 300-meter track; jumping pits; throwing sectors; and pole vault areas. It will be the primary practice and competition space for MSU’s indoor track and field programs, and it is the only indoor facility on campus where the entire Bobcat football team can practice at the same time. It will also be open during specified evening and weekend hours for use by community athletic groups. The facility was funded entirely with private dollars, and we are so grateful to the generous donors who made it possible.

A small but mighty satellite built at MSU headed into orbit last month, where it will spend at least six months collecting information about solar particles that escape Earth’s magnetic field and enter our atmosphere. The Relativistic Electron Atmospheric Loss CubeSat, or REAL, was one of several scientific craft launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Funded by NASA, REAL is a collaboration between Dartmouth College, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Boston University and MSU’s Space Science and Engineering Laboratory. REAL will study the forces that cause charged particles, released by the sun and trapped in radiation belts in Earth’s magnetosphere, to scatter and zip into the atmosphere along magnetic field lines – a process that we sometimes see as the Northern Lights.

Starting this month, Gallatin College MSU is training students to house, guide and feed the state’s tourists and other travelers with a one-year hospitality certificate. The certificate provides baseline knowledge of business communication, culinary arts, hotel management and more, said program manager Meredith Allen. The program received $1 million in funding from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, which also supported plans to construct a new Gallatin College MSU building on campus. The hospitality program is a collaborative effort between Gallatin College MSU, the Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship and the College of Education, Health and Human Development. Gallatin College MSU students in hospitality or culinary arts programs will take classes alongside MSU students and can count their credits toward a four-year hospitality management degree, with options in hospitality business and sustainable hospitality.

With new funding from the Montana Pulse Crop Committee, MSU’s Eastern Agricultural Research Center is establishing a new survey program for peas and lentils. EARC, located in Sidney, will be the hub for the program, and farmers growing peas or lentils in Daniels, McCone, Roosevelt, Sheridan and Valley counties are invited to participate. Through the survey program, MSU scientists will scout participating farmers’ pea and lentil fields for pests, diseases and other threats, such as herbicide resistant weeds. Researchers will partner with MSU Extension’s Schutter Diagnostic Lab to identify any new threats and collaborate with Extension offices to provide individual reports back to each producer. They will also create large-scale reports to share longer-term trends and pest management techniques.

Sarah Stoneback, an associate professor of trumpet in MSU’s School of Music, recently was elected vice president and president-elect of the International Trumpet Guild. On Oct. 1, Stoneback will start her two-year term as vice president of the global organization, followed by two years each as president and past president. The guild represents 5,000 members from 64 countries who take part in performance, teaching and educational opportunities worldwide.

For 35 years, and with funding from entities such as the National Institutes for Health, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Montana INBRE and the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, MSU has continued to acquire cutting-edge equipment for a campus facility used by MSU researchers and external users in the biological sciences. Most recently managed by the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, the facility was designated MSU’s newest core research facility earlier this year. Administered by the vice president for research and economic development, core research facilities are hubs of expertise that aim to advance research efforts by pooling equipment, specialists and resources dedicated to assisting students, faculty and external clients with their research. The Cellular Analysis Core facility provides access to functional equipment essential for researchers in immunology, infectious disease, cell biology, microbiology and related fields at MSU and elsewhere in the region. Most of its instruments are housed in large laboratories on the Innovation Campus in the Health Sciences Building, and three flow cytometers are located near the heart of campus in the Cooley Laboratory to provide easier access for faculty and students.

Nominations are now open for MSU’s premier agricultural award, the Outstanding Agricultural Leader Award, which recognizes individuals, families or businesses that have gone above and beyond for the Montana agricultural industry in service, advocacy, production or business. The award will be presented during the College of Agriculture’s Celebrate Agriculture week Nov. 3-8 on the MSU campus. The deadline to submit nominations is Friday, Sept. 5.

COMING UP AT MSU

The annual Gold Rush football game is Saturday, Sept. 6, versus the South Dakota State Jackrabbits. The game kicks off at 6 p.m. in Bobcat Stadium. Now in its 18th year, the Gold Rush tradition celebrates our Bobcat spirit. Limited edition Gold Rush T-shirts are available in several locations. Please join us — and Go ‘Cats, Go!

The last of MSU’s 2025 agricultural field day series will be at 5 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 28, at the Bozeman Agricultural Research and Teaching Farm, or BART Farm. At field days, attendees can meet faculty, learn about ongoing and future research, offer feedback, share a meal and tour facilities. Topics for 2025 have included plant variety testing, new crops, livestock management, precision agriculture and more. Hosted by the College of Agriculture and Montana Agricultural Experiment Station, the series has included events at all seven of the university’s research centers, plus two at campus farms in Bozeman.

DID YOU KNOW

Throughout their college careers, a trio of recent MSU graduates rehearsed album tracks in the School of Music‘s Howard Hall and performed in jazz ensembles. Earlier this summer, they released the album “Something More” on Bandcamp. The Kellan Moore Trio includes Kellan Moore, a pianist from Billings who earned a mechanical engineering degree, Jaden Hopkins, a bassist from South Carolina with a mechanical engineering degree, and Carson Putnam, a drummer from Bozeman with a degree in psychology. The students found their rhythm playing together in MSU’s Jazz Workshop Band and the One O’clock Jazz Ensemble, a band for the university’s strongest jazz musicians. The trio became official in 2022 and performed more than 30 times at MSU events throughout their undergraduate years.

In Blue and Gold,