Summertime in Bozeman!

We love the summer in Bozeman. The weather is great and there are so many different things to do in the community and in the mountains. Next week is the first new student orientation of the summer and we are excited to get some new Bobcats on campus! Downtown Bozeman will also hold it’s first Art Walk of the summer next Friday! Of course there is always great hiking and backpacking opportunities in the area and soon it will be hot enough to float the river! Yay!!!! Time to whip out the BBQs and hiking shoes, we’re ready for summer!

Don’t forget the Office of Admissions is going to be open and offering tours throughout the summer so let us know if you are going to be in town!!

Congratulations to the Class of 2013!

The academic school year wrapped up this weekend with MSU’s 118th Commencement. Over 1,600 graduates walked across the stage of the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse and are moving on to more amazing adventures. From one graduate to all the others, I am proud to welcome all of you into a very select group as a Montana State University Alumni. Remember: once a Bobcat, always a Bobcat! Congratulations and good luck to the Montana State University Class of 2013!

 

Bobcat Fest!

Next week is the last week of school for the 2012-2013 year so our students have been busy all week studying and preparing for their finals. To reward them for all their hard work and give them a break from their books, papers and calculators we’re having Bobcat Fest! The 5th Annual Bobcat Fest will happen this Friday, April 26th starting at 5pm and will go to 8pm. Students, faculty, and community members will gather on Main Street in Bozeman to celebrate another incredible year and have one last “hoorah” before finals and graduation. Food, prizes and music are provided, the band being Cure for the Common a local favorite! This type of event goes to show what an incredible relationship the community of Bozeman and Montana State University share. Hope to see you all there! Go Cats!

P.S. Good luck to our students on their finals next week!

Time to Celebrate Some Montana Culture

Happy Friday Bobcat Nation! Today is the start of the Annual American Indian Council Pow Wow at MSU’s field house. The two day event is a gathering of many tribes, Indian and non-indian, students and community members to honor and celebrate diverse cultures and special individuals. As one of the largest in the state, this Pow Wow is as exciting as it is colorful…

The grand entry tonight (April 12th) at six is a must see! If you miss it today don’t worry, there will be two more tomorrow at noon and six. If there was such a thing as a must hear it would definitely be the drum competition. The dramatic combination of the thunderous beats and echoing voices under the roof of the field house can be an incredibly moving experience.

In addition there will be a basketball tournament and dance competition. Crafts and art sold in booths as well as food! I’m currently in Vermont telling students about MSU and can’t make it this year so that means any of you going need to have some fry bread for me!

Take care all!

MSU students are at it again!

In just the last couple of days, several Montana State University students have been recognized on a national scale for their outstanding work in the classroom!

Former Student Body President Blake Bjornson, was recently named as one of the Nation’s fifty Udall Scholars, in recognition of his continued passion and work towards an environmentally related career! Be sure to check out the press release for all of the details regarding Blake’s impressive accomplishment! Bjornson is now the fifth MSU student to be receive this prestigious honor!

As if that wasn’t enough, Montana State University made huge ripples in the academic pool last week, landing an astounding FOUR Goldwater Scholars! The Goldwater Scholarship is the premier scholarship for undergraduate students studying Math, Natural Sciences, or Engineering! The icing on this cake is the fact that all four of MSU’s finalists were named as Goldwater Scholars, rounding out our figure to 58 students who have been recognized for this honor!

A little bragging never hurt anyone, right?

Thanks again for reading everyone, and as always… 

GOCATS!!!

“Spirit of the West” Marching Band

The Spirit of the West marching band is growing and wants you!! Any MSU student (regardless of major) with some playing or colorguard experience can join the band. All members receive a partial tuition waiver of $1,000 (plus $300 bonus per year) for being in the band. Every season begins with a week of rehearsals prior to the start of the fall semester.  This time is used to teach marching fundamentals and the music for the season.

You don’t have an instrument? No problem.  There are instruments available through the School of Music, which includes specialized marching instruments (sousaphone, baritone, mellophone, piccolo, drumline, colorguard). There are also a limited number of other instruments available for student use.

I can’t wait to see the band at the first home football game! GO CATS GO!

Leaving on a jet plane…

It’s that wonderful time of year where our Admissions Representatives are hitting the road and visiting areas all over the country to talk about MSU! We will be all over visiting students in Montana, California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Minnesota, Vermont, Texas, Idaho and Nevada in the next couple of months! Make sure to keep track of our travel schedules and let us know if you’d like to meet! Hope to see many of you on the road in the coming weeks!

Spring Break!

Today is the last day of class before Spring Break 2013 officially begins! As a student I can remember counting down the days until I reached this coveted week-long vacation. After talking to many of our current student workers, we have found that they are travelling all over the place! One student is going to Moab, another is off to Disneyland and many are choosing to go home to catch up with their families. Whereever their Spring Break takes them we wish them safe travels and happy relaxing.

For students who don’t know what to do over Spring Break or want to do some community service work then we have the perfect option for them! The Office of Activities and Engagement hosts a program called BreaksAway for student who are looking to travel and help the world. In the past students have worked on projects including; helping the homeless in Denver, hurricane relief in New Orleans, trail building in the Gila National Forest, and the list goes on!

Our students are pretty incredible and we love seeing them getting out into the world and making a change. Even though the students are gone all next week, the Office of Admissions and other offices on campus are still open!

Just How Big is Montana?

Last week Anders and I ran across a quote which gave us an interesting perspective on the size of our state. It goes:

“Montana is as big as Illinois, Michigan and Indiana.   It is bigger than Italy and Japan.  To say that it is the third American state in size does not, perhaps make its enormousness tangible; say instead that one out of every twenty-five American miles is in Montana.”

~John Gunther, Inside USA, 1947

These words were written before Alaska joined the Union and bumped our state to the number four spot but it’s still pretty incredible. Gunther’s numbers must have been off because when I ran them for the continental U.S. I got 1 in 20 miles is in Montana!

On a side note, who caught the debut of Kevin Michael Connolly’s “Armed & Ready” last night? Here’s another trailer in case you missed it!

“Amazing” just doesn’t cut it.

Hello once again from Montana State University’s Office of Admissions!

Throughout this blog, we often bring the stories of our students to light. Whether they are excelling in the classroom, on the football field, or pursuing their dreams after graduation, we love bragging about the amazing feats of Bobcats, both past and present! However, the student that I want to talk about today is (far) beyond “amazing.” This young man’s truly awe-inspiring journey has brought him all around the world, and will now land him on his own show premiering on the Travel Channel on February 26th!

I was fortunate enough to be classmates with Kevin Michael Connolly while attending Montana State University in the early 2000′s. While on campus, there was something about Kevin that commanded attention. He was ambitious, outspoken, confident and one of the friendliest people you could come across. But there was something beyond all of that. There was something more that made him into the X-Games Skier, globally published author, public speaker and TV Star that he is today. What was that intangible that he had? What drove him  to be the inspiring figure that he was around our campus, and then around the world? Well, why don’t you take a look at the trailer for Kevin Connolly’s new show, “Armed & Ready,”and see if you can find out what that intangible was then, is today, and will be for the rest of his thrilling life!

Thanks again for checking out our Blog; and as always…

GO CATS!!!