Published Aug. 12, 2024

If we're lucky, the places and people that can give our lives an aura of magic potential enter our experience at the right moment to sustain our dreams.

—Jill Kerr Conway, A Woman's Education

My Dearest MSU Community,

After serving with immense pride and joy as your president for 15 years, I have decided this will be my last academic year, and I will retire effective June 30, 2025.

Serving as the 12th president of Montana State University has been an incomparable honor, the memory of which I will hold close to my heart for the rest of my life.

The promise of public higher education to better ourselves, our communities and our country endures as brightly today as it did in 1862 when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act into law, establishing — for the first time — a public university in each state and territory of a still very young nation.

Montana State University has remained true to this foundation, opening its doors to all: to the sons and daughters of the working families of America, to the folks "of toil" who, not even in their wildest dreams, would have been able to imagine the potential that lay dormant inside their minds and in their hearts. That higher education would be enacted by, for, and in the people's interest was an inspired decision in 1862. It remains a wise path to follow into the future.

I had never been to Montana before my campus interview in September of 2009. Once here, I learned that the work of Montana State University extends beyond the edges of our campus in Bozeman. It resonates through three affiliated campuses at MSU Billings, MSU Northern in Havre and Great Falls College MSU. It is complemented by the impactful research conducted at our Montana Agricultural Experiment Station's centers and by serving the people in every county of Montana, thanks to the dedicated work of MSU Extension. Because of them, I reveled in telling audiences that the entire state is our campus; I felt so proud to represent you in those moments.

I was born and raised in the coastal city of Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, surrounded by palm and mango trees — a landscape very different from the one I fell in love with once I moved to Montana. I grew up in a multigenerational house shared by my three younger siblings, my parents, two aunts and my maternal grandmother. None of the adults in my home had the opportunity to go to college, but they all valued education and were determined that we children would have the tools to aspire to an even more prosperous and happier life than theirs.

When I was 3 years old, my grandmother handed me a treasure: She gave me reading lessons at the kitchen table while she cooked the traditional rice and beans for the family. Learning to read felt like magic, and books opened a world of wonder that I still explore every day, passing on that gift to my own children and my two granddaughters. Reading books (particularly literature and history) is how I found my path to higher education — books transform lives.

I have a debt of gratitude to the people who first educated me — starting at home — and for 13 school years at Colegio de la Milagrosa. I would not be whom I am without them or without the imprints left on me by attending and serving three land-grant universities: University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, New Mexico State University and, yes, Montana State University.

Every day leading this university I have felt the hopes that families have for their children. For each and every one of our students, I can feel my own family's presence urging me to do my very best to care for them. We all have ledgers in our lives that we struggle to balance, and it has been my privilege, and a blessing, to try to repay my family's gifts by serving at a public university.

If I have had any measure of success in this endeavor, it has only been due to all of you: the students, the faculty, the staff, the alumni, the fans, the benefactors and my devoted team, with whom I start every day standing in a circle in the morning — a tribute to the Indigenous nations who inhabited the land on which Montana State University stands today.

You trusted me, you laughed with me, argued with me, questioned me, you helped me, you worked endless hours at my behest, you made impossible things happen, but most of all: You joined me in believing that what we do here is vitally important to our country and to the world. You joined me in giving a portion of our life to the conviction that public higher education matters.

A new academic year, replete with new opportunities, accomplishments and victories is about to begin; we have work to do. I'm grateful I still have this year to enjoy your company, our conversations, and to celebrate our traditions one more time. I'm thankful that I'm in good health to enjoy this transition into retirement — a new stage that I long for and dread in equal measure. Yes, I long for more time with my family, particularly my grandchildren, who will only be young once. As for the dread? I will miss you all so terribly much.

For this coming year, I invite you to join me: Come to the scholarly, artistic, cultural, athletic and community-building events that we plan with so much love; this year, let's cheer on the Bobcats at the top of our lungs and, this year, let the world know that we have Blue and Gold running through our veins... forever.

I know this magnificent university, this place where anyone with the desire to make their life better can do so, is in good hands. For it is your university: It is in your hands, as it has always been and shall ever be.

With great affection,

Waded Cruzado

Waded Cruzado
President, Montana State University