DATE:  May 15, 2001

TO: Board of Regents

FROM: Willard R. Weaver,  Dean, Montana State University -Great Falls College of Technology

RE: Campus Report for the May 17 -18, Board of Regents' Meeting

This spring student success stories seem to be blossoming at Montana State University-Great Falls College of Technology. Some examples:

  • Laura Bresson, a pre-Bioscience Technology student, has been awarded a $4,000 fellowship at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in Richland, Washington. She will spend 10 weeks this summer working with Glen Dunam, Ph.D., building microscopic instruments for use with bacteria and viruses.

The Department of Energy and the American Association of Community Colleges collaborated to develop this award as a way to create educational pathways for community college students in under-represented groups to pursue science, technology and engineering careers. The DOE's Office of Science has formed the "Institute of Biotechnology, Environmental Science, and Computing for Community Colleges" to provide momentum for this partnership. MSU-Tech has been involved with this pilot project since its inception in 1998.

  • Crystal Johnson, a Business Management/Entrepreneurship student, won $2,000 recently as first runner-up in the Pacific Northwest Collegiate Entrepreneur competition sponsored by the Herb and Allice Jones Entrepreneurship Center at Seattle University. Crystal-s award-winning project was the business plan she developed as a capstone project in her AAS-degree program.

Crystal originally enrolled at MSU-Great Falls College of Technology to develop the business expertise needed to complement her husband-s skills as an electrician in their business, Power Connection. Apart from the award, the plan has also resulted in improvements to their business. Crystal will use the same plan this week when she travels to The University of Montana to compete in the John Ruffatto Business Plan Competition.

  • Sharolyn Suek earned the distinction this spring of being the first MSU COT Student of the Year to complete all of her courses through distance education. Sharolyn lives in Dutton, Montana, where she serves on the local school board and raises a familyall while maintaining a 4.0 GPA in on-line coursework in the Medical Transcription program. The whole family drove to Great Falls to watch Sharolyn receive her award in Heritage Hall.

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MSUGreat Falls College of Technology has been selected as one of twenty sites nationwide to be a Cisco Academy Training Center in Sponsored Curriculum (CATC-SC). As a CATC-CS, the College will provide a minimum of five week-long training sessions this summer and one session a month for the upcoming academic year in both Unix Operating Systems and Web Development. Training for additional software programs will be added in the months to come.