MSU President Waded Crusado Passionate About Land Grant Mission
Author: Lee Enterprises Columnist Mary Sheehy Moe
MSU President Waded Crusado Passionate About Land Grant Mission
Mary Sheehy Moe
Lee Enterprises Columnist
The incongruity of the video alone makes you smile: After the game that punched Montana State University's ticket to the national championship, dozens of football players — young, big, pumped — are celebrating postgame when a tiny, gray-haired woman dances into their midst.
The decibel level goes through the roof.
Waded Cruzado. Fifteen years ago, she entered the midst of the Montana University System. Then, too, it seemed incongruous. A Hispanic woman assuming MSU's top job? A humanities scholar heading up an ag-engineering university? This native of a tropical island calling landlocked cowboy country home? Hmmm.
But Waded was just continuing what she'd spent her whole career doing: Realizing the dream of a land-grant college. The product of a land-grant college herself, she savored the mission established by the Morrill Act, incongruously, in the middle of the Civil War. Sen. Justin Morrill, too poor himself to attend college, believed the nation would be well-served by democratizing higher education, opening the doors of academia to the sons and daughters of the working class.
Waded was one such daughter. None of her family had gone to college; all of them knew she would. Thanks to her grandmother, she was reading at age 3. "It was like turning on a light bulb," Waded says. Her love of learning led to her first degree … from the University of Puerto Rico, a land-grant college.
With a master's and a doctorate from Texas under her belt, she scaled the ladder of academia. When she took the job at MSU, she was just 49 years old.
She hit the ground running. Eloquently, charismatically, tirelessly, she reminded Montana and MSU itself of its land grant mission. MSU was not lesser than. Just like its students, its potential is limitless.
Fifteen years later, MSU has the highest enrollment in the Montana University System, 50% higher than what it was when Cruzado started. More importantly, more MSU students stay in college and graduate. Many win prestigious national awards for their scholarship.
MSU's research presence also exploded. For 10 years running, research faculty have successfully competed for over $100 million in federal research funds — in 2023, nearly $230 million!
Waded's no slouch at fundraising herself.
"When she talks about the land-grant mission, her passion becomes your passion," one donor told me years ago. That's a lot of passion.
Research funding aside, MSU during Cruzado's tenure amassed nearly $1 billion, half of that for academic, sports, and students facilities alone. As a former colleague told me recently, "Visiting that campus now, compared to when she started, it's like another planet. Totally transformed."
But the transformation that's always been Cruzado's passion is the one students make. On Move-In Day, she's out in the parking lot, hauling students' boxes into dorms. She's added scholarship programs to make college possible for more students. She's encouraged students to take more credits each semester to reduce the price tag for completion. She makes a point of meeting with students, mixing with them, and guest-lecturing in their classrooms. She tells them her story, which is their story too.
And, yes, when the football team punches its ticket to the national championship game, she seeks them out and dances with joy in their midst.
We open the calendar to 2025 with some trepidation. It's a scary, explosive world out there. But in the midst of all this division, we can unite Monday as Montanans to cheer a team on to a national championship.
The excitement will be tinged, of course, by the sadness of things coming to an end. Monday will be the last time we'll experience Butte's Tommy Mellott, Billings' Marcus Wehr, Melstone's Brady Grebe, Darby's Cole Sain, Missoula's Ryan Ortt, and Bozeman's McCade O'Reilly, Ryan Lonergan and Justus Perkins in blue and gold, thrilling us with their amazing gifts, honed at our land-grant university.
And cheering them on for the last time will be Waded Cruzado, amazing us yet again with hers. Her tenure, as one former regent remarked, has been a master class in leadership.
Waded says she faces retirement torn between longing and dread. My wish for this woman who continually demonstrates that excellence pursued with passion and discipline leads, incongruously enough, to joy? I hope you dance.
Mary Sheehy Moe is a retired educator and former state senator, school board trustee, and city commissioner from Great Falls. Now living in Missoula.
Eloquently, charismatically, tirelessly, she reminded Montana and MSU itself of its land-grant mission. MSU was not lesser than. Just like its students, its potential is limitless.
