The University of Montana-Missoula

In the span of a century since its founding, the University of Montana in Missoula has extended its educational, research and community footprint from its campus door step at the base of Sentinel Mountain to the entire 18-million-acre Crown of the Continent ecosystem that extends northward into Canada. This US–Canada transboundary ecosystem is defined by Glacier and Waterton Lakes National Parks, the world’s first international peace park, and the Bob Marshall Wilderness, one of the first designated wilderness areas. In reframing its place within this ecosystem, the University of Montana has become a landscape conservation champion and an enduring institutional steward of the region’s natural resources in the face of climate change. By example, the University of Montana is demonstrating that higher education has a keystone role in landscape conservation as the identity of the university is forever linked to its surrounding environs.