Waded Cruzado couldn’t imagine leading Montana State University — a place she thought would be too cold, too forbidding, and too different from her Caribbean roots.
It was 2009, and a recruiter was pestering Cruzado, who was serving as interim president of New Mexico State University.
In Cruzado’s mind, there was no way a Latina scholar of Spanish language and literature would be a good fit at STEM-focused Montana State, where nearly 85 percent of students identify as white.
“Listen, I have never been to Montana,” she recalled telling the recruiter. “I don’t sound like anyone in Montana. I don’t look like anyone in Montana. When I think about Montana, I think about horses and mountains and snow.”
Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for less than $10/month.
Don’t have an account? Sign up now.
A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.
If you need assistance, please contact us at 202-466-1032 or help@chronicle.com.
Waded Cruzado couldn’t imagine leading Montana State University at Bozeman — a place she thought would be too cold, too forbidding, and too different from her Caribbean roots.
It was 2009, and a recruiter was pestering Cruzado, who was serving as interim president of New Mexico State University.
In Cruzado’s mind, there was no way a Latina scholar of Spanish language and literature would be a good fit at STEM-focused Montana State, where nearly 85 percent of students identify as white.
“Listen, I have never been to Montana,” she recalled telling the recruiter. “I don’t sound like anyone in Montana. I don’t look like anyone in Montana. When I think about Montana, I think about horses and mountains and snow.”
But the recruiter kept calling back, Cruzado said, telling her that the board was interested in her experience at a land-grant institution, her passion for supporting students and staff from underrepresented groups, and her energy.
Now Cruzado has been Montana State’s president for 15 years — more than twice as long as the average presidential tenure.
As she prepares to step down at the end of this academic year, she is leaving behind a university that has grown to record heights in enrollment and retention, in sponsored research and fund raising. Montana State’s size and stature now dwarf the state’s other flagship, the University of Montana at Missoula.
For her critics, though, the university’s successes have come at a cost. Some faculty and students have blamed her for not doing enough to help others fit in at the university, especially underrepresented minorities and LGBTQ students.
Jerry Johnson, a former professor of political science at Montana State, said he liked the president but thinks she stayed too long and seemed to suppress support for marginalized groups to appease the state’s increasingly conservative leadership.
Cruzado’s presidency stands out because she has secured political buy-in even as Montana has veered to the right and at a time when Republicans nationally have become less supportive of higher education, especially colleges’ diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Cruzado, herself, is among the few women of color in campus leadership.
State Sen. Dan Salomon, a Republican and vice chair of the Montana Legislature’s joint committee on education, credited Cruzado for the university’s increase in enrollment; for her strong focus on majors that meet the state’s needs in agriculture, healthcare, and STEM; and for her ability to raise money for new buildings.
“She’s small, but she has a lot of pizzazz,” Salomon said.
Cruzado said the authenticity and openness of Montanans is what made her feel at home in a place so different from what she’d known before. The sparse population and sometimes challenging environment and weather require people to rely on one another and communicate directly, she said, without pretense.
“They have taught me here that neighbor is a verb,” she said.
Even so, Cruzado has had to be nimble in responding to people and groups with widely divergent visions of the university.
A few months after she arrived in Bozeman, Cruzado said she met with the Bobcat Quarterback Club, a booster group for alumni supporting Montana State’s football team. In a suite at the stadium, Cruzado said, some 200 “very big, very angry men” vented their frustrations about the program, including the head coach and the university’s athletic director.
ADVERTISEMENT
Instead of responding directly to their demands for personnel changes, Cruzado said, she pivoted in an attempt to refocus their attention — pointing out the shabby wooden bleachers in the south end zone and offering the seeds of a plan to improve the fan experience.
What began as a gripe session about the team became the kickoff of a new fund-raising effort: a $10 million project to refurbish the stadium, adding more than 3,000 new seats, plus new locker rooms, restrooms, concession facilities, and a fancy scoreboard.
Montana State University students take selfies with President Waded Cruzado in August.Colter Peterson, Montana State University
“The most important thing that any leader can do, first of all, is listen,” Cruzado said. “Listen carefully. Because in what you hear, there will be a kernel. There will be a clue. There will be something that you can latch on to and then help them envision a better and brighter future.”
Construction projects have been a constant during Cruzado’s tenure, including the $20-million American Indian Hall, which provides academic and social spaces for students from indigenous communities, and Gianforte Hall, which received $50 million from the philanthropy founded by Gov. Greg Gianforte, a Republican. That project, expected to finish in 2026, will house the university’s computer-science program.
Salomon, the state senator, said the fund raising and new buildings have done more than spruce up the Bozeman campus; they have also helped attract new students to the university.
Since the fall of 2010, Montana State’s student headcount at its main campus has grown more than 19 percent, to 16,043 from 13,459. That trend has been driven by a large influx of students from outside Montana: The university has more than doubled the number of nonresident students since Cruzado became president, while resident enrollment has fallen by nearly 21 percent.
As a result, nonresident students have outnumbered residents for three consecutive years at Montana State. They’re now 53 percent of the campus population.
The growth at Montana State stands in stark difference to its rival, the University of Montana, where undergraduate enrollment has tumbled to 6,494 from 10,891 in 2010 — a decline of more than 40 percent. State-resident enrollment at the Missoula campus is down nearly 50 percent over that period.
The nonresident enrollment has been good for the university’s finances and politically beneficial, said Robert C. Maher, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Montana State and the chair of the Faculty Senate, because nonresident students pay much more in tuition.
Still, some faculty wonder whether the university’s recent growth and fund-raising success have come with tradeoffs.
Johnson, the former political-science professor, said accepting money from the foundation of a sitting governor, as Montana State did for its new computer-science building, could make the university’s administration feel indebted to Gianforte.
The governor’s foundation has also supported scientifically questionable causes such as creationism — which posits that the theory of evolution is false — and a range of socially conservative groups that oppose same-sex marriage and other LGBTQ protections.
To keep peace with the state’s conservative leaders, said Johnson, the university has appeared to downplay the concerns of marginalized students.
Cruzado participates in a ground-blessing ceremony with students prior to construction of the American Indian Hall in April.Adrian Sanchez-Gonzalez, Montana State University
For example, Johnson said, Cruzado only made “performative statements” after a death threat was sent in 2023 to a student organization that supports gay and queer students on the campus. The campus police department said at the time that they did not consider it a legitimate threat.
“Some of those students were my students,” Johnson said, “and [Cruzado] did the absolute minimum because LGBTQ rights are not popular, especially with the legislature.”
Tomomi Yamaguchi, formerly an associate professor of sociocultural anthropology and feminism at Montana State, said the administration also did too little to respond to threats against Asian students and other racial minorities on campus.
ADVERTISEMENT
“It’s clear the university leadership was afraid of speaking up and angering conservative politicians,” said Yamaguchi, who taught at Montana State for 17 years and is now teaching at a university in Japan.
Johnson added that he believes Cruzado passed up opportunities to create innovative programs that would have served the state’s interests, such managing Montana’s complicated ecosystem and mitigating the consequences of climate change.
It’s not just faculty who have questioned the climate on campus. Since 2016, the U.S. Department of Education has opened 18 investigations into allegations of civil-rights violations at the university. Of those, six were complaints of discrimination based on race or national origin filed between October 2023 and May 2024 . Ten were complaints of sexual discrimination, all but three of which were filed during the same period.
A university spokesperson said in a written statement to The Chronicle that nearly all the investigations began after thousands of flyers were distributed on campus encouraging students to lodge complaints with the department’s Office of Civil Rights. The flyers were part of a student-led campaign.
“We have cooperated with the OCR in every request it has made and stand ready to address any deficiencies it identifies,” the university’s statement said. In July, Montana State opened a consolidated civil-rights office to try to respond more effectively to complaints.
Cruzado’s ability to stay in lawmakers’ good graces may have dissuaded them from prohibiting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on campus. Montana’s state legislature, which is controlled by a supermajority of Republicans, has only considered one bill to restrict or eliminate DEI measures at public colleges. That bill failed, while lawmakers in three surrounding states — Idaho, North Dakota, and Wyoming — passed such laws.
When asked about how she handles a challenging political climate for higher education, Cruzado avoids answering directly. But she acknowledges she’s cautious about saying much publicly. Even when the president does speak, Cruzado said, it’s not always going to solve the problem.
“What I have found is sometimes folks might not be entirely happy with what you have to communicate,” she said, “but they know that there’s no duplicity there. They also know that I have not rushed to judgment, that I have evaluated every possible perspective. And then this is what I have to do. And sometimes this is what I have to do, not what I want to do.”
Clarification (Dec. 23, 2024, 1:19 p.m.): An earlier version of this article, in discussing the University of Montana's enrollment decline, did not specify that the figures referenced pertained only to undergraduate enrollment. The sentence has been updated.
Eric Kelderman covers issues of power, politics, and purse strings in higher education. You can email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com, or find him on Twitter @etkeld.