Jim Patton Wildlife Management Scholarship

Jim Patton served as Undersecretary at Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries from 1998-2004. Both of Jim's parents and his maternal grandfather attended Montana State College. The scholarship honors Jim’s Montana heritage, recognizing the importance of the quality education provided by Montana State University. The scholarship supports a Master’s student with wildlife ecology as their area of study. The 2024 award is $1,000.

Recipient:  Arcata Leavitt

Arcata is a master's student in Justine Becker's lab and studies nesting habitat associations and bioacoustic methods for detecting nesting pairs of Great Gray Owls.  Her research evaluates best practices for management agencies to find nesting Great Gray Owl pairs to improve conservation efforts for this species in Montana.

Don C. Quimby Graduate Wildlife Research Scholarship

This scholarship honors Dr. Don C. Quimby, a biology teacher, student advisor and founder of the Wildlife Program with Montana State University’s Biology Department in 1948.  Dr. Quimby served as the head of that program until his retirement in 1975. This scholarship supports a student with a field research project focused on a free-ranging wildlife species within the state of Montana and a commitment to a career in wildlife management. The 2024 award is $2,000.

Recipient:  Nolan Helmstetter

Nolan is working towards a Ph.D. in Andrea Litt's lab and is evaluating marten distributions and occupancy throughout Montana to better understand distributions, species taxonomy and hybridization, and field methods for monitoring population status to inform harvest strategies and management into the future.

Dr. Lynn Irby Fish & Wildlife Biology Graduate Scholarship

This scholarship was established by Jeff Carpenter in honor of Dr. Lynn Irby, who was his advisor while at MSU. Dr. Irby’s studies improved management of wild ungulates and carnivores throughout the Northern Rockies and Great Plains and he chaired 43 graduate committees during his 26-year career at MSU. The recipients of this award will be graduate students pursuing an advanced degree in the Ecology Department.  There are two awards in 2024, each for $2,400.

Recipient #1:  Sam Fritz

Sam is working towards a Ph.D. in Lindsey Albertson's lab and has studied numerous species, many of conservation concern or federally listed, such as mussels, beaver, and fishes living within restored beaver ponds. His current research links nutrient pollution with aquatic invertebrate communities using experiments and quantitative modeling techniques. 

Recipient #2:  Sam Larkin

Sam is working towards an M.S. degree in Biological Sciences in Wyatt Cross' lab and previously worked as the Curatorial Assistant for the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley, where he taught classes on techniques for preparing organisms for museum collections. He has participated in several areas of research, mostly in freshwater ecosystems, including foraging bioenergetics of fishes and the influence of warming and drought on freshwater communities. 

Matthew F. Clow Memorial Award

Matthew Clow was an MSU graduate student who died in 1998 while conducting research on whirling disease and wild trout.  The award was established by his parents in his honor to recognize graduate students who share Matt’s love and commitment to wild trout and native fishes. There are two awards in 2024, each for $2,000.

Recipient #1:  Cody Vender

Cody iw working on an M.S. degree in Fish & Wildlife Management in Chris Guy's lab, and studies population dynamics of Yellowstone cutthroat trout by investigating growth patterns through time to inform recovery and conservation efforts of this native fish species in Yellowstone Lake.

Recipient #2:  Hannah Stapleton

Hannah is also working on an M.S. degree in Fish & Wildlife Management in Chris Guy's lab, and has worked in a variety of positions related to fish and fisheries, including in Alaksa. She currently studies how rainbow trout and brown trout populations are affected by incidental catch-and-release fishing, with a focus on the upper Missouri River using age-structured population models.

Sara Amasa Madsen Conservation Biology Scholarship

Mary and Jerry Madsen established this fund in loving memory of their daughter, Sara Amasa Madsen, who graduated from the University in 2019. This scholarship supports students that share Sara’s heart and enthusiasm for the wilderness, particularly wildland firefighting and water resources. There are two awards in 2024, each for $2,200.

Recipient #1: Allison Sutcliffe

Allison is an M.S. student in Wyatt Cross' lab and has worked on a variety of projects related to wildland forests, including with the US Forest service as a firefighter in the hot summer months in Phoenix AZ, before eventually moving north to work in Oregon, Utah, and now Montana. Her current research focuses on the effects of low flows and warming temperatures on aquatic communities.

Recipient #2:  Anna French

Anna is a master's student in Lindsey Albertson's lab and studies interactions between nutrient cycling, microbes, and invertebrates that live in rivers, with a focus on net-spinning caddisflies and crayfish.  She volunteers with the Hyalite Fire Department, and has achieved several certifications related to wildland firefighting over the past few years.

Daniel Goodman Conservation Biology Scholarship

This scholarship honors Dr. Daniel Goodman, a quantitative ecologist and conservation biologist, who was a professor in MSU’s Ecology Department from 1981 until his death in 2012. This scholarship supports an MSU Ecology Department graduate student whose research is both quantitative and within the broad field of conservation biology, with potential to improve the management of at-risk species or ecosystems. The 2024 award is $2,500.

Recipient: Ben Goodheart

Ben is a Ph.D. student in Scott Creel's lab and studies African Wild Dogs in Zambia to evaluate and quantify the baseline demography of this population in a prey depleted system using quantitative modeling tools, such as Cormack-Jolly-Seber and Huggins Closed Population models fit using a Bayesian framework.

Sacajawea Audubon Society Bob Moore Scholarship

The Board of Trustees of the Sacajawea Audubon Society established this scholarship in honor of Dr. Bob Moore, Professor Emeritus of Biology at MSU, who taught vertebrate ecology, evolutionary biology, and field ornithology. The recipient of this award will be a graduate student pursuing a degree from the Department of Ecology, with research focusing on ecology and conservation of avian communities and their habitats, including research and/or education in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem or Montana. In 2024 there is one award, for $1,500.

Recipient:  Anna Freundlich

Anna is working on a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies under advisor Laura Burkle.  She is studying how herbicide applications affects vegetation, pollinator, and avian communities in eastern Montana to help land managers rehabilitate degraded sagebrush habitat and prevent invasion by annual grasses while minimizing negative impacts to native species, including birds.

Jim Belsey Graduate Student Scholarship

Jim Belsey was an avid trout angler and conservationist.  Jim established this award to support graduate students pursuing a degree with research emphasizing coldwater fisheries. In the last few years, the trout populations in the Big Hole, Ruby and Beaverhead Rivers have declined precipitously. The cause (or causes) of these declines is not clear and research is urgently needed. For the 2024 award cycle, the Belsey scholarships will be directed to graduate students who are doing research on these three rivers.  There are three awards in 2024, each for $2,200.

Recipient #1:  Nicholas Hudson

Nicholas is working on a Ph.D. under advisor Tim Cline and studies the complex dynamics of trout life history, production, recruitment, and physiology, with a specific focus on juvenile trout, using research  approaches such as otolith sampling to reconstruct native origins, juvenile fish surveys, and redd counts.

Recipient #2: Max Rubino

Max is a Ph.D. student under advisors Chris Guy and Al Zale and is investigating components of adult mortality of trout using fish tagging, tag return, and recapture estimates to inform models, and the research integrates both social science and fisheries science.

Recipient #3: Michael Lant

Michael is a Ph.D. student in Al Zale's lab and studies recreational angling pressure and catch across time and space to determine if catch-and-release induces post-release mortality, increased susceptibility to disease, or exacerbates stress induced by high water temperatures or low flows, and his research relies heavily on social science surveys of angling activity. 

John H. Rumely Award

This award supports the instructional, research and scholarly activities of the curricula traditionally known as Botany, and supports graduate students conducting field studies of native Montana plants. There is one award in 2024 for $2,500.

Recipient:  Eme Morgan

Eme is working on a master's in Biological Sciences under advisor Danielle Ulrich.  She is studying the efficacy of different methods for mapping vegetation nutritional quality in the Yellowstone NorthernRange, specifically between Paradise Valleyand the LamarRiver Valley,byusing and comparing hyperspectral and multispectral imaging methods.

Jim Posewitz Memorial Scholarship Award

Jim Posewitz was one of Montana’s most respected conservation leaders who pioneered protections for fish and wildlife during his 32-year, distinguished career with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The family and friends of Jim Posewitz wanted to honor his conservation legacy through establishment of the Jim Posewitz Memorial Scholarship. Jim was a fisheries biologist and administrator who worked to protect in-stream flows for fish and wildlife. The 2024 award is $1,000.

Recipient:  Michelle Briggs

Michelle is a Ph.D.student in Chris Guy's Lab, and is researching the population dynamics and genetic structure of trout, with a focus on Yellowstone cutthroat trout in Yellowstone Lake. She regularly collaborates with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the National Park service to more broadly develop tools for understanding how trout populations will fare under future expected climate change.

William Gould Memorial Scholarship

William Gould IV established this memorial scholarship in honor of his late father, William Gould III. As a fisheries biologist, William worked with Montana Fish and Game, the Fish Technology Center and several other state and federal organizations on projects ranging from fish distributions to physiology to human impacts on fish populations. While at the University, he taught classes and directed undergraduate and graduate students. After retirement, he authored the Key to Fishes of Montana in 1996 and coauthored Fish of the Rockies in 2009.  The recipient will be pursuing an advanced degree in Fish and Wildlife Management and demonstrate passion for and research relating to fish ecology and fisheries in freshwater ecosystems. The 2024 award is $1,000.

Recipient:  Lukas Draugelis

Lukas is a master's student in Tim Cline's lab, and studies how invasive rainbow trout disperse, with the goal of using improved understanding of their movement patterns to inform the potential for hybridization with native fishes and possible techniques for suppression of rainbow trout.