William Tietz
[4] After 6 years in the United States Navy, he enrolled at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where he ran track and was on the social committee.
[2] He briefly studied the metabolism of small animals in arctic conditions in Alaska, and was employed for a short time by Baxter Laboratories in Illinois.
[5][6] He immediately pursued a doctorate in physiology and pathology at the Purdue University School of Veterinary Science and Medicine, graduating in 1961.
[2][7] He left in 1964 to take a position as an associate professor of radiobiology and physiology at Colorado State University (CSU).
[2] Tietz was appointed the ninth president of Montana State University by unanimous vote of the Board of Regents on August 1, 1977.
[10] Economic growth led to higher tax revenues, and this allowed the state legislature to revised the university's funding formula for the first time since the 1950s.
Under Tietz, MSU also expanded its international studies and university honors programs, started the Writing Center, rapidly expanded financial aid (primarily through scholarships), founded the Shakespeare in the Parks program, and founded an Office of Academic Affairs, an Alumni Association, and the Bobcat Boosters alumni network to support sports.
[14] Tietz also greatly expanded Native American programs at MSU (which he believes was one of his most important achievements).
[10] A third building, the modern home of the Museum of the Rockies, opened in 1989, but this structure was paid for by bonds and not state legislative appropriations.
The goal was for MSU to act as a high technology development incubator, and then transfer the discoveries made to the private sector.
Not only would MSU benefit from licensing and royalty income, but the state economy would grow and jobs would be created.
)[10] But Governor Ted Schwinden believed MSU should continue to focus strongly on agronomy, animal husbandry, and agricultural economics rather than high technology or research.
That same year, Business Week said MSU ranked in the top 10 universities encouraging and making technology transfer.
Tietz said he and his administrators spent 18 hours a day for two weeks to try to meet the cuts required by the legislature (which totalled more than 10 percent).
But after bitter battles with the public, students, faculty, professional associations, and the legislature, Tietz was forced to keep them both open.
[22] Architecture was saved only because students in the program agreed to tax themselves an extra $190 a semester to pay for faculty salaries.
An auditor's report, released in April 1989, showed that researchers had overspent their federal grants by hundreds of thousands of dollars and Tietz had done nothing to rein in costs or stop the spending.
He was a member of the board of directors of the Montana Energy Research and Development Institute from 1977 to 1985, and served as its chair for two years.
[27] In 2011, three historians who wrote a history of MSU were asked to name Montana State University's most important presidents.
Pierce Mullen, Robert Rydell, and Jeffrey Safford named Tietz one of the four top presidents in the university's history.
