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Hello,
This is a discussion of recent activities at the O'Connor Center
(last two months) and current plans for the next two months (June and July).
The Center is a regional studies and public policy program at The University of
Montana located in the heart of the Rockies. The Rocky Mountain West is a
region full of change and rich in history. As you will see as you read, Center
staff are heavily involved in the community, state, and larger region, helping
people and decision makers to better understand the region and to equip it for
the future. We enjoy our work, work hard at it, and hope that you and others
will continue to value it. We will keep you regularly informed.
From all of
us at the O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West, The University of
Montana
a
look at the region's history
provided by William Farr
Twenty-six years
ago, on a Sunday morning, May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens, a relatively young
volcano at 40,000 years but dormant since 1857, erupted, creating huge
landslides and triggering powerful explosions that blasted out rocks, ash,
volcanic gas and steam. The eruption of ash and gas climaxed late in the
afternoon. Prevailing winds carried 520 million tons of ash eastward to both
sides of the Rocky Mountains. The blast
column rose to more than 80,000 feet in less than 15 minutes and spread across
the United States in three days. Spokane, Wash., some 250 miles from the
volcano, fell under complete darkness that afternoon. In
Missoula, Mont., the dark-grey ash fell to such depths that it had to be
shoveled off driveways and sidewalks.
By six o’clock it was east of Pocatello, Idaho, and at the end of the day, 16
hours after it all began, the ash plume was near central Colorado.
| Throughout eastern Washington as far east as Red Lodge,
Mont., a thousand miles away, deep in the heart of the Rocky Mountain West,
public places were closed and people were advised to stay inside and not stir
up the ash. Health officials were
initially uncertain as to toxicity of the ash, whether it was harmful or inert. After
two days, as more information became available, people throughout the region
emerged from their confinement to begin the cleanup.
People collected the ash in bottles as a reminder of the cataclysmic
event when an almost 10,000-foot mountain blew up. |
May 18,
1980 eruption - USGS photograph by Austin Post.
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recent activities
On June 2nd,
in Butte, Mont., Senior Fellow Pat Williams and Geoff Sutton of the Montana
World Trade Center honored Missoula artist George Gogas at a ceremony sponsored
by the Butte Arts Council. Williams
and Sutton represented the Center, the World Trade Center, and UM President
George Dennison at the ceremony.
On May 26th
in Missoula, Mont., Senior Fellow Bob Brown conducted a recorded interview with
longtime legislator Bill Norman for the Mansfield Library Historical
Archives. Norman represented
Missoula in both the State House of Representatives and State
Senate, and served as both Senate Minority Leader and Senate President.
On May 19-21st,
in Billings, Mont.,
Senior Fellow Daniel Kemmis and Center Director Larry Swanson
attended the Billings-based Foundation for Community Vitality’s Leaders
Learning Network meeting in Montana’s Paradise Valley.
The meeting featured presentations by members of the
Plexus Institute on ways of using complexity theory in areas of
organizational and community development. The
two-day session was attended by FFCV staff and board members and persons
working in areas of health care and community and economic development.
On May 17th,
in Butte, Mont., Williams, along with Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Lt.
Gov. John Bollinger, assisted in welcoming the President of Ireland, Mary
McAleese. Former congressman Williams
delivered a welcoming message to the President from the ad hoc "Friends of
Ireland Committee" of the U.S. Congress.
May 12th
through the 14th in Aspen, Colo., the
Sopris Foundation hosted a conference on "Innovative
Ideas for a New West". Kemmis delivered a keynote speech on the
challenge of maintaining livability and community character in the West’s
growing cities and towns.
On May 9th,
in Whitefish, Mont., Williams presented the keynote address to the western
regional conference of state parks and tourism agencies. His
address was titled "The West in Transition."
On May 3rd,
in Helena, Mont., Williams had the honor of engaging in a ceremony where Gov.
Schweitzer issued pardons as a result of UM’s Prof. Clem Work’s recent book
"Darkest Before the Dawn" and the legal research work of law students at UM.
Williams introduced those students as a group to the Governor.
On
April 29th, in Helena, Mont., Williams hosted the second annual
Leadership Seminar Series, sponsored
by The Policy Institute with headquarters in Helena. The seminar engages its
participants in an overarching examination of policy issues in Montana and the
West. The four sessions of this
year’s seminar series includes 25 participants.
Indian Student Leaders Symposium
On
April 28th, in Pablo, Mont., Williams welcomed two dozen Indian
student participants to the first Indian Student Leaders Symposium.
Held at Salish Kootenai College and The University of Montana, the
symposium provided graduate and graduating students with two days of
enhancement on individual and tribal perspectives.Iris
Pretty Paint, the symposium’s lead presenter, noted, "Our enlarged view of the
school-to-work transition will encourage and prepare this generation of Indian
leaders to envision a new future and a new role within their communities."
On
April 28th, in Missoula, Mont., Associate Director Bill Farr presented a talk
on the sesquicentennial anniversary of the 1855 Blackfeet Treaty to the Montana
History Group.
On
April 27th in Missoula, Mont., Headwaters News Editor Shellie Nelson
participated on the U.S. Forest Service Northern Region’s "Communicating in a
Changing World" panel at the USFS Public Affairs Conference.
On
April 27th in
Missoula, Mont., at the North Underground Lecture Hall
of The University of Montana, the Fourth Annual Hammond Lecture in Western /
Environmental History, Hetch Hetchy:
Exploring the Legacy, was presented by Professor Robert Righter to an
audience of 45 people. The event was co-sponsored by the Hammond Endowment in
the Department of History and the O’Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West. Professor
Righter, author of The Battle Over Hetch
Hetchy: America’s Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern
Environmentalism, focused on the controversy between John Muir and the
Sierra Club and the city of San Francisco over the building of the
O’Shaughnessy Dam in Yosemite Park’s Hetch Hetchy valley. The battle eventually
resulted in the creation of the National Park Service in 1916, and created the
blueprint for environmental struggles in the 20th century to the
present.
On
April 27th, in Missoula, Mont., Williams addressed the College
Presidents Council at The University of Montana. The
Council includes President Dennison and the presidents of Montana’s seven
tribally-controlled community colleges. Williams
reviewed last year’s activities and this year’s agenda of the Tribal Leaders
Institute.
On
April 25th, in Missoula, Mont., Williams spoke to team leaders of
the Montana Conservation Corps. Former
congressman Williams and former congressman John Sieberling of Ohio were
co-sponsors of the national legislation that created the National Conservation
Corps in the 1980s. The program
operates in all 50 states as part of Americorps.
On
April 20th and 21st in St. Paul, Minn., Kemmis attended a
board meeting of the Northwest Area Foundation. He
is a member of the NWA Foundation board.
On
April 20th, in Missoula, Mont., the O’Connor Center co-sponsored and
Williams hosted the inaugural event of "Missoula School." The
School was created by a group of UM poetry students with the intention of
presenting their work, along with that of other arts students, in an annual
spring event in downtown Missoula, followed with a journal of their creative
writing.
O
n April 14th in
Missoula, Mont., Swanson made an invited presentation to the
Missoula County Government Review
Commission . He discussed growth and change in the area and
new challenges for local city and county government planners and decision
makers.
On April
13th in Missoula, Mont., Swanson made a presentation to the 2006
class of Leadership Missoula sponsored by the Missoula Area Chamber of
Commerce. The
program provides education and training for young leaders in the Missoula
community.
On
April 12th in Colorado Springs, Colo., Senior Fellow Daniel Kemmis
spoke at Colorado College’s 2006
State of the Rockies conference. Kemmis addressed the growing momentum
toward coordinating several western primaries and caucuses during the 2008
presidential election cycle.
Kemmis spoke on this same topic at the annual
banquet and initiation of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi at UM’s
Davidson Honors College on April 18th and to the
Missoula Rotary Club on
May 31st.
On
April 4th in Dillon, Mont., Kemmis presented a public lecture on
"New Politics in the New West". The
lecture was sponsored by the University of Montana-Western
Honors Program. Kemmis also
met with an honors seminar, "Visions
of the West: Charting a Course for Western Studies," where
students are exploring the possibility of establishing a western studies
program on their campus.
On
April 3rd, in Missoula, Mont., Williams gave the keynote address at
the Montana TRIO Conference. TRIO is a
federal program of postsecondary opportunity for low-income, disabled, and
first generation college students.
teaching
Bob Brown is
teaching Education Policy and Ethics 407 in the Curriculum and Instruction
Department of the School of Education the first half of summer semester. The
course is required for students intending on entering the teaching profession
in Montana.
Brown
returned to campus on April 23 following a month long teaching exchange at
Nankai University in Tianjin, China.His
students included International Relations majors, and graduate students in
Public Administration.
Doug
Lawrence is teaching a summer session class at the University of Montana. The
class, CS 172, Computer Modeling, is a required class for many U of M
students.
Bob Brown teaching in China
During
this past academic year Senior Fellow Pat Williams taught classes in Forestry,
History and Geography, including: FOR
423 Wilderness Policy and Politics, and, along with William Farr, Hist/Geog 401
Regionalism and the Rocky Mountain West.
In addition Williams had scheduled classes in
Environmental Studies, Political Science, and Fine Arts. He
also guest lectured in Geography, Wilderness and Civilization, Journalism,
Forestry and Environmental Studies.
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regional
trends
Many areas of the fast-growing Rockies have become increasingly
dependent upon construction activity.
The recent influx of new migrants to the Rockies generates more housing
construction, as well as construction associated with commercial activity. And
much of this growth in construction is financed by new income flowing into the
area. The Rocky Mountain West has become a hot bed of construction activity.
Growth brings both opportunities – income and job growth – and challenges –
saving the things that make the region an attractive place to live and work.
center
in the news
Teacher,
legislator tells life story of state constitution's 1972 birth - Missoulian,
June 5, 2006
West's
new tune: Hands off our lands -
Denver Post, May 31, 2006
Merits
of marketing state parks explained - Missoulian, May 16, 2006
West
wants more political power:
Early primaries touted as a
way to influence presidential politics - Vail Daily News,
April 17, 2006
upcoming events
On
June 5th in Phillipsburg, Mont., Center Director Larry Swanson will
make an invited presentation at an organizational meeting for a Flint Creek
Watershed Association. The meeting
is sponsored by the Granite Conservation District.
Swanson will discuss larger area growth trends.
On
June 6th, in Billings, Mont., Senior
Fellow Pat Williams will address a Billings community breakfast group on the
subject of "Land and Water Restoration as an Economic Engine."
On
June 7th and 8th in Dayton, Ohio, Kemmis will attend a
meeting of the Kettering Foundation Board
of Directors, where, as chair of
the Program Committee, he will preside over a discussion of promising and
threatening trends in democratic practice, from the local to the global scale. He
assumed the duties of chairing the Program Committee at a foundation meeting in
Washington, D.C. on May 3rd.
On
June 8th in Missoula, Mont., Swanson will do a taped interview for
radio broadcast on June 12th by various radio stations in the
Missoula area. The interview is
part of the Live
Missoula program of the Missoula Organization of
Realtors which is a community awareness program designed to help Missoula's
real estate sector participate in important issues facing Missoula.
On
June 8-9th, in Billings, Mont., Williams will
assist in inaugurating the Governor’s
Restoration Forum, for which The
University of Montana is a Principal Sponsor. As members of the
planning committee, Williams and Jim Burchfield of UM’s College of Forestry and
Conservation were instrumental in launching the forum. Williams
will speak at the forum’s closing and will moderate its final panel of federal
participants.
On
June 9th, at the Flathead Lake Biological Station, Yellow Bay, Mont., Senior
Fellow Bob Brown will serve as moderator of the fourth in a
series of seminars on the Montana Constitution. The
focus of the seminar is the constitution's guarantee of the right to a clean
and healthful environment, and how that right has been interpreted and
implemented. The
seminar will be recorded for the Mansfield Library historical archives.
On
June 10th in Missoula, Mont., Kemmis will address a meeting of
Western States Humanities Councils.
On
June 14th in Somers, Mont., Swanson will speak at a meeting of the
Flathead Basin Commission,
discussing socioeconomic growth and change in the Flathead Basin area. The
23-member Commission was established by the Montana Legislature to "encourage
economic development and use of the basin’s resources to their fullest extent
possible without compromising the present high quality of the Flathead’s
aquatic environment." The June 14th
meeting is part of the Commission’s strategic planning process.
On
June 15th in Missoula, Mont., Kemmis will discuss the benefits of
commuter rail service to urban environments, at a meeting exploring the
possibility of commuter rail service in Missoula and the Bitterroot Valley.
On
June 18th in Sun Valley, Idaho, Swanson is speaking at the
2006 Quad-State Bankers Convention. Several
hundred banking executives and association representatives from Colorado,
Idaho, Montana, and Nevada attend this meeting each year.Swanson
and Wells Fargo Senior Economist Gary Schlossberg will share a panel,
discussing key growth trends in the region.
On
June 27th in Boston, Mass., Kemmis will speak on
"What Universities Can Bringto Collaborative Governance" at
a meeting of university-based consensus-building institutes. The
meeting is sponsored by the Portland, Oregon-based
Policy Consensus Institute.
On
June 30th in Cambridge, Mass., Kemmis will help summarize a
session sponsored by the Environmental
Public Policy Section of the Association of Conflict Resolution in a
conference focusing on
"Deliberative Democracy: New
Directions in Public Policy Dispute Resolution".
On
July 9th, in Lolo, Mont., Williams, as
a member of the Executive Board of Travelers Rest State Park, will be involved
in the closing ceremony of the celebration of the 1805-06 expedition of Lewis
and Clark.
On
July 13th in Bozeman, Mont., Swanson will speak at the board meeting
of the Helena Branch of the
Federal Reserve System. The
Helena Fed Branch is hosting representatives of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve
Bank, including President and CEO Gary Stern and staff with the
Fed Gazette
publication. Swanson will discuss growth
and change in the Rockies and how this growth is translating into the Bozeman
area economy.
In
late July, Swanson and the Center will host Professor Mike Osborne of the
University of Stirling in Scotland.
Osborne directs the Centre for
Lifelong Learning at Stirling and is co-director of the
PASCAL International Observatory. PASCAL
is an international research and policy development alliance focused on
lifelong learning in policies and practices about place management, learning
regions, and social capital. It
currently has academic and governmental partners in Scotland, South Africa, and
Australia and affiliates with the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development).
recent
quotes from the region
as provided by Headwaters
News
"We don't
know what we're doing when we mess up natural systems."
Svata
Louda, a Nebraska biology professor,
on a Montana study that linked gall flies, a bug imported to
kill knapweed, to an increase in deer mice that carry hantavirus.
- New York Times
04/04/06
"This
is unprecedented but it is not unforeseen."
Jeff
Foss, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Boise field office supervisor on a
request by the state of Idaho to
kill most of a wolf pack the state believes is preying
on an elk herd on the Idaho-Montana border.
-Helena Independent Record (AP)
04/05/06
"Absolutely,
we are worried states will try to turn back the clock."
John
Shelk,
president of the Electric Power Supply Association, about states rethinking energy deregulation,
which has caused
rates in those states to increase significantly.
- Christian Science Monitor
04/25/06
"We
don't want to confuse the public."
David
Meyer, a Department of Energy employee, on the agency's decision not to release a working map of
routes in the West under consideration for pipelines and transmission lines.
- Los Angeles Times
05/23/06
project
activity
Larry
Swanson and Doug Lawrence, the Center’s computing systems manager and database
manager, recently completed a report for the Montana State Fund entitled Past
and Projected Population, Income, and Employment Growth in Montana. It
can be viewed at www.crmw.org/read/msf.asp.
Swanson
and Lawrence also recently completed a report for the Ravalli County Right to
Farm and Ranch Committee and Bitter Root
Land Trust entitled Growth and Change in the Bitterroot Valley and
Implications for Area Agriculture and Ag Lands. The
report can be viewed at www.crmw.org/read/blt.asp.
Center
Associate Director William Farr was asked to join an advisory team for a new
permanent installation by the C.M. Russell Museum. Entitled "The Bison: Heart
of Culture, Icon of Art" it is scheduled to open fall of 2008 in the Museum's
first floor galleries in Great Falls, Mont.
Swanson
and the Center recently contracted with the
Canadian Consulate Office in Denver to do a study of Montana
’s business and trade relationship with Canada.
A report will be completed by late September examining cross-border
trade and business activity in the Rocky Mountain West.
Swanson
also initiated a study of the Cody, Wyo., area economy under contract with the
Greater Yellowstone Coalition
(GYC). Cody is a major gateway to Yellowstone National Park and is located in
the eastern portion of the greater Yellowstone eco-system.
links
Center Web Site
Archived Center Newsletters
Headwater's News
The University of Montana
KUFM Public Radio
The O'Connor
Center for the Rocky Mountain West is a program of The University of Montana in
Missoula.
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