By Greg Cappis MSU NEWS SERVICE
BOZEMAN — It started with an email. Mark Jones wrote to Montana State University President Waded Cruzado asking how he and his wife, Robyn, could use their resources in partnership with the university to better the state’s health care system.
Three years later Cruzado and other university administrators and partners, sometimes joined by the Joneses, toured the MSU nursing college’s five campuses to don hard hats and ceremonially break ground on new nursing education buildings in Billings, Bozeman, Great Falls, Kalispell and Missoula. The new buildings will provide faculty and students with state-of-the-art facilities and allow for increased enrollment to help offset Montana’s shortage of health care professionals.
Each groundbreaking event drew hundreds of people. While speaking at the Bozeman ceremony, Mark Jones acknowledged the nurses in attendance, saying, “Everyone knows it’s the nurses that actually take care of you.”
“You are there at all of the key intersections of our lives,” he added. “You’re there when we’re born. You’re there when we’re sick, at our worst, and you’re there when we make our way out. We are so proud to be associated with helping expand nursing in Montana. It is the nurses that really are the heroes.”
In 2021 Mark and Robyn Jones, co-founders of Goosehead Insurance, made a $101 million philanthropic investment to MSU’s nursing college, now known as the Mark and Robyn Jones College of Nursing. Part of that money will fund the construction of the new nursing education buildings.
Designed by the architecture firms Cushing Terrell and CO Architects, each building will be two stories and house multiple classrooms and simulation laboratories, as well as break and study areas for students who often spend many hours of their days on campus. Construction at all five sites is expected to begin this summer.
Except for the Bozeman facility, which is being constructed on the MSU campus, health care partners of the nursing college donated land for the buildings. Previously, the MSU nursing college operated out of leased facilities in Billings, Great Falls, Missoula and Kalispell.
In Billings, Billings Clinic and Intermountain Health St. Vincent Regional Hospital donated land in the 1000 block of North 29th Street. Benefis Health System donated two acres at 29th Street South and 18th Avenue South in Great Falls. Logan Health Medical Center in Kalispell donated land at the northeast corner of Windward and Heritage ways. Community Medical Center provided the land for the Missoula building, which will be erected at 2825 Fort Missoula Road.
“The building represents profound educational opportunities for Montana State University students,” Cruzado said at the Bozeman ceremony. “Within its walls, future health care professionals will be nurtured and empowered. They will be equipped with the knowledge, skills and compassion to excel in their profession. This building will lead to innovation and provide an environment where students are inspired to pursue knowledge and service.”
MSU’s nursing college is the largest producer of registered nurses in Montana with more than half of all newly licensed Montana nurses graduating as Bobcat Nurses. About 80% of the MSU nursing graduates remain in the state to work after finishing their degrees. The college hosts the state’s sole doctoral nursing program educating nurse practitioners and is opening a nurse-midwifery option this fall to help meet the college’s mission of providing care to all residents in the state, especially those in rural, frontier and Native communities.
“Our mission is to transform the lives and the health of Montana’s communities, and we seek to do that through cutting-edge education, creation of new knowledge and meaningful service,” said Sarah Shannon, nursing college dean. “Our motto is five campuses – one college – serving Montana. We have a simple goal – to improve the health of all Montanans.”
