Bringing the U to You- Great Falls

04/12/2026

02/27/2026

Thank you to everyone who made it to our final U to You lecture of our 25th season!

Dr. Mary-Ann Sontag of UM’s School of Social Work shared advice for grieving and early results from research on Benefis Peace Hospice's Camp Francis, which helps grieving children.

Sontag calls herself a "grief evangelical." Her mom died at 45, and Sontag thought she was losing her mind. She didn't know anything about what grief was like.

"It will make everyone's life better if we understand grief," which is not just losing a person but all sorts of changes. "The fact that it happens to everyone doesn't make it less awful when it happens to us."

She worked with parents who lost children and saw how soul shattering it is. People have a misconception that they will take an orderly journey through stages of grief, one after another. Grief is chaos not steps, and it wounds people when their reality collides with this conception of stages. Grief affects every part of what makes us a person - emotional, physical, mental, social, and spiritual. Even eating can feel like too much effort.

What the grieving should see on this long journey is improved functioning over time. Not a linear process but improvement. In the meantime, space and grace and support. Skip the platitudes and advice. "Just be present with the shattered person."

For kids, grief is all over the place. They may happily ride a bike one moment, be hysterical the next, and then have a tummy ache. They grieve in different ways as they grow up, too, understanding their loss different at 13 than they did at 6.

Sontag had a healthy skepticism about Camp Francis after hearing a Missoulian involved talk it up. She started research on children's bereavement camps by calling around to see what other camps in the country had by way of research findings. Well, not much to none. But if it's not working or could be better, why are we putting our kids into grief camps? Why are we spending this money and volunteer time?

Camp Francis, which involves about 30 children 6-12 every summer, and more than double as many volunteers, is one of the longest running such camps in the country. It will mark 35 years this summer.

Sontag's research into the camp involved a survey and interviews with former campers. They all said they were different because of their Camp Francis experience.

"There is no question in my mind at this point that Camp Francis helps children hold on through the awful so they can get to the amazing parts of life," she said. "It is a community commitment to those kids, and it's a good investment. You have made those kids better by sending them to Camp Francis."

Camp is a collaborative effort among families, volunteers, Benefis Foundation, donors, Peace Hospice, and Camp Rotary (which hosts the camp). It's a "gathering of caring, bringing all these resources together to serve these children. This is remarkable, an exemplary commitment to caring for children and families."

02/13/2026

What makes Montana ✨ Montana ✨?

Would love to hear your take ^

Thanks to Mark Fiege, MSU history (retired), for his conversation-starter of a talk. It touched on something a lot of us have been wresting with in this era of great change.

Some notes from the lecture:

⛰️ Montanans are concerned about wealth pouring into the state in the form of wealthy newcomers. Habitat and open spaces loss, heavy traffic, sprawl, skyrocketing costs of living, and changing ways of life are issues people identify as concerns, as sources of frustration and anger.
🦬 Montanans have been bemoaning changes since there's been a place called Montana.
🤠 What can we identify as shared Montana values? What is the shared experience of Montana that shapes those values across demographics? He pointed to small towns, clean water, wildlife, open spaces, affordable housing for young people, and the shared heritage of public lands.
𓃔𓃽 Montana has a history of resource extraction and values born from the hard work that went along with mining, logging, sodbusting, and etc, and the boom-and-bust that went along with it. The people who stuck take pride in that. "You stayed when others left, and you did the hard work." The "Okies" in California take the identity from diaspora, but for the Montanans, it's sticking.
🌄Progressive movements helped people stick, things like unions and cooperatives and volunteer fire departments and irrigation districts and New Deal programs that put people to work. So did neighborliness, which is in tandum with a libertarian streak.
🦬 Our state literature's most common trope is themes of struggle, sacrifice, and heartbreak in the face of natural beauty.
🌄 Newcomers think they can buy what it means to be Montanan, but you have to earn it.
🦌 The 1972 Montana Constitution is the culmination of expression of our shared values and was signed by all 100 delegates. Our list of rights is longer than the US Bill of Rights.
𐚁 At Big Sky and the Yellowstone Club, you have the wealthy and at YC some of the wealthiest people in the world in an enclave served by the tradespeople and service workers in the valleys below seeing the rampant consumerism and destruction above that is alien to the values of ordinary working people.
🌄The past is gone and a lot of it wasn't great. He recommended sifting what's useful from that past -- the lessons and values -- and looking forward. Wildlife and habitat should be respected for their own intrinsic value. Growth should pay its own way. We should acknowledge and honor the Native people as part of what Montana means and the people who still do the hard work on the land.
🦬 Being Montanan means giving effort and/or resources to our institutions like the Montana Historical Society, the local search and rescue team, the local boards, the public schools and whatever other things we depend on. Read the classics of Montana history and literature. Get to know people in other walks of life. Be digitally conscious so you don't overwhelm special places.h

02/03/2026

🎉 Huge congratulations to Norma Ashby Smith, one truly feisty woman, on receiving the Spirit of Montana Award! 🌟
A former U to You committee member and proud alum, Norma embodies Montana grit, heart, and leadership. So well deserved!

Norma was named Television Broadcaster of the Year in 1985 and in 2010 was the second woman inducted into the Montana Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame.

01/30/2026

“I’m in awe!” and ”Just wow” and "It makes your head spin" and “He made space, computers and engineering interesting — even for me.”

The reviews were rave for last night’s U to You lecture with Dr. Brock LaMeres, an MSU professor of electrical and computer engineering sharing: “From Montana to the Moon: The Story of MSU’s Space Computer.”

Some notes:
🌔 Last year, a computer invented at MSU landed on the moon as part of the first successful commercial lunar mission. One of the big challenges was how to design that computer to withstand radiation - and with MSU's RadPC, they did!
🌔 We expect computer performance to keep increasing -- faster, cheaper, better with every new laptop or phone -- but how do we "keep that party going"? He worked on a way to use computer chips more efficiently. Instead of having every circuit performing one function, circuits are flexible in what they can do and resilient. That means you don't need as many.
🌔 MSU sent tech into space with balloons and satellites and rockets getting ready for the lunar mission.
🌔Seeing their tech -- complete with MSU logos -- to the International Space Station was "the most incredible thing I'd ever done."
🌔 The mission to the moon is helping set up future missions, beginning with unmanned rovers. The MSU computer went to the Mare Crisium, the Sea of Crisis, and included a memory card of messages from Montana. It launched from the Kennedy Space Center last January and traveled 45 days to the moon, where it lasted 14 days until the sun set and everything froze at -200 degrees. But, MSU's computer withstood three passes through the Van Allen Radiation Belts and proved its worth.
🌔 Every piece was designed and built by MSU students, with about 150 students involved over the course of the project.
🌔 LaMeres is working on taking this prototype and mass producing it. The same things that make it useful for space also seem to be useful in fighting Malware -- a boost to cyber security.
🌔 Artificial intelligence requires huge data centers. But maybe the tech developed at MSU can help reduce those needs.
🌔 LaMeres is a Montana native (Billings) who never dreamt he would be involved with NASA or part of a moon project. He went into electrical engineering at MSU because his uncle did and was the only one in his family with a pension and his two older brothers also went into the field. Then he continued his education and discovered a love of teaching on his way to a PhD. So, he said, encourage young people to look into majors they may not know much about.

01/16/2026

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the first U to You lecture of our 25th season! Thanks to the University of Montana and University of Montana Alumni, too.

Some notes from UM President Seth Bodner's presentation:

🐻UM's mission in two words is "Inclusive prosperity," to ensure all Montanans willing to come and work hard for their education have the opportunity to reach their full and unique potential. UM is widening pathways forward while still aiming for excellence.
🐻 UM has had five years of enrollment growth. 1 in 3 UM students are the first in their family to go to college. Retention is better than ever, up to 77%.
🐻 UM is in the top 4% of universities worldwide for research. In 2025, the U received $179 million in research awards. It's exciting science and creating jobs and even companies in the state.
🐻A $400-million investment in the campus includes the first new residents hall in three decades, a dining hall that doubled the number of diners and is helping create community, a heating plant and more.
🐻 UM is the No. 1 university in the country for community service and for being military-friendly. The most recent UM Marshall Scholar, James Straw, was a Marine sniper who found his passion for biological research at UM and will be studying in Edinburgh on his way to a career in medical research.
🐻Nationwide, universities face tremendous strain. For the first time in American history, we're going to have a generation less educated than the one before it. Low confidence in higher education is a civics issue, a national security threat, and a long-term risk to our competitiveness globally.
🐻 UM is keeping tuition low -- 20% less inflation adjusted than 20 years ago -- and helping find other routes to education like certification programs.
🐻"The Montana Way" encompasses the approach at UM to help students succeed academically and in their careers, to promote well being, and to develop leadership and service-minded citizens.
🐻Last year 10,387 students who took part in non-credit training programs in addition to 11,000 UM students. One participant in his 50s said: “This program gave me hope again. I though I had nothing left to give the world.”
🐻UM is also an arts and entertainment hub. Grizzly athletics has a $93-million economic impact. Concerts at UM can make a restaurant's year.
🐻 Liberal arts remain fundamental, maybe more than ever as "the thing one studies to be free," per the historical definition. Technical skills evolve rapidly, and universities also much develop creativity, leadership, how to write, teamwork, and the other most human of skills.

Hope to see you back in two weeks for an MSU professor's story of a moon computer!

01/09/2026

📣 One week to go!

We are just one week away from the first lecture of our 25th season of Bringing the U to You, and we cannot wait to kick off this amazing lecture series.

🗓️ January 15, 2026
🎤 Seth Bodnar, President of the University of Montana
⏰ 7:00 p.m.
📍 Great Falls College MSU – Heritage Hall

If you haven’t grabbed your tickets yet, now’s the time. Join us for a great night of learning and conversation as we celebrate 25 years of Bringing the U to You in Great Falls!

We're so excited to announce the speaker lineup for our 25th season! We hope you'll mark your calendars now for the 2026 U to You Lecture Series.

Jan. 15, 2026: Seth Bodnar, UM president, “Inclusive Prosperity: How UM is working to drive social mobility, workforce development and economic growth across Montana”

Jan. 29, 2026: Dr. Brock LaMeres, MSU professor, “From Montana to the Moon: The Story of MSU ‘s Moon Computer”

Feb. 12, 2026: Mark Fiege, MSU, “What Makes Montana Montana? Reconciling the Past, Present and Future of our State in a Time of Dramatic Change”

Feb. 26, 2026: Dr. Mary -Ann Sontag, UM, “When Grief Comes Calling: Helping Children, Teens and Ourselves”

Series passes, $25, will be available at Kaufman’s downtown and can be ordered by calling 406-899-0277. Tickets for individual lectures are sold at the door, $10 for adults, $5 for students.

Lectures are at 7 p.m. at Great Falls College MSU's Heritage Hall.

12/16/2025

We have tickets for the 2026 speakers series!

Many thanks to Kaufmans Menswear Centre! You can stop by 411 Central Ave. to purchase 2026 tickets.

If you can't make it downtown, you can get tickets online at:

University of Montana alumni (or general audience): www.msuaf.org/utoyou2026-UM

Montana State alumni (or general audience): www.msuaf.org/utoyou2026-MSU

Committee members also have tickets, and you can message us here, too. Thank you!

Series passes are $25. Tickets for individual lectures are sold at the door, $10 for adults, $5 for students.