Montana Study Research Collection, 1943-1954

The Montana Study was a sociological project, conducted by the University of Montana under funds provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, to use the humanities to contribute to improving the lives of people in small communities.

The project was the vision of Ernest O. Melby, Chancellor of the University of Montana System. Melby believed that by creating a common awareness of Montana's heritage the people of the state would develop a deeper devotion to the welfare of the community, state, and country. From this awareness and devotion there would come concerted action to correct community problems and to reverse some of the forces of social decay, which he saw as a threat to the democratic way of life.

In the early 1940s, Montana State College in Bozeman conducted a Rockefeller Foundation grant-funded project entitled "Northern Plains in a World of Change", which was designed to study the region, enumerate its problems, and look at possible solutions. At a faculty meeting in Bozeman Chancellor Melby met David H. Stevens, Director of Humanities for the Rockefeller Foundation. This meeting eventually led to the funding of The Montana Study by the Rockefeller Foundation.

In planning the project Melby and Stevens consulted Baker Brownell of Northwestern University, a noted authority on the problems of rural life. Brownell turned Melby's vision into a practical project by formulating specific objectives and devising means of carrying them out. His objectives for the Study were: 1) to get the University off the campus by extending its educational services directly to the people in their home towns, 2) to find ways of stabilizing the family and the small community, and 3) to study ways of raising the "appreciative and spiritual standard of living of the people of the state and thus keep a larger number of able young people in their home communities."

On July 1, 1944, Melby resigned as Chancellor and became President of Montana State University at Missoula. He was immediately made responsible for The Montana Study. He hired Baker Brownell as project director. Two half-time positions were filled by Paul Meadows, a sociologist from Northwestern University, and Joseph Kinsey Howard, an author and journalist from Great Falls. The project was supported by a state-wide advisory group the Montana Committee.

The Montana Study was conducted in three phases: a community field work phase using local community study groups, a special projects phase, and a leadership training phase. Local study groups were set up only in towns which requested them. Eventually groups met in Lonepine, Darby, Stevensville, Conrad, Lewistown, Libby, Hamilton, Victor, and two on the Flathead Indian Reservation: the Dixon group consisting of white community members, part-blood Indians, and Bureau of Indian Affairs staff and the Full Blood Flathead Indian Group at Arlee. The local study groups met to discuss the problems of their local communities, to study their local history, and to propose solutions. Several of the groups produced historical pageants as a way of raising the self-awareness of the community.

The special projects and leadership training phases did not develop to the extent that the study groups did. However, they did result in a number of studies and publications, lectures, conferences, and academic course outlines for local school teachers and community leaders.

At the end of the second year of the project Baker Brownell returned to Northwestern University and was replaced as Acting Director by Ruth W. Robinson, leader of the Conrad Study Group. Paul Meadows and Joseph Kinsey Howard also left the Study and were replaced by Frank H. Smith, an educator in community arts and recreation, and Bert B. Hansen, a Montana State University drama professor.

The Montana Study officially ended July 19, 1947, due in part to political controversy over its mildly left wing orientation and its academic "egg-head" image. However, many of the people involved in the Study continued working on the project without official funding, and the Montana Study continued to function on an informal basis into the early 1950s.