page_title: Waded Cruzado
section_title: Construction
hierarchical_section_title: Waded Cruzado / Presidency of Montana State University / Construction
caption_attribution_description: English: Montana State Bobcats home opener vs. Chadron State. The first night game in the history of Bobcat Stadium. A stadium record of 20,767 were in attendance.
context_page_description: Waded Cruzado, is a Puerto Rican professor of Spanish language and Spanish literature. She served as Interim President of New Mexico State University from 2008 to 2009, and since 2010 has served as the 12th President of Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana.
context_section_description: Although the Animal Bioscience Building was the first building constructed during Cruzado's tenure, it was one she had little to do with. In 1997, the Montana Land Board sued MSU, arguing that the university sold at below-market value or used for non-intended purposes land bequeathed to the university by Bozeman area farmers and ranchers. In 1999, the Land Board reached a settlement with MSU which, in part, required the university to set aside $3 million by 2005 to build a livestock research center. More than $13 million was earmarked by Congress over the next few years to build the structure. Additional fundraising also occurred, and more than 141 individuals gave more than $10,000 each to fund construction of the new center. The Wanke family of Rudyard, Montana, gave $2.7 million in honor of Harold Wanke (who always wanted to be a veterinarian but never got the chance). Construction began on the 40,000 square feet (3,700 m²), $15.7 million building in 2008, and was complete in November 2010.
  Bobcat Stadium, MSU's football arena, underwent a major expansion due to Cruzado's boosterism. Expansion of the football stadium was long planned, and provided for architecturally during its 1998 renovation. Boosters had already raised $1 million by October 2010. When Cruzado learned of the fund-raising effort, she publicly endorsed it and challenged boosters to raise another $4 million with in the year. If they did, the university would float $4 million in bonds to match it (with funding for the bonds coming from football ticket sales). Boosters subsequently raised another $5 million by late December 2010.
  In 2011, the university renovated Cooley Laboratory. The five-story building, constructed in 1960, had never been renovated. In 2009, before Cruzado arrived, MSU submitted a request for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus funds), and won a $14.9 million ARRA grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to pay for the renovation. Another $1.2 million came from the Montana State Board of Investments InterCap in the form of a loan, $732,000 came from NIH to pay for lab equipment, and $71,000 came from other various MSU research grants. Reopened in September 2012, Cooley Lab was the first MSU building to win a LEED Gold designation as a "green building".
  The university considered three sites in early 2012 for the new $18 million Jabs Hall: a Grant Street parking lot, a Hamilton Hall parking lot, and an open grassy are east of the Chemistry Research building. The open area was chosen as the site. Construction began in July 2013, and was expected to take two years to finish.
  Aside from the $17 million Cooley Lab renovation and the $20 million Jabs Hall, another $49.6 million in construction projects were under way on the MSU campus as of July 2012. This included a multi-million project to replace roofs throughout the campus which were damaged during a severe 2010 hailstorm, a $3 million renovation of two residence halls (Hapner Hall and Langford Hall), construction of the new 70-bed North Hedges Suite 3 residential cottages, expansion of the Writing enter in Wilson Hall, and a project to improve energy efficiency in all dormitories, Brick Breeden Fieldhouse, the Marga Hosaeus Fitness Center, and the Strand Union Building.
  Additional campus construction occurred in 2013. Married student housing cottages from the 1950s were torn down; the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse parking lot and part of the Bobcat Stadium parking lot were repaved; Linfield Hall, Roberts Hall, and Wilson Hall were renovated; and the Visual Communication Building received seismic bracing.
  President Cruzado has made improvements to student facilities a priority. In 2011, she led the university to secure $15 million in bonding authority for upgrading student residence halls. During the summer of 2011, more than $3 million was spent on the Langford and Hapner residence hall rooms to make them more modern and appealing to students, and Miller Dining Hall—the largest on campus—had a $400,000 seating upgrade. President Cruzado made sure students were invo
caption: The $10 million renovation of Bobcat Stadium under Cruzado added south end zone seating (left) and a new press box and private VIP boxes (right).
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