Montana State College. Office of the President

Alfred Atkinson, the 4th president of Montana State College, was born in Seaforth, Ontario, Canada and graduated from the Ontario Agricultural College, received his B.S. at Iowa State College in 1904 and his M.S. at Cornell in 1912. He arrived at MSC in 1904 as an instructor in agronomy and a member of the Experiment Station staff, was appointed a professor of agronomy in 1905 and was appointed to the presidency in 1919. He was president for 18 years which encompassed many changes at the college, in the state and nationally. Of these changes and challenges, finances, the Depression, instructional programs including improving the engineering departments and projects in the agricultural community are addressed extensively. He also served as Federal Food Administrator for Montana, 1919-1921 during the Hoover administration. In 1937, he left to become President of the University of Arizona. He served in that capacity for 10 years. He died May 16, 1958 in Arizona at the age of 78.

From the guide to the Alfred Atkinson Correspondence Files, 1914-1940, (Montana State University-Bozeman Library, Merrill G Burlingame Special Collections)

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