UM announces $5M endowment to create chair in fisheries science for wildlife biology program
The announcement of the endowed chair in fisheries science comes at crucial time, as declining native trout populations have alarmed biologists, fishing outfitters and anglers alike. Here, Associate Professor Andrew Whiteley looks at a trout while surveying Rattlesnake Creek with UM students.
The Siebel-Lewis Endowed Chair in Fisheries Science honors donors Huey Lewis, left, and Ken Siebel, who joined together with more than 50 donors to establish the endowed position that will bolster and expand the aquatic focus of UM’s wildlife biology program. (Courtesy the University of Montana)
MISSOULA – The University of Montana announces the completion of a successful $5 million fundraising campaign to endow a chair in fisheries science for its renowned wildlife biology program.
The Siebel-Lewis Endowed Chair in Fisheries Science will bolster and expand the aquatic focus of the wildlife biology program, furthering its mission to deliver excellence in education and advance science-based management of fisheries in Montana, the West and beyond.
More than 50 donors joined together to establish the new chair during a 26-month campaign led by the University of Montana Foundation. Their gifts created the $5 million endowment that will support, in perpetuity, the research and work of the expert who will be recruited by the university to lead the fisheries effort. Significant contributors whose generous support made the endowment possible include investment manager Ken Siebel, musician Huey Lewis, the late Gordon Moore, the Tykeson Family Foundation and the Trailsend Foundation.
The announcement comes as land managers face challenging resource management decisions for Montana’s blue-ribbon aquatic ecosystems. Declining native trout populations in the state’s cold-water rivers and streams have alarmed biologists, fishing outfitters and anglers alike.
The Siebel-Lewis Chair in Fisheries Science will increase the wildlife biology program’s research output, strengthening its commitment to unbiased, data-driven solutions for securing healthy waterways and sustaining recreational opportunities across the West. The program’s work will have profound environmental and economic impact throughout the region, university officials said.
“Our job is certainly to address present needs, but we’re always looking to manage the needs of tomorrow,” said Chad Bishop, director of the wildlife biology program. “Adding this chair in fisheries will increase our capacity in aquatic undergraduate and graduate education while helping us better meet the very real research needs on conserving native fisheries and supporting recreational fisheries in Western Montana.”
The Siebel-Lewis Chair elevates the wildlife biology program’s goal of training leading fish biologists through classroom instruction and immersive, hands-on fieldwork with real-world applications in fisheries conservation and management.
It gives the program the opportunity to build on its already cutting-edge fisheries research, including work done by Associate Professor Andrew Whiteley. Whiteley earned an $800,000 CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation in 2017 for his work on the effectiveness of gene rescue on trout populations.
“An endowed chair in fisheries gives the University of Montana even greater ability to advance our well-established track record of outstanding research, education and conservation,” said University of Montana President Seth Bodnar. “[The university] has been a leader in the field of wildlife biology for decades and this addition only furthers that reputation as well as the university’s ability to attract world-renowned faculty and top undergraduate and graduate students.”
The university has been at the forefront of fisheries scholarship since the 1970s, when University of Montana Regents Professor Emeritus Fred Allendorf and former biology professor Robb Leary established the Montana State Conservation Genetics Lab, where Whiteley is now the principal investigator. The lab spawned a partnership with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks that resulted in the creation of one of the world’s first comprehensive databases on native trout.
“We are overjoyed to help the University of Montana work to preserve our state’s fish, rivers, and watersheds which each year attract fly-fishing enthusiasts from around the globe and provide a significant economic boost to Montana,” said donor Ken Siebel. “We believe healthy rivers and streams are not only intrinsically valuable, but also benefit all our citizens.”
The introduction of the new chair comes amid the University of Montana Foundation and Franke College’s “Treasure Montana: Cultivating Our Tomorrow” fundraising campaign. The campaign aims to inspire $20 million in private support to construct a new state-of-the-art, 60,000-square foot hub for environment and conservation research on campus. The effort will match $25 million committed to the project by the Montana Legislature in 2021.
Wildlife biology is an interdisciplinary program between the W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation, the Division of Biological Sciences within the College of Humanities and Sciences, and the Montana Wildlife Cooperative Research Unit. An endowed fisheries chair brings the program’s total number of endowed chairs to four.
Recruiting the fisheries expert who will hold the Siebel-Lewis Chair in Fisheries Science and lead University of Montana’s fisheries work will begin with the creation of an interdisciplinary hiring committee to conduct a nationwide search for candidates, with hopes of filling the position by the beginning of the 2025-26 academic year.
The Siebel-Lewis Endowed Chair in Fisheries Science honors donors Huey Lewis, left, and Ken Siebel, who joined together with more than 50 donors to establish the endowed position that will bolster and expand the aquatic focus of UM’s wildlife biology program. (Courtesy the University of Montana)