UM earns national No. 1 ‘Military Friendly’ rank

MISSOULA – A national organization recently named the University of Montana the No. 1 “Military Friendly” college in the United States. The ranking is for top “tier-1 research institutions.”

The Military Friendly Schools list is compiled each year from data collected from 8,800 schools nationwide. Input is provided by student veterans and a Military Friendly survey by participating institutions.

The top showing wasn’t a surprise for Tanner Liermann, a Marine Corps veteran and UM wildlife biology major preparing to graduate this spring. A native of Bonners Ferry, Idaho, Liermann came to UM on the G.I. Bill in 2022.

“When I think about my decision to come to UM, I’m extremely grateful,” he said. “It’s the best decision I’ve made so far – right up there with my decision to join and really commit to my time in the Marine Corps. The opportunities I’ve been presented with here at UM have been almost unfathomable.”

One of his campus mentors is Patrick Beckwith, director of UM’s Military and Veteran Services Office. Beckwith said UM currently serves about 1,000 military-affiliated students.

“We feel this Military Friendly recognition is important because it highlights UM’s unwavering commitment to inclusive prosperity,” Beckwith said. “It shows how UM is dedicated to the hard work necessary to create a welcoming and successful environment for military and veteran students.”

He said UM ranks highly because military-friendly practices have become woven into the identity of campus.

“So many different sectors of campus are doing things to positively impact our military and veteran families,” Beckwith said. “People all across campus are taking the initiative to learn and improve our military-friendly practices.”

UM is led by President Seth Bodnar, a West Point graduate, Rhodes Scholar and veteran of the Iraq War. Beckwith also is a West Point graduate and warzone veteran, and in 2023 he temporarily left his family and UM duties for a deployment to Iraq as part of the Montana Army National Guard.

When he was a Marine, Liermann deployed to the western Pacific with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, with stops in Okinawa, Australia and South Korea. “The whole emphasis was to ensure freedom of the seas in the Indo-Pacific region,” he said. He enjoyed his often-nomadic service, which lasted from 2017 to 2021.

Afterwards the first-generation student tried college in Boston, but it wasn’t a good fit. Liermann then decided on UM because of its proximity to his Idaho hometown. It was close enough for a weekend trip to visit family, but far enough away to maintain his independence.

“I didn’t know then I would join one of the greatest Wildlife Biology programs in the United States,” he said with a laugh. “Sometimes things just work out.”

Liermann believes UM is attractive to veterans like himself because of its unique location on the “urban-rural interface.” He said Missoula – in the middle of the mountains – has all the advantages of a small city with a lively downtown.

“But then you can drive 30 minutes and be in the Rattlesnake Wilderness and just disappear off the grid for a weekend – just like I did over winter break,” he said.

Liermann intentionally worked to find community when he arrived on campus. Always a strong student, he joined UM’s Davidson Honors College, which provides a focused and rigorous learning environment with smaller classes for top students. He also attended a meeting in the University Center, where he met Beckwith working to launch a new Student Veterans Organization on campus.

Liermann wound up becoming an officer with the student vets group, serving as vice president in 2022-23 and president in 2023-24. He also was recruited by Beckwith to work at the veteran services headquarters, a homey retrofitted house located on the edge of campus at 1000 E. Beckwith Ave. The residence offers military and veteran students their own home base at UM.

But what he really fell hard for was research. He took three courses at UM’s Flathead Lake Biological Station, which turned him on to fieldwork and collecting, analyzing and reporting data in a wilderness setting. Later he took a class with Dr. Andrew Whiteley, which spurred an interest in genetics work with a case study on grizzly bears.

“From a genetic standpoint, grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem are on a genetic island, with restrictions on what kind of new genes come in,” Liermann said. “This story inspired me, so I applied to be a grizzly bear technician for Idaho Fish & Game this past summer. We set up barbed-wire corrals and scratching posts, and I went out and collected the hair for genetic samples. I’ll be doing that again this summer.”

He said his campus connections helped him get that job. UM also helped him land research experiences working at hunter check stations with Montana Fish Wildlife & Parks. That work connected him with Bitterroot Valley FWP biologist Rebecca Mowry, who took him on expeditions to dart bighorn sheep.

“UM allowed me to pursue something I’m passionate about and know that I would love,” he said.

Liermann believes the University’s Military Friendly ranking resulted from Beckwith’s ability to communicate across campus and forge relationships. He said top institutions like UM also concentrate on graduation and career outcomes, work on support and retention for military-affiliated students, and focus on financial aid and loan repayments.

“I feel like this honor is a pat on the back for our entire campus,” he said. “There are a lot of everyday heroes out there who make things easier for us – people like Lucy Logan over in student accounts. They are all part of it.”

Liermann graduated from UM on May 10, but his grizzly adventures will continue. His next stop is a doctoral ecology and evolutionary biology program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The veteran will conduct collaborative research, integrating genomics into long-term diversity monitoring of grizzly bears.