CANDIDATE NO.12 flattened his tie as he leaned forward. He rested his forearms on his legs and twisted his gold wedding band.

Board of Regents Chairman Clayton Christian, too, leaned forward, speaking into the microphone as he told the gathered university officials that Candidate No. 12 had agreed to the contract terms of becoming the University of Montana's 17th president.

"We can actually give him a name today," Christian said.

Royce Engstrom grinned, sat up in the plastic conference room chair and waited for the vote.

"All those in favor?" Christian asked.

"Aye!" responded the circle of Regents.

It's 11:28 on Thursday morning and the search for UM's next president is over.

The man who will take over for a president sometimes called King George said he wants to focus on shared governance that strengthens every campus of UM affiliation. He plans to use first names and frankly answer every question. His lifelong curiosity and desire to learn drove him to new friendships, skills and ambitions. He rose to UM's presidency on the supportive shoulders of the students, colleagues and family he helped along the way. He likes people and adventure.  This is the job, the university, for him.

UM Vice President Bill Muse offered a handshake as

Engstrom returned to his seat. He gripped firmly, grinned slightly, sat back and sighed.

He's made it, but the journey's only just begun.

 

CAMPUS visits last week introduced Engstrom's qualifications — a doctorate in analytical chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, positions at the University of South Dakota documenting his rise from professor to provost over 28 years, president of the Council on Undergraduate Research and his three years as UM's Provost — but the forums only provide a narrow view of the man who sought UM's presidency.

Mary, his wife, knows this best.

A friend introduced them when Mary was visiting family in Madison during a break from her first teaching job. They married a year later in 1979, the same year Engstrom earned his doctorate and they moved to Vermillion, South Dakota to teach.

This would be the first of many journeys for the couple. Mary learned everything became an adventure with Engstrom.

Like the outdoor church service one summer when Engstrom, Mike Armstrong and George Slinker were mistaken for a professional guitar trio.

"The three of us were strumming with the music and someone asked for our name," Engstrom said. "Mike shouted, ‘The Buckaroos!'"

It stuck. They practiced — and just hung out — at 11 a.m. each Saturday for nearly 10 years.

They were The Gospel Buckaroos when playing bluegrass variations of hymns.

They were The Celtic Buckaroos when they filled a last-minute gap at a local festival.

They were The Bluegrass Buckaroos when they played for fundraisers.

And when more than a dozen musicians joined the group — though never in the same performance — they were "The Too Many Buckaroos."

"We had too many guitar players," Engstrom said. "I was in Washington D.C. for a meeting and saw a guitar shop. They had a mandolin and so I decided to learn to play."

Armstrong said Engstrom learned to play it well almost overnight.

Engstrom also knew how to fly, so he piloted a small Cessna to Longmont, Colo. then drove 11 miles to Lyons for RockyGrass, an annual bluegrass festival.

While Armstrong rested in the tent, he stayed out and played late into the night.

"He kept jammin' all night out there ‘til his elbow swelled up," Armstrong said. "He was a mandolin strumming fool."

But the mandolin and guitar were not enough. Mary said he bought a keyboard after moving to Montana and is teaching himself to play.

"At heart, he's kind of an explorer," she said. "He loves learning about everything."

The same curiosity inspired a detour last week on their return from UM's football game against Eastern Washington University.

He skipped I-90 and drove through Idaho's Thompson Pass to Thompson Falls and then home. He wanted to see the terrain described by David Thompson after reading a book on the pioneer.

 "He wants to get to know everything about a place: It's geography, geology, history, culture," Mary said. "He was always like that."

In 1999, as USD's Vice President of Research, it was the Missouri River he wanted to explore. He asked a friend, Silvia Ronco, to help him develop a research project on the Lewis & Clark expedition.

She wrote what she could, leaving some of the history to Engstrom since she grew up in Argentina.

"He really laughed when I said ‘Clark & Lewis' instead of ‘Lewis & Clark,'" she said. "But he never made fun of my accent."

The grant from the NCUR/Lancy Initiative was approved, they launched the program and started an annual summer research trip.

But one year the group was slowed by harsh heat and a wind that whipped upstream.

Ronco, her sister and her niece couldn't quite keep up.

 "We have no hat, no sunscreen lotion, no water," Roncos said. "It was a long trip and all of a sudden we didn't see anybody around.

"My sister starts panicking actually. She wanted to leave the canoe."

That was when Engstrom paddled back around the bend and up the river to find them. He tied his canoe to hers and towed them to camp.

"Paddling was easy for him," Roncos said, chuckling.

It's not a surprise: Engstrom doesn't just pilot canoes. He builds them.

After cutting thin strips of white cedar, he steams, bends and nails them together along a row of wood forms. He rolls a white sheet of canvas over the hull and binds it with a thick, sticky polymer before painting it.

"It was a technique started in the 1800s and used until World War Two," Engstrom said. "It takes a couple hundred hours to build one."

He learned the craft in graduate school when he couldn't afford to buy a canoe. He, instead, read design books and experimented with the process. Years later, after wedding Mary in 1979, his first canoe floated.

"There are few things more peaceful to me than floating down a river in a canoe," Engstrom said.

He and his wife try to float or hike with their two dogs at least one day every weekend but lately the time has been harder to find.

 

THE last several months were busier than ever as Engstrom auditioned for the presidency.

"Every hour I was with a different group of people," he said. "I found it all very energizing and rewarding."

One typical morning last week, he met professor Neil Moisey at 6:30 a.m. for the drive to Butte and tossed his suit jacket in the Prius' backseat. He asked Moisey to pull into the Burger King drive-through before entering I-90 East on West Broadway.

He drank his fresh coffee, chatted and thought about his pitches for creating the 2020 curriculum, better connecting the affiliated campuses with a new meeting schedule and creating new channels of communication.

Two hours later, when he arrived in Butte, he bypassed the podium and walked past the first two rows of empty tables to speak with the faculty and staff who gathered to meet the only presidential finalist.

One professor asked pointed questions about creating a doctoral degree program and the authoritarian reign of King George and the Regents.

By the third question, Engstrom addressed him by name.

"Yes, Matt?"

Matt thanked Engstrom as the forum ended at 11 a.m.

For Engstrom, it was back on the road, this time to Helena.

 Engstrom set his white, boxed lunch of turkey sandwich, lemonade, Doritos and an M&M cookie on the Prius' roof.

 He took off his jacket and threw it in the backseat.

 It was his last day of interviews but already he was eager to visit the campuses again and to learn more about their people and programs.

A week later, back in Butte, the Regents' vote would allow him to do just that: begin another adventure.

jayme.fraser@umontana.edu