ISU president says students ‘do not simply attend ISU’ — they shape it
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POCATELLO – The president of Idaho State University celebrated the institution’s history and spoke optimistically about its future.
On Wednesday afternoon, ISU President Robert Wagner delivered his fall address to university staff and faculty from a stage on Davis Field. Wagner’s address highlighted ISU’s 125-year history, emphasizing that the university became what it is today only through the hard work of past generations of Bengals.
“Our story began in 1901. It was never inevitable that this institution would become what it is in 2026. Not even close,” Wagner said.
Before ISU was conceived, the land where it would stand was a part of the original boundaries of the Fort Hall Reservation, “and ancestral homelands of the Shoshone and Bannock peoples,” Wagner said. To honor this fact, he first took the stage with Miss Native ISU Danella Rose Perry-Murphy.
“We recognize that our university story is part of a much longer, richer history of this place. Understanding where we fit within that history helps us preserve a legacy, but it also gives us purpose as we think about what came before and what comes next,” Wagner said.
Idaho State University, which adopted that name in 1963, opened as the Academy of Idaho at a time when Pocatello looked much different from what it does today.
“Pocatello itself was barely a town, and certainly not a campus community,” Wagner said.
In 1902, the academy had its first year of school, with three students enrolling in September. By the end of the term, the Academy had around 70 students enrolled.
The institution that would one day become ISU underwent many changes after that, becoming the Idaho Technical Institute in 1915, with students building a giant “T” on Red Hill to celebrate. And 12 years later, it became the southern branch of the University of Idaho.
And apparently, Wagner said, it was common for students from the north to refer to the southern campus as “the twig.”
“I’ve been called a few things in my life, but I do not care for twig. Fortunately, neither did generations of students, faculty, staff, alumni and community leaders who knew this institution’s story was meant to be something far more,” Wagner said.
After this, students began to push for the institution to achieve four-year status. Wagner shared a story where students decided to make this point by climbing Red Hill during the night, carrying picks, shovels and whitewash, and turned that giant T into a nearly 200-foot-tall No. 4.”
“I love that part of our story because it says something about our students that is still true today. Students do not simply attend ISU. They shape us and are part of our story,” Wagner said.
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And Wagner highlighted the achievements of those students, pointing out how ISU students are filling critical roles across Idaho.
“We prepare the respiratory therapist who takes the night shift and helps the patient breathe easier. We train the aircraft technician who keeps people moving safely across the nation. We educate the counselor who helps a struggling teenager find a way forward. We prepare a cybersecurity professional to work protecting our country’s critical systems. Our faculty and students conduct research that solves real-world problems,” Wagner said.
And because of this, Wagner said that ISU’s best days are not in its past, but in its future.
“We are carrying on the baton passed on by those who preceded us. That is our purpose,” Wagner said.
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