Montana State University
MT · AI Readiness #185 of 227
AIREDEX™ Score: 5.4 /10
A university-built AI tool, CatChat, launched at Montana State in 2026, running on Tempest, the largest supercomputer in the state, giving every Bobcat free, on-campus AI access, part of over $20 million in active research funding.
Montana State also opened the Interdisciplinary Institute on Artificial Intelligence that same year, co-led by the deans of the MSU Library and the College of Letters and Science, with more than 150 faculty attending its inaugural symposium and a national conference scheduled for October 2026. The SkillSets platform and the AI Lab and Ambassadors program extend AI training to students across all disciplines, while the Responsible AI in Libraries and Archives project, led by Sara Mannheimer and funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, gives undergrads access to published ethical decision-making tools.
Pillar grades
- Commitment: C-
- Curriculum: C+
- Partnerships: D+
- Research: B-
A(I)ttitude™: cautious
Selected Highlights
- IIAI formally approved by MUS Board of Regents November 2025; co-led by Doralyn Rossmann (MSU Library Dean) and William Thomas (Dean, College of Letters and Science); 150+ faculty attended inaugural symposium March 2026; national symposium scheduled October 2026.
- Responsible AI in Libraries and Archives program (2022-2026), IMLS-funded ($250K), PI Sara Mannheimer; produced Viewfinder toolkit, published in Information Technology and Libraries; actively promoted on MSU's official AI page.
- CatChat is a university-built, campus-hosted AI tool running on Tempest infrastructure, free to all MSU students, faculty, and staff; uses publicly available LLMs (gpt-oss:120b, Mistral, Gemma3); all data remain within MSU systems; powered ~80% renewable energy.
- SkillSets campus-wide AI learning platform (licensed, all users); AI Lab and AI Ambassadors (Library-based, 60 ambassadors across 9 colleges, 500+ member Community of Practice); CFE AI workshops; Ithaka S+R AI literacy cohort embedding AI into undergraduate core curriculum.
- Tempest HPC cluster: 12,264 logical CPU cores, 55,926 GB RAM, 26 NVIDIA A40 GPUs, 14 NVIDIA A100 GPUs, 12 NVIDIA H100 GPUs, 600 TB flash storage; free-tier access for all MSU researchers and instructors; NSF-funded $500K upgrade.