ScholarWorks

ScholarWorks is an open access repository for the capture of the intellectual work of Montana State University (MSU) in support of its teaching, research and service missions. MSU ScholarWorks is a central point of discovery for accessing, collecting, sharing, preserving, and distributing knowledge to the Montana State University community and the world.

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Scholarship & Research

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Elucidating the dynamic underpinnings of nuclear receptor biased agonism
(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2026)
Hasenoehrl, Ethan James
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Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Brian Bothner
Approximately one out of six FDA-approved drugs target nuclear receptor proteins. This family of ligand-activated transcription factors has a highly dynamic activation mechanism that includes dimerization, ligand binding, and coregulator binding. After binding to coregulator proteins, nuclear receptors can specifically recruit different histone modifying proteins to thereby regulate gene expression. What is not fully understood about these proteins is how ligands can modulate the recruitment of specific coactivator proteins, known as biased agonism. Conventionally, it has been thought that helix 12 located on the C-terminus of the ligand binding domain acts as a crucial determinant for coregulator binding affinities. However, recent work has suggested that this mechanism is far more complex. In this project, we employed hydrogen deuterium exchange mass spectrometry to study the dynamics of the ligand binding domains of two nuclear receptors: peroxisome proliferator activator receptor gamma and farnesoid x receptor. Analyses were done in the presence of ligands and/or coregulators to elucidate changes in structural stability and dynamics of these proteins when in complex with various binding partners. This work has revealed that protein regions besides helix 12 proximal to the coregulator binding interface are involved in the biased agonism mechanism. By further understanding this mechanism, this work provides a significant opportunity for the development of new therapeutic agents with highly targeted effects.
Influence of environment, genetics, and management on field pea grain nitrogen concentration and yield response and subsequent effect of legume-based crop rotations on soil organic carbon
(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 2026)
Koeshall, Samuel Thomas
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Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Perry R. Miller
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This is a manuscript style paper that includes co-authored chapters.
Field pea (Pisum sativum L). is a cool-season legume, commonly referred to as a pulse crop, that is rotated with cereal and oilseed crops across the northern Great Plains (NGP). Field pea domestic markets have benefited from the growth of the plant-based protein market. North American plant-based protein markets commonly reward pea farmers with value-added contracts for producing high protein pea grain. Previous field pea research has focused on environment, genetics, or management factors that increase yield, while ignoring protein. Additionally, carbon (C) markets are emerging that reward farmers for utilizing practices such as diverse crop rotations to sequester atmospheric C into soil organic carbon (SOC). Pea farmers in the NGP need guidance on how to manage pea for elevated protein while also understanding how long- term production practices influence SOC sequestration. This dissertation provides an approach to understanding how environmental, genetic, and management factors influence pea protein and yield, and how diverse crop rotations affect SOC accrual. An interdisciplinary team conducted research across the USA and Canada from 2016 - 2024. Across the NGP, environment explained 70.5% of the variation in protein concentration observed across 23 environments, while genetics explained 10.5%. Precipitation accumulation during late vegetative growth followed by heat accumulation during grain fill predicted protein concentration. Intra-plant protein variation revealed that bottom pods frequently have a greater protein concentration across the NGP and that the environment x genetic interaction explained 50.7% of intra-plant protein variation. Analysis of genotypes revealed that stability of protein concentration is not associated with mean protein or yield stability, suggesting trait stability should be considered when evaluating pea genotypes. A management study revealed that application of seed-coat insecticide to mitigate pea leaf weevil infestations increased protein by 7 g kg -1. A six-year study revealed that diverse crop rotations that rotate pea and lentil with spring wheat optimize SOC accrual, at a rate of 0.41 Mg SOC ha -1 yr -1. These findings provide foundational information to inform pea growers and the larger plant-based protein industry how pea protein formation is controlled and the subsequent benefit of including field pea in diverse crop rotations to increase ecosystem services.
Recessions and registrations: do local economic downturns impact voter participation?
(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 2026)
Hurly, Robert Thomas
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Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Carly Urban
This paper examines how local economic shocks affect political participation, focusing on voter registration as an early-stage margin of engagement. While a sizable literature studies the impact of economic conditions on voter turnout, less is known about how these conditions influence the decision to enter the electorate. Voter registration requires forward-looking effort and information acquisition, implying that economic shocks may affect participation through both resource constraints and attention channels. I test these predictions using a county-month panel of voter registrations in Ohio from 2000 to 2024, constructed from state voter files and combined with measures of local economic shocks based on Sahm rule recession indicators and mass layoff events from WARN notices. Across specifications, I find little evidence that local economic shocks meaningfully affect registration behavior. Neither measure produces statistically significant changes in registrations. These results hold across alternative specifications, event-study designs, and after excluding election-driven registration spikes. I interpret this pattern as consistent with models in which participation decisions made well in advance of elections are less responsive to short- run economic conditions, even when such conditions influence later-stage behaviors such as turnout or vote choice.
Go Cats go: why prospective students go to MSU
(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Education, Health & Human Development, 2026)
Holt, Michelle Moreno
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Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Sarah Pennington
While a "demographic cliff" and rising costs have sent national college enrollment into a decade-long slide, Montana State University (MSU) is telling a different story. Defying the trend of growing skepticism toward higher education, MSU has seen record-breaking application and enrollment growth. This study sets out to solve that puzzle: why here, and why now? To uncover the answer, I employed a constructivist grounded theory approach. By analyzing 100 de- identified application essays and conducting semi-structured interviews, the study utilized inductive coding and constant comparison to map the internal decision-making process of prospective applicants. Contrary to the logic that affordability drives the modern student, we found that 91% were motivated by the promise of academic rigor and specialized pedagogy. They aren't just looking for a degree; they are seeking a specific identity shaped by the Montana landscape and a deep sense of social belonging. In an era of institutional decline, these findings reveal that the most powerful recruitment tool isn't a lower price tag, but a compelling synthesis of place, purpose, and community.
Complexities of indentity in Montana's border regions: between rivers and ridges, an anticolonial exploration of indigenous and settler texts in the Two Medicine Region
(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2026)
Hall, Nicole JoAnna
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Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Allison Wynhoff Olsen
This dissertation undertakes a comparative analysis of three Montana novels: Debra Magpie Earling's The Lost Journals of Sacajewea (2023), James Welch's Fools Crow (1986), and Ivan Doig's Dancing at the Rascal Fair (1987) to examine how these novels, whose characters converge in the Two Medicine region, reflect Montana as a borderland and liminal space. The Lost Journals of Sacajewea claims rhetorical sovereignty by centering Sacajewea's voice as she traverses the upper Missouri and Yellowstone regions in her early life and during the Corps of Discovery, highlighting the complexities of survivance (Gerald Vizenor) and reclaiming Montana regions as Indigenous space. Fools Crow situates the late 1860s Montana Territory as a contested zone marked by Blackfeet/Pikuni survival amid colonial encroachment, foregrounding Indigenous negotiations of identity and belonging in the face of colonial dispossession. Dancing at the Rascal Fair chronicles the experiences of Scottish immigrants in the Two Medicine country, exploring how settler communities navigate the realities of colonial settlerism. Guided by the following research questions: (1) How do these novels represent Montana as a borderland and liminal space? (2) In what ways do their protagonists and communities negotiate identity, belonging, and survivance or survival in these liminal spaces? (3) What does a comparative, anticolonial, borderlands-theory-driven reading reveal about the intersections and divergences of Native and settler experiences in Montana? The dissertation synthesizes and critiques mainstream borderlands theory (Gloria Anzaldua's mestiza consciousness and nepantla) and Indigenous epistemologies, drawing on the work of seminal scholars, including Gerald Visenor, Jodi Byrd, Vine Deloria Jr., Scott Richard Lyons, Mishuana Goeman, and others, to develop an anticolonial literary criticism. No existing scholarship directly compares Fools Crow, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, and The Lost Journals of Sacajewea through this theoretical framework. The dissertation's original contribution lies in its synthesis of Indigenous and mainstream borderlands theory, its comparative analysis of Earling and Welch alongside Doig, and its insistence on the ethical and political stakes of reading Montana's borderlands literature through an anticolonial lens. Ultimately, the study reveals both intersections of shared experiences, particularly regarding land, memory, narrative authority, and the complex dynamics of the Montana borderlands.