Dr. Thomas Rust begins his seventh year as the faculty athletic representative in 2025-26. He is a professor of history at MSUB and a native Montanan. He graduated with a Bachelor of Art in history in 1992 from the University of Minnesota. He received his master's degree in history from the University in Denver in 1995 where his work in American military history, more specifically Fort Ellis, has been published in the journal "Military History of West" and recently the monograph Lost Fort Ellis: A Frontier History of Bozeman, Montana.
He went on to receive a M.Ed. from MSUB in 1999 before completing his Ph.D. at the University of Leicester in 2006. He has conducted and published both historical and archeological research in a variety of areas from ancient Rome to the American West. He has been the primary investigator on more than 20 archeological projects and from 2011 to 2014 he led the multidisciplinary effort to verify the location of the Clark Canoe Camp on the Yellowstone River near Park City, which was published in the journal Archeology in Montana and We Proceeded On. He currently has a book on the U.S. Army's administration of Yellowstone Park under review with the University of Kansas press. Dr. Rust has taught at MSUB since 1999.
Outside of his time at the university, he has earned national recognition as a scholar and has impacted the campus community, the community of Billings, and the state of Montana. Last Thursday, Dr. Rust was honored at the MSUB Faculty Excellence Awards. Dr. Rust's commitment to the university, service, and scholarship endeavors demonstrates his overall excellence and the reason why he was selected as one of the recipients of the Faculty Excellence Awards.
