Honors College Team

A leader in the national Honors community, Richard Badenhausen has thirty years of experience in Honors education. He is a past president of the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC), was a two-time member of the NCHC Board of Directors, and currently sits on the board of the American Conference of Academic Deans (ACAD). He co-chaired the task force that rewrote the national honors standards for the first time in thirty years in 2022. He has also published over a dozen essays on issues related to honors education and edited the 2022 monograph, Honors Colleges in the 21st Century (NCHC). He has served as a program reviewer or consultant at two dozen universities looking to improve their honors programs or colleges.

Badenhausen has published widely on the work of T. S. Eliot and modernist literature, including T. S. Eliot and the Art of Collaboration (Cambridge UP). He regularly publishes in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed on topics related to academic administration. He previously was Dean of the Honors College for eight years at Westminster University, where he also served as interim provost for 14 months. Before that, he was a Professor of English at Marshall University, where he also led the honors program. Badenhausen has a PhD and MA from the University of Michigan and a BA from Colgate University.

A proud second-generation Bobcat alum, Steven KiiNockKooMii (First Thunder) Davis leads initiatives to broaden access in higher education, promote academic excellence, and support student success. Steven aims to support students in all aspects of their Honors College experience, from admissions and advising to undergraduate research and community engagement, serving as the director for the Directed Interdisciplinary Studies (DIS) program. He is also the founding director and architect of Honor Bound, an Indigenous program for high-achieving American Indian and Alaska Native students, which has significantly increased AIAN enrollment and achievement within the Honors College.

An enrolled member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and descendant of the Blackfeet Nation, Davis earned dual B.S. degrees in Chemical and Biological Engineering and an Honors Baccalaureate with Highest Distinction in 2014. A former NCAA Division I athlete and Rhodes Scholarship finalist, he spent nearly a decade in industry before returning to his alma mater to help shape the next generation of students. He is currently pursuing a Master’s in Environmental Engineering en route to a Ph.D. in Engineering, supported by the Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership and LSAMP Bridge to the Doctorate fellowships.

Dawn helps prospective students apply to the Honors College and advises current students on how to achieve an Honors degree.  In addition, Dawn supports the Honors College Dean, Assistant Dean, and Faculty.  She provides the “behind the scenes” administration to keep the Honors College functioning, which includes human resources, budgeting, scheduling of classes, classrooms and faculty assignments, and logistics for our experiential learning courses (i.e. Hike and Read, etc...), among many other activities.  Dawn is heavily involved in the administering of the Presidential Scholarship along with other scholarships housed in the Honors College.

Dawn has 38 years of service to Montana State and began her career in the College of Agriculture before transitioning to the Honors College in 2006. She has served in her current role for 19 years.

Josie comes from Sturgis in the Black Hills of South Dakota. She is a 2025 Summa Cum Laude graduate of MSU with a BS in Cell Biology and Neuroscience. A Presidential Scholar in the Honors College while at MSU, Josie has extensive experience with student-centered programming, having served as a T&C Student Fellow, a Senator in MSU student government, and a lead tutor in American Indian Hall. Before joining the Honors College staff, Josie worked with the Good Relations Learning Community, a peer mentorship program for first year and transfer Indigenous students in the American Indian & Alaska Native Student Success Services.