Bruce Parker Athletics Endowed Scholarship

The MSU Billings Athletic Endowed Scholarship was established in 2001 to provide financial assistance to student-athletes based on participation on an athletic team, grade point average, and need as determined by the Intercollegiate Athletics Scholarship Selection Committee. The first scholarship was awarded in the academic year 2005-2006.

In 2021, The Yellowjacket Athletics Association (YAA) announced that the department’s Athletics Scholarship Endowment would be renamed the Bruce Parker Athletics Endowed Scholarship in honor of the late Montana athletics legend Bruce Parker ’79.

While Parker was a Bobcat, Saint, and a Battlin’ Bear, he got his start as a Yellowjacket. Before starting his legendary administrative career, he played tennis for Eastern Montana College for four years and served as student body president as a senior. He was inducted into the MSUB Athletics Hall of Fame in 2020.

Parker then started his athletic administration career at MSU Bozeman before serving as the athletic director at Carroll College and Rocky Mountain College until his retirement in 2018. He was selected as AD of the year of the Frontier Conference nine times and Under Armor National AD of the year three times. He has also been inducted into six different halls of fame: Montana State Bozeman, Carrol College, Rocky Mountain College, Montana State Billings, and National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA), and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).