Max Yates, Montana State ’21, was recently honored by his university for his work advocacy and support of Native American students on campus. The MSU’s Department of Native American Studies awarded Yates with the Daniel Voyich Community Involvement Award, named for the campus’ director and advisor to the MSU American Indian and Alaskan Native students for 30 years.

Yates helped establish and expand MSU’s American Indian Success Center tutoring program, and led the program for three years. How did this all start out for Yates? “I just simply went up and asked if there was any way that I could get involved, if they had any tutoring programs or anything,” he said. “We tried to establish the program based on mutual respect, recognizing that I am not indigenous. So I simply came in and sat in the center one day, and they said, ‘There is a tutor here if you want him.’ Students were a bit reticent to start using me at first but then it started picking up and they started utilizing my services. Now we have over 11 tutors.”

In 2020, Yates was also named a Truman Scholar, a prestigious and competitive national scholarship awarded to college juniors from each state who have demonstrated leadership potential and have answered the call to public service. He was one of 17 in Montana State’s history, and the only fraternity or sorority member to receive the honor last year. See local news coverage of Yates’ honors and read about his plans after graduation here.

Yates recently received a Marshall Scholarship that will enable him to study health systems at the University of Cambridge in England for two years. He will use the scholarship to study that country’s innovations in primary care systems by earning a master’s degree at Cambridge then a second master’s in health policy and health economics at the University of Birmingham. After, he plans to attend medical school and hopes to practice primary care medicine in a rural, underserved community.

“I want to use the experience of studying and researching primary care structures and health workforce studies in the U.K. to provide ideas that I can bring back to serve rural areas in Montana,” Yates said. “The opportunity to specialize and study the fields I am interested in is enthralling. It will be a long journey ahead, but it will be interesting and, I think, fun.” Read more about his new academic journey here. 

Marshall Scholarships finance high performing young Americans to study for a degree in the United Kingdom. The scholarships were first awarded in 1954, up to 50 scholars are selected each year to study at a graduate level at an U.K. institution in any field of study. This year 1,190 students applied for the scholarship, 163 were interviewed and 46 awarded. Yates is only the second student in Montana State Marshall Scholar. 

Recipients receive tuition, fees, living expenses, annual book and thesis grants and research and daily travel grants. To learn more about the Marshall Scholarship, click here.